This Article is From Oct 08, 2014

Amplified by Social Media, Insider Memoirs Make More Racket

Amplified by Social Media, Insider Memoirs Make More Racket

A member of the Secret Service Uniformed Division with a K-9. (Associated Press)

Washington: Leon E. Panetta's new memoir was out, and the president was livid. The president, it asserted, was "blind" to major problems and presided over a White House with a "lack of principles." The president told aides the book was a "case study on how to screw the White House."

The year was 1971, the president was Richard M. Nixon and the author, Panetta, had written his original memoir after serving as Nixon's civil rights chief.

So if President Barack Obama feels a little raw about Panetta's latest memoir, "Worthy Fights," published Tuesday amid a flurry of news media appearances, at least he has some company.

The White House tell-all - or tell-some, as the case may be - is hardly a new phenomenon for the presidency. In recent decades, it has become a ritual in Washington, particularly during second terms when advisers departed from first terms chronicle their experiences for history or good royalties or both, often with a harsh edge.

What may be new is how much more amplified these books have become with the advent of the Internet, social media and cable television, none of which were a part of American life when Panetta's first book came out 43 years ago. Obama finds himself under repeated assault as criticisms are excavated from his own team's accounts, refashioned into political missiles and fired at him with precision and repetition.

Even before anyone had actually read Panetta's latest book, critics were seizing pieces of it to make points. Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana cited Panetta this week in arguing that Obama should have left troops in Iraq. House Republican aides sent out to their huge email lists Panetta's criticism of Obama's decision to rule out using ground troops against the Islamic State.

"The most important thing I learned from my experience," said Matt Latimer, who wrote a memoir of his time as a speechwriter for President George W. Bush, "was that people don't really want an honest look at history in these memoirs. They want a partisan weapon."

For the White House, the emergence of yet another memoir has been greeted with weary resignation after books by Robert M. Gates, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Timothy F. Geithner.

The cycle has become familiar: The author, or an aide, typically gives Obama's staff a heads-up and insists that the book is generally positive. But what the president's aides understand, even if the author does not, is that does not matter. If there is a hint of criticism, it will be highlighted by a publisher eager to generate attention and by a news media on the hunt.

"What hurts is when the criticism ratifies the doubts that already exist," said Ari Fleischer, Bush's first White House press secretary. "And when it comes from someone who's on the same team, it validates the point of view of the critics."

Panetta's analysis tends to square with that of critics. And he is not the only one with a new book making similar points. Christopher R. Hill, who was the ambassador to Iraq under Obama, is out with his own book, "Outpost," arguing that the administration neglected Baghdad.

Although Vice President Joe Biden said it was "inappropriate" to write while the president was still in office, Obama offered no criticism.

"The president intentionally sought out strong, experienced Cabinet members who would speak their minds," Denis R. McDonough, the White House chief of staff, said by email. "He understood that could make for a messy process and public rehash of arguments. That comes with the territory and makes for better policy. That's why the president will continue to follow that approach. People have to make their own judgments on whether they want to write books on their experience."

McDonough's comments reflect the view of White House aides that taking issue with such books will only keep them in the public spotlight longer. "Without oxygen being added, they burn themselves out more quickly," said Anita Dunn, a former White House communications director for Obama.

Mostly, the books are staples of the second term. In the second four years of the Reagan administration, David Stockman wrote about the president's funny math, Donald Regan exposed Nancy Reagan's reliance on astrology, and Larry Speakes revealed that he had made up quotations.

In the second Clinton term, George Stephanopoulos wrote of his disillusionment working for the president, Robert Reich complained that Clinton had abandoned progressive policies, and Dick Morris confessed that he sent the first family to Wyoming for vacation because it tested better in polls.

In the first term of the second Bush administration, David J. Frum, a former speechwriter, wrote one of the first Bush White House memoirs and viewed it as largely positive, even titling it "The Right Man." Television bookers canceled interviews because it was not negative enough, he said - that is, until someone leaked a couple of critical passages to The Drudge Report, which produced the impression that it was a harsh portrayal.

Other Bush White House memoirs that followed were genuinely harsh, including those written in the first term by or with the cooperation of top officials like Richard A. Clarke and Paul O'Neill and in the second term by David Kuo and Scott McClellan. The toughest book on Bush may have been by McClellan, his former press secretary, who wrote that the Iraq War was sold to the public with a sophisticated "political propaganda campaign."

Latimer waited until after Bush left office to publish. "I thought that would mute some of the criticism I would receive," he said. "But it did not." Instead, he was excoriated by some Republican friends as disloyal.

Looking back now, he said, the notion of loyalty seems situational. "All the Republicans cheer Panetta for writing this memoir against Obama, and it's the same people who would be tut-tutting Panetta if he was working for a Republican president doing this," he said. "By the same token, Democrats are unhappy about this when they had no problem with aides to President Bush writing theirs."

Latimer and Frum argue that such books are important for history. "People owe a duty of loyalty to the president they served," Frum said. "They also owe a duty of loyalty to the taxpayers who paid their salaries."

But others said that the books chilled in-house discussions. "It creates a climate for anyone who works in the White House where they have to constantly ask themselves how they're going to be portrayed by their colleagues," Dunn said.

Panetta has seen this before. But last time, he had been fired by Nixon for being too aggressive in pushing school desegregation in the South. He later switched parties and ran for Congress. This time, he remains an admirer of Obama and considers his book broadly positive.

"I think if the president takes time to read it - and for that matter, Joe Biden - he is going to enjoy the book," he said in an interview.

Maybe. But they probably won't enjoy the controversy.


© 2014, The New York Times News Service
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