President Bush should have fired aide Karl Rove over the Plamegate affair, Scott McClellan said today. Publicizing his Washington tell-all book, McClellan also blasted Rove and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney's ex-chief of staff, for denying they had leaked CIA agent Valerie Plame's name, the AP reports. "We had higher standards at the White House."
"I think the president should have stood by his word and that meant Karl should have left," McClellan said on Meet the Press. "The president said he was going to restore honor and integrity. We didn't live up to that. When it become known that his top adviser had been involved, then the bar was moved." (More Scott McClellan stories.)