What's Behind the White House Staff Shake-Up?

April 19, 2006 — -- Republicans have been urging the president to shake up his staff. Now he has given them what they want. Or has he?

We won't know until the staff changes are complete, and until a new Bush agenda has been unveiled. But for now, Bush has quieted some of his in-party critics.

One Republican consultant, who did not want to be named, told ABC News, "Look, he has at least taken some important first steps. ...These changes have given the impression of new energy. We needed that. I just hope there is sufficient follow-through to keep up the energy."

The change most people will notice is the impending departure of press secretary Scott McClellan. No one, with the possible exception of the president, spends more time on TV expounding the White House line on whatever the subject of the day is.

Privately, a number of Republicans on Capitol Hill wanted him to go. They found McClellan unpersuasive and bland. They also thought his credibility had been damaged after he assured the nation that White House aides knew nothing about the "outing" of CIA official Valerie Plame. When that proved untrue, reporters subjected McClellan to one of the most brutal grillings in recent memory.

While McClellan's credibility may have been damaged, it was not because reporters felt he had purposely lied. Most reporters regard him as a decent man who simply repeated what his superiors told him.

McClellan said he told the president on Monday he would be leaving. It is not clear whether McClellan chose to resign or was pushed. It is widely assumed in Washington that McClellan was given the signal that this might be a good time to find less stressful work.

He will probably also find lucrative employment. Most ex-press secretaries do very well after stepping down as the mouthpiece for the leader of the free world. As McClellan's predecessor, Ari Fleischer, has found, making speeches for hire can be very profitable.

One of the few who didn't make much of an effort to cash in was Marlin Fitzwater, who served George H.W. Bush. He made a brief stab at consulting, and then wrote his memoirs, the most affecting part being his recounting of a hardscrabble Kansas childhood in a dirt-floor house. Fitzwater now lives modestly in eastern Maryland, sometimes casting an acerbic eye toward goings-on inside the beltway. He seems quite content.