'This Is Not My Book'
O'Neill's Bush-bashing confusion shows why Cheney pulled the plug.
BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Friday, January 16, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST
"The Price of Loyalty"--which everyone thinks Paul O'Neill wrote but didn't write--is about how no one in the sealed-off cloisters of the Bush White House would listen to him or take his ideas seriously. In the past week, however, the whole world has been able to discover what was on Mr. O'Neill's mind. The BBC's Portuguese-language edition conveyed Mr. O'Neill's opinion of the President to the people of Brazil: "o presidente era como 'um cego em uma sala cheia de surdos.' " That's the part in which the former Treasury secretary/Alcoa CEO calls Mr. Bush "a blind person in a roomful of deaf people."
The blind person wouldn't recognize Mr. O'Neill, and the deaf people wouldn't listen to him. But for six days, all the rest of us have been able to see and hear Mr. O'Neill crystal clear.
"This is Ron Suskind's book," Mr. O'Neill told Katie Couric Tuesday morning. "This is not my book." Not his book? I'm not sure I follow that. Mr. O'Neill gave Ron Suskind CD-ROMs containing 19,000 documents for the book. Mr. Suskind then turned over these 19,000 documents to a 23-year-old former college newspaper editor who he says "dove into the documents . . . and then began the process of assessing the worth of each." Mr. Suskind wrote what he calls "a work of narrative nonfiction" that "relies on the power of story." The primary source for this "story" is Paul O'Neill, whose picture is on the cover with the blind president, but who is now at pains to put distance between himself and the product.
"I have no economic interest in it, contrary to the inference in The Wall Street Journal this morning." OK, it's not his book and he has no economic interest in it. Anything else? "I used some vivid language that if I could take it back, I'd take that back, because it's become the controversial centerpiece." Mr. O'Neill apparently had no clue that Ron Suskind, like any reporter, would think he had died and gone to heaven upon hearing a former Treasury secretary make one scathing remark after another about the president and his aides. But now, "I'd take it back." Why? Because, he told Katie Couric, "I'm afraid that it will cause people to have an impression without actually reading the book. I hope people will read the book."
At this point, why bother? Years ago, Spy magazine would collect a crop of big-budget books about celebrities and simply run side-by-side columns extruding and summarizing what Mr. O'Neill early this week called "the red meat." Back then Spy was mocking the soap operas of blockbuster memoir publishing, but today the mainstream media offer summaries.
Mr. O'Neill evidently feels it's someone else's fault that his book is being treated much like the one just out by Princess Di's footman. "Television doesn't seem to have the interest in drilling into really consequential issues with any depth," Mr. O'Neill informs the longtime "Today" show host.
Perhaps Mr. O'Neill was referring to his appearance the previous evening on "60 Minutes" with Lesley Stahl. He professes surprise when Ms. Stahl tells Mr. O'Neill his account of the president is unflattering: "Hmmm, you really think so?" As well, the media innocent sat down before publication to be interviewed by Time magazine, which also somehow highlighted the "controversial" parts in this week's issue.
The former Treasury secretary suggests he had no inkling any of this would happen. He speaks to Katie Couric "about the need for fundamental reform of Social Security and our health and medical care system and our tax reform system--which is what I would have written about if this were my book." In what sense is this not like Paris Hilton disowning her famous video? This is not my book.
If indeed the former Treasury secretary and retired Alcoa CEO had wanted to take the time to write his own book on taxes, Social Security, health care, global climate change or aid to sub-Saharan Africa, any number of public-policy publishers would have been happy to wrap covers around his thoughts. And Brookings, Heritage, Cato or the American Enterprise Institute would gladly schedule whole afternoons of discussion with people who spend their lives "drilling into really consequential issues." But no, he dumps 19,000 documents on someone else who produces a tendentious account of how Paul O'Neill was right about everything and the Bush White House was wrong about everything.
Amazon.com's remarkable software has the ability to herd together like-minded readers and point them at each other. It reveals that the book Mr. O'Neill says isn't his is being bought by people who've also purchased "The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception" by David Corn, "Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth" by Joe Conason, "The Clinton Wars" by Sidney Blumenthal, and "American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush" by Kevin Phillips. Among the multitude of apparently unanticipated consequences Mr. O'Neill is just now discovering, falling in among this group must be the one that hurts the most.
He won't be able to take this back either. Ted Kennedy, in his speech Wednesday about the "disgraceful" Bush presidency, said: "I happen to know Paul O'Neill. . . . He's a person of great integrity, intelligence and vision. . . . It is easy to understand why he was so concerned by what he heard about Iraq in the Bush administration."
Dick Cheney fired Paul O'Neill. Like Don Rumsfeld, Mr. Cheney had worked with Paul O'Neill in the Ford administration. Friends who also worked with Mr. O'Neill in the Ford budget office tell me it was a memorable experience. But to explain this weird, whiny book and the comments of the past week, you have to conclude that something was missing from the skill set the CEO brought back to government service at the cabinet level. The word that occurs is "temperament."
What I take away from "The Price of Loyalty" and the events of the past week is a better understanding of why Dick Cheney, an old friend of Mr. O'Neill's, understood that in the interests of all concerned, he had to pull the plug.
Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com. |
