With the upcoming release of Scott McClellan’s new book, “What Happened” the media have the fresh opportunity to report all sides of the story, but will they take advantage of it? So far, it has become the subject of the day and leading into the weekend talk shows, should prove to at least be entertaining (just don’t count on it being informative). One decent piece of coverage can be attributed to Keith Olbermann on Countdown and his extensive interview with McClellan on Thursday about his new book, his experiences as Bush’s Press Secretary and his thoughts about the events taking place in this country over the past seven years. Although much of the interview is very well done and worth the time to watch, we wish Olbermann would have held McClellan to it a bit more when asking him: ‘Why now? Why did it take so long to speak out about this?’ In March of 2004 when Richard Clarke, a former member of both Clinton and George W. Bush’s National Security Council and 30-year government employee, published a book criticizing the Bush administration’s handling of the 9/11 attacks and the premise behind the Iraq war, Scott McClellan’s response was, “why didn’t he raise this issue sooner?” Thanks to Slate video for the reminder:

Well, McClellan’s response on Countdown was reasonable, but certainly had its similarities with what Clarke was saying four years ago: ‘I needed time to simmer and remove myself from the bubble.’ McClellan was a bit more naive in his assessment that he still thought, in 2003-2004, that Bush would become the bipartisan leader McClellan thought him to be. Judge for yourself and hope the media focus on this, rather than just the drama of having another Bushee lift his skirt and run for the hills when the walls start to crumble.

At about 3 minutes into this section of the Olbermann interview, you can hear McClellan’s response: