Scott McClellan

If the president is committed to embracing a high level of openness and honesty, then we can move Washington beyond this partisan warfare that has been so destructive.

The federal government should have taken more responsibility, because, to the American people, I think, the federal government is the failsafe backstop to all that.

It's too much about party and too little about the country. And we need to put the country first and put the party much lower.

We should have embraced a high legal of openness and forthrightness in addition to that and then the expectations wouldn't have gotten so out of whack.

Unfortunately, I think too many people today do look at Washington and say, 'All they're giving us is spin and manipulation, and they're not working together to get things done.'

Yes. No, I was sincere at the time. Now, looking back and reflecting on that, I have a different perspective on it.

The rest of the foreign policy team seemed to be preoccupied with regime change or, in the case of Condi Rice, seemingly more interested in accommodating the president's instincts and ideas than in questioning them or educating him.

When I found out I had been knowingly lied to by Karl Rove and Scooter Libby in the Valerie Plame leak episode and passed along false information based on their assurances two years prior to that saying that they weren't involved.

We went and sold -- oversold the case to the American people on the war and not only that, but the emphasis was more on the weapons of mass destruction than it was on really the driving motivation behind the decision to go to war, which…

There's been no evidence to back that up whatsoever.

Colin Powell was apparently the only adviser who even tried to raise doubts about the wisdom of war. The rest of the foreign policy team seemed to be preoccupied with regime change or, in the case of Condi Rice, seemingly more interested…