Shoot at the Facts, Not at the Messenger

Scott McClellan isn't someone Peggy Noonan found herself admiring, she writes in the Wall Street Journal, but she did end up “believing him" after finishing his memoir. He didn’t pen his story to make friends or salvage his image, but rather to set the record straight as he saw it. And first-person accounts are exactly what’s needed: “Feed history,” Noonan demands.

She does pick a bone with McClellan’s wavering on President Bush himself: he implies his former boss is “vain, narrow, out of his depth and coldly dismissive of doubt,” but refuses to say it. "What he says may be inconvenient, and it may be painful," Noonan observes, "but that's not what matters. What matters is if it's true." (More Scott McClellan stories.)