To: sylvester80 who wrote (34897 ) 1/13/2004 10:30:36 AM From: jlallen Read Replies (1) | Respond to The Non-Treasury Secretary Mr. O'Neill cooperated fully with author Ron Suskind, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and well-known Bush antagonist, sharing recollections and 19,000 documents as well as fact-checking the final manuscript. After reading it, we're amazed he wasn't fired sooner. Instead, he got a policy and political blunderbuss who must not have been paying attention during the 2000 Presidential campaign. In "The Price of Loyalty," Mr. O'Neill reveals that he disagreed with much of the Bush agenda, especially with tax cuts. Three years later the record shows that Mr. Bush was right to ignore Mr. O'Neill's counsel. The Bush tax cuts helped to make the recession one of the mildest on record -- despite the burst stock-market bubble, corporate scandals, 9/11 and war. And now the recovery is well under way, with the third quarter's 8.2% growth rate the fastest since 1984. Mr. O'Neill describes Mr. Bush as not listening. But clearly the problem was that the President tuned him out early and didn't trust him enough to engage. This meant that even when Mr. O'Neill was right on the merits -- such as opposing steel tariffs -- he had no clout. It's hard to believe the same thing would have happened to Mr. Baker, or Bill Simon, or for that matter Robert Rubin.The defrocked Treasury Secretary also assails Mr. Bush for preparing to depose Saddam Hussein two years before the war in Iraq. He and his co-author overlook that even President Clinton wanted to remove Saddam, signing a bill that made that official U.S. policy. The 1998 Iraq Liberation Act was passed by a unanimous Senate and a near-unanimous House. online.wsj.com .
