Good riddance to bad rubbish

White House press secretary Scott McClellan submitted his resignation to the president last week.

It was just one of a number of personnel changes that have occurred in the West Wing since Josh Bolten took over as President George W. Bush's new chief of staff. It has been widely speculated that McClellan's resignation came at the behest of a White House that has been struggling with plummeting public support.

I say "widely speculated" because we don't know. Nobody knows what goes on in this president's administration because it avoids releasing information to the public as much as possible. When it does make public statements, they are almost invariably misleading or are outright false.

I do not think I exaggerate. The Bush Administration goes into bunker mode as a matter of reflex.

It needlessly classifies government documents and presidential papers, refuses to answer the most basic questions and inanely utters the same talking points ad infinitum.

From day one of the Iraq war, the picture painted by the administration has been a misleadingly optimistic one. Setting aside our cloudy motivations for invading in the first place, the American public has never gotten an accurate account of the situation on the ground in Iraq.

Do Republicans even trust what the president has to say about the war anymore?

The case of Iraq is the most egregious of the administration's war on the release of information to the public, but it is far from the only example.

The list is as long as my arm: Dick Cheney's meetings with energy executives; the White House's relationship with Ken Lay, Jack Abramoff or any other disgraced public figure; the outing of a covert CIA operative for political purposes (the order for which came from the president himself, according to Cheney's former chief of staff, Scooter Libby). I could go on.

For the three years since his predecessor's resignation, McClellan has been on the front line of this pattern of obfuscation and stonewalling. He has driven the White House press corps to the brink of armed insurrection with his porcine serenity and robot-like ability to stay on message.

So infuriating is McClellan's blatant refusal to answer any question that comes his way that I've often wondered why evening news programs never simply broadcast a couple of minutes of him standing behind the lectern speaking words but not actually saying anything. Nothing would better illustrate the administration's consistent question dodging.

Of course, McClellan is just a cog in the machine. Anyone can refuse to answer questions.

But as the public face of this administration, he is symbolic of the tendency of the current White House occupants toward secrecy -- the tendency towards not letting the public know what its government is up to.

Symbols are important. They are a convenient way of representing complex ideas and beliefs. And hopes. Hopefully, McClellan's departure is symbolic of a larger exodus from Washington on the part of his former co-workers.

Reach Daily columnist David Nordmark at [url='mailto:davidnordmark@thedaily.washington.edu']davidnordmark@thedaily.washington.edu[/url].