"Politics," George H. W. Bush once wrote, "is no profession for people who don't like surprises."
There were plenty of surprise to go around this week, much of it coming from the publication of a book. It was hard to keep up with all the different ways people claimed to be taken aback by the contents of former Bush Press Secretary Scott McClellan's memoir, What Happened. Some were surprised that the White House had lied about the war.(On what planet had they been living?) Others, like Bob Dole, could not imagine that a Bush staffer had written such a revelatory book. (Did they think the vaunted Bush message discipline and loyalty would last for all eternity?) And some of those who had the difficult job of covering the Bush White House day to day had not expected the underestimated McClellan, of all refugees, to be the one to pull it off. (Note to Karl Rove: McClellan just about tripled the pressure on you to tell us something we don't know when your memoir hits the bookstores.)
But the main impact of the McClellan book probably won't be about Bush or loyalty or even, really, the war (and certainly not a congressional investigation, despite the threat by at least one Democrat on the Hill to call McClellan to testify). It's more likely to be about the political mood, which is genuinely rotten for incumbents and Republicans in particular.
McClellan's book is another beta boost for the misery index. His memoir will feed the deep anxiety that the country has veered severely off the right track, that Washington is a cesspool of deception and hogwash, and that the federal government can't be trusted to do much of anything right. At a minimum, McClellan has not made it any easier for Republicans to maintain the balance of power in Washington. But the flap over his book is yet another reminder of how difficult the country will be to govern for whichever party wins in November.
* * * * * *
When Bush wrote that line about surprises (in his first memoir), he was talking about the GOP vice presidential nomination, and how he got it.
Bush I is the world's leading expert on that topic (up in Kennebunkport, he's probably already got a short list in his head). He had been talked up for the Veep's spot in 1968, 1976 and of course finally snared it in 1980. That year, he had run an underdog's race against Ronald Reagan for the nomination, won or came in second in most contests and reluctantly ended his campaign after the Michigan primary. When he dropped out, few people thought Reagan would tap his top rival to be his partner. Reagan didn't care for Bush much, found him to be a bit too effete, had not liked the way Bush had handled himself at a few key moments in the primary. Plus, they were from two different wings of the GOP: Reagan hailed from its more conservative, western, anti-government wing; Bush was a legatee of the moderate eastern establishment and had famously called Reagan's tax cutting economic policies a kind of "voodoo."
Yet by August of that year, Reagan had indeed tapped Bush to be his Number Two -- in part to unify the party, because the other options were worse, but also because Bush would have been a credible president if anything happened to a 68-year-old Reagan. Amid all the talk about who McCain might pick as his partner today, it's wholly accurate to say Mitt Romney is unlikely to get that call from Sedona. There is no love between McCain and Romney; the two men don't care for each other, come from different wings of their party and have said some things that make Bush's "voodoo" remark seem harmless.
But I wonder. Like Bush in 1980, Romney exited the race in an efficient way when he knew his run was done, has stayed out of sight through the late spring, held some fundraisers for McCain and even turned over his donor lists. And Romney has one other factor in his favor. When the standard bearer would be the oldest president in history (72 on inauguration day), the party needs someone the country can imagine as President nearby. On that score, McCain's choices, like Reagan's in 1980, are limited. Romney is an unlikely Number Two. But I'm prepared to be, as Bush wrote, surprised.
* * * * *
And how soon, speaking of efficient exits, will Hillary Clinton wrap up her long goodbye?
There is a growing expectation that a large number of superdelegates will tip their hands on Wednesday, if not sooner, handing Barack Obama the nomination as the primary season ends. That should enable Clinton to say she gave it her all and still close up her roadshow by the end of the week.
But it isn't as easy as it sounds, particularly for the Clintons. These are two people who have defined themselves as tough, resilient, no-surrender fighters -- and who have virtually no recent or even memorable experience with defeat.
Which helps explain why her campaign, as it begins to shut down, has spent so much time been searching plaintively for factors - the rules, the media, latent sexism - to explain the outcome. One party operative laid some of the inability to see reality at the former president's feet. "He's never lost. I mean, there have been times when he hasn't won. But as far as he's concerned, he's never lost. And so this has to be explained somehow.''