Just a pawn in their game

It is ironic that liberals, who generally don't believe in absolute truth in religion, swear upon it in politics.

You need only look at how anyone who questions the qualifications of Barack Obama to be president is cast into the pit of outer darkness by those who see him as the country's savior. But there is a current case in the news which provides a less sensitive, and perhaps more obvious, example of how making political truth your moral compass results in turning right and wrong upside down.

That is the story of hapless Scott McClellan, who was the left's favorite whipping boy when he was President Bush's bumbling press secretary but is the oracular voice of reason now that he has stuck a knife in the president's back.

McClellan's new book, "What Happened," purports to be a fresh new look at the "truth" of the Bush White House, but in fact just repeats the usual liberal truisms: that President Bush is a moron, his advisers are evil manipulators, and anyone who thinks differently is a fool.

This is manna to liberals and maddening to conservatives. Questions of competence that worried everyone a couple of years ago when McClellan was near the throne are now deemed irrelevant by the left because they can't look a "gift defector" in the mouth. Questions of character that should be as obvious as a crack in the mirror are left unasked, presumably because a witness's credibility is only as good as his character, and McClellan clearly doesn't have any - character, that is.

Of course, the idea that there could actually be "right" and "wrong" of a higher source than politics appears not to have occurred to the Daily Kos bloggers or the TV news anchors. For them, right and wrong is as simple as Democrat and Republican - in that respective order, of course, and thus McClellan is now "persona grata," and is being rewarded with money, fame and the semblance of power for coming to see the political light and telling tales out of school.

In the legal world, such payments for damning testimony would be called suborning perjury, or at the very least bribing the witness, but this is not a real trial; it is a show trial - or a "show business" trial. No one really cares about the truth of the matter; what's really crucial is the overnight ratings (good), the Amazon dot.com standings (better), and the denouement (Bush gets bashed in the end).

The notion that there might be some reason to question the veracity of a man who is a self-confessed moral coward (inability to tell the truth when it actually matters), a disloyal confidant (this one needs no explanation) and a paid informant (see above) does not seem to have occurred to McClellan's new friends. But these are the same folks who are excited to discover that there is more than one religion because they think that gets them off the hook from having to subscribe to any of them.

Don't be fooled into thinking there is a war between Republicans and Democrats. There isn't. That is just a disagreement. The real war is between people who are willing to say and do anything to gain power, and those who aren't.

So don't be too hard on McClellan. He is just one of many pawns in this game. And you can't really blame the guy for selling his soul for a million bucks, can you? After all, they usually go a lot cheaper than that.

. Frank Miele is managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake and writes a weekly column. E-mail responses may be sent to edit@dailyinterlake.com