Copyright: 2004
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 0-7432-5545-3
This book is supposed to be about former Secretary of Treasury Paul O'neil, however the auther, Ron Suskind, doesn't do a very good job of hiding his true intentions of writing a disparaging commentary on the Bush Administration. The author goes to great lengths to point out the accuracy of the book from a factual perspective, however as is often the case with a biased author, the accuracy of the reported facts is often out-weighed by the obviously missing facts. Critics of the Bush Administration loved this book and often refer to some of the facts as indisputable evidence of the incompetance of the Administration. Conspiracy theorists loved this book as well, pointing to the "secret plans" to invade Iraq from the earliest days of the Presidency as evidence that the War in Iraq is the product of a blood-thirsty President (or worse yet, his blood-thirsty co-hort, Vice President Cheney!) I personally was intrigued by the book because of my interest in the man who was supposed to be the main character of this story, Paul O'Neil.
Who is Paul O'Neil?
Paul O'Neil served as assistant director and later deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) first under President Nixon then under President Ford. He left public life to move to the private sector, first at International Paper Company and then at Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). ALCOA went from $1.1 million in earnings on sales of $8 billion in 1987 to $1.5billion in earnings on $23 billion in sales in 1999 while O'Neil was in the top spot. He was tapped for the cabinet position of Secretary of Treasury by President George W. Bush in 2000 and in 2001 he became the 72nd man to occupy the position first held by the venerable Alexander Hamilton.
Lessons in Leadership Style
A recurring theme in the book is the lack of intellectual leadership provided by President Bush. Quite a bit of the book is devoted to comparing the intellectual workings of men such as Paul O'Neil and former Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan to those of President Bush and the men surrounding him. As someone who only minored in Economics, I have just enough knowledge to follow along when these men speak but I greatly admire them along with the likes of Galbraith and Friedman. That said, I find some of the scenes portrayed in Suskind's book to be somewhat lacking in perception.
In several cases the practice of "scripting" meetings with the President is outlined. Each partipant in a meeting is sent a memo detailing what he / she should speak about and approximately how long they should speak. There is no room for back and forth debate, just reporting on the issues. This is contrasted with the breakfast meetings that Greenspan and O'Neil would often have in which they would hash out some concept or idea via a back and forth conversation, spewing out facts and figures and coming to an informed conclusion at the end. This comparison makes it sound as though the President is not being the recipient of a fully informed debate. To further make this point, some of O'Neil's experiences working with President's Ford and Nixon are compared. In one case President Ford is remembered as having presided over an economic conference to determine new policies and "he showed that he was attentive and really knowledgeable about all competing positions.." (pp 268-269)
While it is possible that President Bush doesn't fully grasp economic policies well enough to hold his own in a meeting, it is also very likely that his leadership style is very different from the other men that O'Neil sat under. From his very first meeting with the President, O'Neil remembers wondering "if the President didn't know the questions to ask." He based this observation on the fact that the President didn't ask him any questions about his briefing. This leaves one to wonder however if the President expects the men and women who brief him to come fully prepared and to give him their full briefing without having to drag it out of them. Another possibility is that the President didn't have any questions because he understood the issues completely. Truthfully we can't know which of these is most accurate but the author would have us to believe that the only plausible explanation is that the President was too stupid to understand what Mr. O'Neil was talking about. I find that hard to believe since even I understood all of the topics that were covered in the book and I am certainly not qualified to run for President.
Pre-determined Outcomes
Interestingly, another "sore topic" for O'Neil was the feeling that even when a topic was to be debated, the outcome of the debate was pre-determined. Suskind details the workings of the National Energy Policy Development Group headed by Vice-President Cheney. O'Neil felt that the deck was stacked on this task force in favor of large corporations and the energy industry. He felt that these meetings were simply shams that took place in order to ratify what was already pre-determined to be the outcome of the meeting. This obviously negates the point of having an open and honest debate about policies.
