Monster's Ball

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post
Friday, May 30, 2008

Bush loyalists watching Scott McClellan kick off his media tour yesterday must have felt a revulsion akin to Dr. Frankenstein's.

McClellan's former White House colleagues had built and trained the former press secretary to parrot their talking points, monotonously if not mindlessly, no matter what argument or fact stood in the way. Saddam Hussein was a grave threat. The war in Iraq was going well. Scooter Libby and Karl Rove didn't leak Valerie Plame's identity.

But now the McClellan monster is back -- and he's got a new set of talking points that attack the very people he was trained to defend. He's a bit thinner around the middle, and the sideburns are comically longer, but McClellan's famous fealty to his message is as stubborn as ever.

"We set up a massive political operation that was aimed at really continuing that permanent-campaign way of governing," he informed the listeners of National Public Radio's "Morning Edition."

(Continued here.)