So I've been watching Scott McLellan on the different political shows all week and he seems to be genuine in his motives for critiquing his former boss. When I read the headlines that he was writing a tell-all book about his time in the White House, I initially wrote it off as an easy cash in.

But he's slowly won me over. There's a memo going around that's making the case that his initial pitch for the book was much softer on Bush and Co., but being someone who often writes blogs and other types of writing, I know that my initial intentions sometimes get lost the more I write, especially when its something of a personal nature.

I haven't read the book yet, but I get the impression that Scott McLellan had a profound coming to Jesus moment while serving as the press secretary and that his epiphany started him on a journey that ultimately produced that book.

So I bristle a little bit when I hear someone say that he showed cowardice in not speaking up earlier (or outright quit) when he started to have these doubts. Too often, we want people to be where we are, or to be where we think we are, and we often look down on people who engage in the tranformative process that sometimes takes place in people's belief structures. Its very easy for us to stand on top of the ladder and criticize those for not being up at the top of the ladder, even as that person is climbing at their own pace.

Again, I haven't read the book, but I never once thought to myself that he sounds like someone who's just cashing in. His examples of moments that made him question the integrity of the job he was doing and of the administration he served seem logical and seemed to fit together chronologically in a narrative sense. Meaning, you can see how one piece fit with the next and how each subsequent piece got him to where he is today.

But he's also been almost disarmingly apologetic about his shortcomings and in his silent complicity in the unfolding disaster that is the war in Iraq, even going so far as to donate money to families of fallen service members.

Not only that, but his accounts of what happened in the WH have fit right in line with other "tell all" accounts of the Bush Administration. Where there's smoke there's fire and I think that this Bush administration has been like a wildfire of negative information.