The truth is though, O'Neil himself led meetings just like this. Suskind describes in painful detail a meeting in which O'Neil had determined weeks before what needed to be done with regard to corporate governance. He and Greenspan had discussed it in several private meetings and had come to their own conclusions about what was necessary. In the February 2002 meeting, O'Neil does allow some debate but he refuses to give ground on his position. A telling moment comes when, in Suskind's words "Midway through this monologue, O'Neil took out his pad and began to write" the opening lines of his brief to the President. (pg. 230) This opening line directly contradicted the point that was being made in the monologue. Rather than even listening to the end of the argument, he made his decision and moved on... to his pre-determined outcome.
It just so happens that I agree with O'Neil's stance on corporate governance and I think he was right to do what he did. However I think that O'Neil's many years as CEO of Alcoa made him think that HE had the right to make up his mind without listening to others but no one else did. It is hard to go from being "top man on the job" to working for someone else and I think these observations of his clearly show that he struggled with that transition.
Who Got it Right?
In the early days of the Bush Administration, liberals were always quick to pin the bad economy on his failure to understand the economy. Both O'Neil and Greenspan vehemently decried the deep tax cuts that were implemented by the President and his political team. Neither of these men are "supply siders" and obviously disagree with many policies that lean towards that economic bent. Interestingly, looking back on Suskind's book one wonders if he knew then what he knows now, would he have written some of the things he wrote? The economy is doing very well despite the best efforts of liberal pundits to spin it otherwise. This in spite of the fact that O'Neil and Greenspan didn't get their way at every turn and the "ideologues" were allowed to run rampant with the economy.
One area of Suskind's book that I believe he did a terrible job was explaining some of the economic ideas and concepts. He consistently uses Greenspan's view point as the "be all end all" of economic positions and anyone who doesn't agree with him must not be that smart. No doubt Greenspan and O'Neil both are talented and incredibly smart individuals, however if you were able to fill a room with Galbraith, Friedman, Keynes, Solow and Smith himself, you would have a room full of incredibly smart people who all disagree with each other. Economics as a field struggles with the notion that it really isn't a science because it isn't "exact" enough. Just because a man is very smart and holds to one economic position, doesn't mean that he is necessarily "right" or even "more right" than the next guy. It just means you should take what he has to say into account, which I believe the Bush Administration did with O'Neil.
Another interesting part of this book is the detail of the trip that the Secretary of Treasury took with Bono to Africa. The details of the trip are one of the more interesting parts of the book. Of course Suskind's spin on the trip is that O'Neil came back determined to make a difference in Africa and yet the Adminstration shot him down at every turn.
The truth is however that as with all political beasts, our government doesn't turn on a dime. Now, several years later, we find an increasing focus on the AIDS epidemic in Africa with just recently a trip to Africa by the First Lady herself. I can't say whether or not Paul O'Neils trip made the difference to the Administration but it likely did. The problem that O'Neil faced however was that you can't turn a government's focus in a month like you can a company such as ALCOA. No doubt if while CEO, O'Neil had decided to implement a new focus on safety company-wide, he could have accomplished it in a matter of months if not weeks. Not so with a beast the size of our government. It takes months of planning and preparation just to get the political machine in gear to change directions, not to mention what it takes to get actual progress made towards a new goal. Like it or not, that is what our government has become.
Conclusion
I found this book to be a fascinating look into the day to day life of a high government official. I believe that Suskind and O'Neil both mis-represent the Administration but that is there prerogative to do so. No doubt Suskind believes it will help his career as an author to write controversial books and there is now a large supply of "Bush detractors" to sell his books to! As for O'Neil, I can't help but wonder if a good deal of his frustration with the Administration wasn't really born out of his inability to transition from being the "top guy" to being the "guy working for the top guy". Many of his observations come across smelling a lot like sour grapes from a guy who didn't get his way as much as he would have liked. I still admire the man but after reading the book my admiration has dulled somewhat.