Oh, wow

The wheels are coming off the bus faster than I ever imagined.

Josh Marshall:

In this morning's gaggle, Scott McClellan got asked whether the teleconference the president had with troops in Tikrit was scripted. Here's what he said ...

QUESTION: How were they selected, and are their comments to the president pre-screened, any questions or anything...
MCCLELLAN: No.

QUESTION: Not at all?

MCCLELLAN: This is a back-and-forth.

Here's how the pool report (i.e., from the designated reporter on the scene) described what happened.

The soldiers, nine U.S. men and one U.S. woman, plus an Iraqi, had been tipped off in advance about the questions in the highly scripted event. Allison Barber, deputy assistant to the Secretary of Defense for internal communication, could be heard asking one soldier before the start of the event, "Who are we going to give that [question] to?"

Wait, it gets better. Later, McClellan said Helen Thomas opposed the "war on terror."

McCLELLAN: Well, Helen, the President recognizes that we are engaged in a global war on terrorism. And when you're engaged in a war, it's not always pleasant, and it's certainly a last resort. But when you engage in a war, you take the fight to the enemy, you go on the offense. And that's exactly what we are doing. We are fighting them there so that we don't have to fight them here. September 11th taught us --

THOMAS It has nothing to do with -- Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

McCLELLAN: Well, you have a very different view of the war on terrorism, and I'm sure you're opposed to the broader war on terrorism. The President recognizes this requires a comprehensive strategy, and that this is a broad war, that it is not a law enforcement matter.

Terry.

TERRY MORAN On what basis do you say Helen is opposed to the broader war on terrorism?

McCLELLAN: Well, she certainly expressed her concerns about Afghanistan and Iraq and going into those two countries. I think I can go back and pull up her comments over the course of the past couple of years.

MORAN And speak for her, which is odd.

Let's remember that a press secretary is the second most visible face in any administration. If he's making mistakes like this...man, backstage at the West Wing right now must be drama outside even Aaron Sorkin's imagination.

BTW, if you missed the story about the White House's seemingly inexplicable screw-up of this Presidential "chat" (GWB, you're no FDR. You're not even Jimmy Carter), Mark has a good wrap-up.

We politics junkies have known for a fact for a long while that almost all Bush's public events are tightly scripted and/or screened. But what the hell made anyone think they could get away with this?

This "media event" was carefully rehearsed and loosely-scripted and someone -- maybe the same someone who erred by suggesting the format in the first place -- compounded the disaster. They allowed the media to see and tape the rehearsals where the troops were told what would be discussed in seeming spontaneity. I would love to hear the explanation of why they allowed this to be seen. It made Bush look like a marionette who walks in and does what his own handlers don't trust him to do without careful preparation. We all know that much of what we see on television that's represented as unplanned is meticulously prearranged. Most producers, however, know enough not to show the world just how prearranged.

How awful was it all? I felt sorry for George W. Bush. That's how awful it all was.

The other video worth a look is the press briefing that Scott McClellan engaged in later, denying to reporters who'd see the rehearsal that the event was rehearsed. I don't know why anyone with an ounce of self-respect would ever want to be a presidential press secretary. At some point in every administration, your boss is caught picking his nose, there's videotape of him picking his nose, and you're sent out to deny that he picked his nose and to suggest that there's something seriously wrong with a reporter who thinks so. For the last few years, the White House Press Corps has taken polite dictation and asked questions that don't even measure up to the softball standard. Wiffleball is more like it...or Nerf. I dunno if they're just lazy or if, as I suspect, there's some fear there of feeding the rage of those who scream "Liberal Media" every time there's something on the news they don't like. But every so often lately, there's been some Scott McClellan tap-dance that is so far from provable reality that even the guy from Fox News has to go, "Come on."

(Emphasis is mine.)

That's what I mean by "seemingly inexplicable." Maybe they thought they were still dealing with a press corps that didn't do their job. As for why the press corps has now decided to do their job, I'm thinking it has to be the new George Clooney movie...