Scott McClellan's book, (What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception) has ignited a firestorm. This article is an excerpt from the book itself. Here is one passage I found particularly insightful. "As I explain in this book, Washington has become the home of the permanent campaign, a game of endless politicking based on the manipulation of shades of truth, partial truths, twisting of the truth, and spin. Governing has become an appendage of politics rather than the other way around, with electoral victory and the control of power as the sole measures of success. That means shaping the narrative before it shapes you. Candor and honesty are pushed to the side in the battle to win the latest news cycle…"

This tracks with a conclusion I reached some time ago and promote here. We will not change how government is run today until we change how politics is done today. The causal links are too strong. Changing government will not be done simply by changing the individual in charge. The system must be changed.

McClellan's book also demonstrates to me the need for new safeguards within government regarding our National Defense processes. We need to find new ways to ensure we have the proper balance on these topics.

    Ensuring we have the proper level of manpower readiness that is affordable and distributes sacrifice across all sectors of the American people, rather than a select few.
    Ensuring we have the proper balance between equipment readiness and maintenance of the warm industrial base necessary to defeat our enemies with the demands of our society and economy.
    Ensuring we have a Congress that will properly execute its role as a co-equal branch of government in considering the possiblity of engaging in a war by ensuring that war is the only option left to the Executive branch.

Again, the only way we will achieve this is by changing the way we do our politics.

Here's a link to the WSJ article.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121198457525625977.html?mod=fpa_mostpop