Cheney: I Won't Read McClellan's Book

Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that he has no plans to read the scathing tell-all book by President Bush's former press secretary Scott McClellan.

In "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," McClellan writes that Bush relied on an aggressive "political propaganda campaign" instead of the truth to sell the Iraq war, and that the decision to invade pushed Bush's presidency "terribly off course," according to The Associated Press. He also calls the White House atmosphere "insular, secretive and combative" and says the Bush White House made "a decision to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed."

At a Q&A session at the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize luncheon on Monday, Cheney said he agreed with former Sen. Bob Dole when it comes to former administration officials who write such books, saying, "I thought Bob Dole got it about right."

Dole sent an e-mail to McClellan blasting him as a “miserable creature,” according to The Wall Street Journal. “You’re a hot ticket now but don’t you, deep down, feel like a total ingrate?"

Cheney also said that the partisan atmosphere in Washington isn't nearly as bad as it has been at other times in the past, pointing to events surrounding Watergate, the Civil War, and the War of 1812.

Cheney also hinted that he might join the author ranks after Bush's presidency ends.

“I’ve never written a book, and I always said that I got this job because I didn’t write about the last one," reports the Journal. "But we’ll see."