McClellan campaigns for himself in promoting book

SAN FRANCISCO -- On his book promotion stopover here, former White House press secretary Scott McClellan was squired around by a "literary escort," a pleasant woman named Naomi who drives visiting authors to their speaking engagements in a blue convertible. There were no motorcades, no street closures, no Secret Service.

Where he once spoke with the White House seal behind him, McClellan addressed a crowd here in front of a fabric backdrop .

It is a long way from the Oval Office, where he once basked in the power of the president, to the book circuit, where he is delivering a sharp critique of that president. But a month after the release of "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," McClellan seems comfortable in his new role.

It probably helps that the tour has taken him to "blue" cities. In San Francisco, a city Bush has never visited as president, McClellan was drowned out by applause as he said, "the war in Iraq was not absolutely necessary."

The book accuses Bush of orchestrating a "political propaganda campaign to sell the war to the American people," trying to make the "WMD threat and the Iraqi connection to terrorism appear just a little more certain, a little less questionable than they were."