Scotty Plays Politics In the Parlor All By Himself

Is it just me, or are there other American's out there tired of Scotty McMessage McCLellan thinking that he can speak for all American people. He is not paid to do that, nor does he have his pulse on anything except his own spin. Have a gander at his latest attempt to make qeustioning the presidential direction sound like it's a bad thing by suggesting they folks in Washington are playing a parlor game. Zoiks. Don't get dizzy from the spin.

Q How do you respond to the perception then -- there is kind of a combination of things going on; recent polls have shown the President's approval below 40 percent in a number of surveys. There are friends of the White House who say that there might be a need for some new blood or some additions, not necessarily removing people who are serving here now.

MR. McCLELLAN: That doesn't taken into account the fact that there has been a good bit of change over the course of the last few years. Go and look at the -- look at the Cabinet, look at the administration, look at the staff here at the White House.

Q There is a perception that the President keeps a very tight circle and that circle has --

MR. McCLELLAN: I think there's a perception out there on the part of the American people that Washington tends to get caught up in a lot of this parlor game and they tend to get caught up in all this babble, process-oriented stuff. I think the American people want us to stay focused on their priorities....

Q Then why do you think even friends of the White House suggest that maybe there's time for some changes --

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, we keep talking about friends or lawmakers, but I don't hear a lot of names being mentioned.

Q Norm Coleman.

MR. McCLELLAN: There's one.

Q So --

MR. McCLELLAN: That's not a lot.

Go ahead.

Q Without giving you a huge list of those lawmakers who have been quoted in the public press in the last several months suggesting that there's been communication problems and perhaps the White House could use a little bit of staffing help, are you accusing lawmakers on Capitol Hill of "babble" and "parlor games" when they're voicing these concerns? Or are they --

MR. McCLELLAN: I can tell you we just came out of a meeting with a number of lawmakers from both the Senate and the House, and the whole focus of that meeting was on how we continue to move forward and implement our shared agenda and our shared priorities for the American people.

Q Now, if we wanted to go over a list of those folks -- you mentioned changes. Perhaps wrongly, perhaps rightly, a lot of the changes appeared to many to have been departures from the White House in the past few months. Can you comment at all about whether or not you're experiencing any staff shortages?

MR. McCLELLAN: Carl, I never get into speculating about personnel matters. I've never done that, and I'm not going to start doing that. If there are vacancies to fill, then we move forward quickly to fill those vacancies.

Yup, but his definition of what the priorities are seem to be different. If you had to tell Scott what your priorities are for the Whitehouse, what would they be?