Who else was excited when they heard former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s memoir was going to tattle on the president and the rest of his cronies? Who else realized minutes later that McClellan was one of the most public of those same cronies? The one who, with a slight tinge of fear, would look into the eyes of White House correspondents during a press conference and spit out carefully sliced and diced White House soundbites? Call this pudgy and possibly opportunistic man what you will, but in his role as press secretary, he was most certainly a traitor. But it seems people can’t quite agree on who he betrayed. I’ll tell you who he betrayed: everyone.

Rob Stutzman, a former communications director for California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, pulled out the biblical rhetoric against McClellan when he compared McClellan to Judas, claiming that he violated a covenant when he aired the president’s dirty laundry.

Stutzman said that, “to be effective, a president must be able to rely upon the confidence to interact with his or her senior staff in candid and intimate ways. To effectively deliberate requires an environment of safety, of which the greatest element is the confidence of privacy and candor.” Nice argument, Mr. Stutzman, but this isn’t a sixth grade girls’ slumber party.

Our leaders have had their share of candor and privacy in their closed-door meetings. What have they come up with? Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show, hypothesized with McClellan on Monday’s show what goes on behind closed doors: “It was done with a forethought. They sat in a room with each other and said, ‘Don’t tell them any of the bad consequences that could come of this war because we really want to do this.'” McClellan replied, “I don’t think it was just like that.”

How cute of him to smile as he protested his very role in the affairs: McClellan was the man who went public with the information. He admitted to Stewart, “You can’t win by being as open and forthright as you should be. And that’s the big problem.” However, he excuses himself from responsibility. McClellan said he got “caught up in the … bubble.” The bubble made him do it!

In his role, McClellan swore an oath to the U.S. Constitution, not to the president. He had options. It wouldn’t have been unprecedented for him to resign from his post. As Jerald terHorst puts it, “There isn’t a job in the world that is important enough to keep doing it under pretense. He has an oath to the Constitution of the United States, not the man who gave him his job.”

And terHorst has some street cred. He quit in his first month as press secretary to the newly sworn-in President Gerald Ford after the leader of the free world two-timed him. Asked by reporters if Ford opposed granting President Nixon immunity from prosecution, terHorst replied, “I can assure you of that.” Hours later, Ford announced on TV he was going to give Nixon a “full, free and absolute pardon.” terHorst packed up soon after that, citing in his resignation letter that he could not continue working in “good conscience.”

McClellan failed us as a press secretary and even as a citizen. He had years to think about what he was doing in his powerful role as a representative of the White House. He should have said or done something between his resignation as press secretary and his book tour – if at least to escape the scalding wrath of a crotchety old man we know as Bob Dole. The five-term Kansas senator had fighting words for McClellan

“There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don’t have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues,” he wrote to McClellan in an e-mail. “No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits and, spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique.”

Gee, Bob Dole, how do you really feel?

Nandini Jammi is a junior English literature and language and marketing major. She can be reached at jammidbk@gmail.com.