The WaPo has a rundown of his Today show appearance:
McClellan, in turn, said it took him some time after leaving the White House to come to terms with his experience there. When the Iraq war started, “my beliefs were different,” he told “Today.” “I trusted the president’s foreign policy team and I believed the president when he talked about the great and gathering danger from Iraq. I believe the president believed it too. He had convinced himself.
“I don’t think this is a book that I could have written two years ago,” McClellan added. “[I] struggled as I went through this book process. I struggled to come to grips with how things went so badly off course.”
More here at MSNBC, and here is the actual interview:
As a side note, I imagine that Irving Janis and groupthink are going to be referenced frequently in the next few years as the Bush administration post-mortems begin in earnest. Janis outlined the symptoms:
In order to make groupthink testable, Irving Janis devised eight symptoms that are indicative of groupthink (1977).
1. Illusions of invulnerability creating excessive optimism and encouraging risk taking.
2. Rationalising warnings that might challenge the group’s assumptions.
3. Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions.
4. Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, disfigured, impotent, or stupid.
5. Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions the group, couched in terms of “disloyalty”.
6. Self censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus.
7. Illusions of unanimity among group members, silence is viewed as agreement.
8. Mindguards — self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information.
One of the classic examples of groupthink Janis refers to is the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Keep this list in mind when you watch the video, particularly the response from Rove, Bartlett and others to McClellan’s book. Probably something folks like me should also keep in mind when discussing the Clinton campaign.