WASHINGTON — In President George W. Bush’s last year in office, his former press secretary, Scott McClellan, wrote a tell-all book concluding that the Iraq war was a “serious strategic blunder” based on the “ambition, certitude and self-deceit” of a White House that was not fully honest with the American people.

The president’s remaining advisers were livid at what they considered the betrayal of an aide who had been with Mr. Bush since his Texas days. But when Dana Perino, who then held the same spokesman’s job, expressed her indignation, Mr. Bush sighed and told her to find a way to forgive Mr. McClellan or risk being consumed by anger.

Forgiveness is not exactly President Trump’s first instinct, as he made clear this week when a new book quoted his former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, offering his own harsh judgments about the White House where he once worked. Every president, it seems, goes through the spin cycle of former aides and revelatory books — some they write themselves, others they are quoted in — and every president has to find a way to grapple with the questions of loyalty and candor that invariably arise. Mr. Trump chose blunt force.

What is different about Mr. Bannon’s stark assessments in Michael Wolff’s new book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” is not that a former aide would speak out, but that it would happen so early in a presidency. Most books of this sort appear later in a president’s tenure, or even after its end, not before the one-year anniversary. But then again, Mr. Trump’s White House has burned through staff so quickly that the usual patterns have accelerated dramatically.