The following article by Peter Baker was posted on the New York Times website January 5, 2018:
WASHINGTON — In President George W. Bush’s last year in office, his former press secretary, Scott McClellan, wrote a tell-all book concluding that the Iraq war was a “serious strategic blunder” based on the “ambition, certitude and self-deceit” of a White House that was not fully honest with the American people.
The president’s remaining advisers were livid at what they considered the betrayal of an aide who had been with Mr. Bush since his Texas days. But when Dana Perino, who then held the same spokesman’s job, expressed her indignation, Mr. Bush sighed and told her to find a way to forgive Mr. McClellan or risk being consumed by anger.
Forgiveness is not exactly President Trump’s first instinct, as he made clear this week when a new book quoted his former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, offering his own harsh judgments about the White House where he once worked. Every president, it seems, goes through the spin cycle of former aides and revelatory books — some they write themselves, others they are quoted in — and every president has to find a way to grapple with the questions of loyalty and candor that invariably arise. Mr. Trump chose blunt force. Continue reading “For Trump, Book Raises Familiar Questions of Loyalty and Candor”