Scott McClellan was trotted out Friday by the Democrats for a “hearing”– one more opportunity to bash the Bush administration on the Valerie Plume matter. He was as informed and as effective a witness as he was a press secretary. Politico reports:

The problem: He doesn’t know the whole truth himself.

“I do not know whether a crime was committed by any of the administration officials who revealed Valerie Plame’s identity to reporters,” McClellan testified. “Nor do I know if there was an attempt by any person or persons to engage in a coverup during the investigation. I do know that it was wrong to reveal her identity, because it compromised the effectiveness of a covert official for political reasons. I regret that I played a role, however unintentionally, in relaying false information to the public about it.”

Once again the words “Richard Armitage” did not seem to play any role in the proceedings. And what of the central theme of the Democrats (“Bush lied, people died”)? Well unfortunately their new friend can’t help there. As the Washington Post reported, “McClellan emphasized that he did not believe that Bush or his aides purposely misled the country about Iraq.”

We’ve long since passed the point where “facts” mean anything in this realm. Indeed, in none of the zillion interviews he did that I saw or read was he ever asked some basic facts one would normally ask of a witness. No one bothered to ask him detailed questions about what meetings he attended, what he learned and who said what to whom in his presence. That would have been far too mundane and, more importantly, would have exposed that McClellan really didn’t “know” (in the sense of personally hearing or seeing evidence to support his belatedly-arrived at thesis that everyone around him, except him, was a craven liar) much of anything. Hence, he makes the perfect witness for the Democrats’ purposes.

As I contended when this broke some time ago, it is embarrassing that the media — which had a dim view of McClellan as a press secretary — should play along with McClellan ( and his publisher) in the stunt to write a book devoid of real facts, a polemic, disguised as a tell-all because of the author’s proximity to those who did know what was going on.

I will say that McClellan is better at transmitting the message (“propaganda” I believed he called it in his book) of his new media masters than he was at conveying information on behalf of his former employer. Perhaps in another few years he can write another book about how he became a “pawn” of the Left.