"I think the president should have stood by his word, and that meant Karl should have left. I think the president should have stood by the word that we said, which was that if you were involved in this in any way, then you would no longer be in this administration. And Karl was involved in it."

Scott McClellan Politics See all quotes by Scott McClellan →

React to this quote

More by Scott McClellan

“I do not believe that the President was in any way directly involved in the leaking of her identity, but that was a very disillusioning moment for me when I found out when it initially hit the press, and I was in North Carolina, if I remember correctly, and a reporter shouted out to the President, "Is it true that you authorized the secret leaking of this classified information?" We walked onto Air Force One, and the Presidents asks, "What was the reporter asking?", and I said, "He asserted that you were the one who authorized Scooty Libby leaking this information," and he said, "Yeah, I did.”

“If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration.”

“As a Texas loyalist who followed Bush to Washington with great hope and personal affection and as a proud member of his administration, I was all too ready to give him and his highly experienced foreign policy advisers the benefit of the doubt on Iraq. Unfortunately, subsequent events have showed that our willingness to trust the judgment of Bush and his team was misplaced.”

“As I have heard Bush say, only a wartime president is likely to achieve greatness, in part because the epochal upheavals of war provide the opportunity for transformative change of the kind Bush hoped to achieve. In Iraq, Bush saw his opportunity to create a legacy of greatness.”

“...I could not say honestly today that this administration does not believe in torture, does not engage in torture.”

“We had higher standards at the White House. The president said he was going to restore honor and integrity. He said we were going to set the highest of standards. We didn't live up to that. When it became known that his top adviser had been involved, then the bar was moved.”

Resonant Thoughts

"The reason of a commandment, whether positive or negative, is clear, and its usefulness evident, if it directly tends to remove injustice, or to teach good conduct that furthers the well-being of soci…"

— Maimonides

Religion1135–1204

#justice

"You can only cook Italian if you are Italian or you think like an Italian and then you don't need the recipe. To think like an Italian in the kitchen means to be frugal. It's a very simple concept. Bu…"

— Silvia Colloca

Music1977

#mind

"It is my profession, yes but a calling.. that a little bit pathetic, a little bit bombastic. I think it was much more natural.. .I Thought – when I was a child – the only method to be not in the world…"

— Anselm Kiefer

Art1945

#mind