The Price of Loyalty

What exactly do you mean? Is everything put through a political filter? Well, you know, O'Neill calls it vote-getting. And you know, he is extremely judicious in sticking to the facts in his comments. I think what it means is that, in many areas in — well, in virtually every issue, you feel the force of this sort of "let's win first and the rest is for later or maybe for never" kind of philosophy. And it frustrates many right-minded people in this administration who said, "I thought we were here in large measure to ask hard questions.

Do we have facts here? Is there a discussion of why we should do this, rather than the discussions of how? And it's really a battle of sorts between many people as to how the content and character of this presidency will be defined. Well, Paul O'Neill is clearly at the core of this story-telling, telling us his view of events as he lived through them.

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But who else talked to you? I mean you didn't just … he's not a sole source, is he? I mean, I have a mandate to protect a lot of sources here. Many people in Treasury are quoted, and former officials of the Treasury Department, and some current officials at the time of the writing of the book are quoted as well. There are in the book, there's an extraordinary kind of reportorial gift. This is nothing special that I did.

But contained in the files are transcripts of meetings. They are not illegal tapes of proceedings. But what they are is a level of let's just say stenographic level of note-taking by, you know, a particular person or persons in the room that allows the reader to essentially feel as though they're sitting in the room. And I think that's an enormous gift to our national discussion. I mean, these are facts. This book is based on facts. And what that does, in a partisan debate often defined by illusion, is it causes sort of an explosive effect.

Eventually though, things settle, and these facts become shared facts indisputable, that help guide more productive discussion. That's certainly what I'm hoping and it's what O'Neill hoped at the start of this project. This is what will happen: We can do better in this political system.

Well, you've got a series of meetings with really dense dialogue of, as you say, a stenographic nature. What's the portrait of George W. Bush that emerges from these meetings?

Well, you know, I don't think the book ever makes a swift or decisive judgments about who the president is and, you know, what specifically are his deficits or strengths. What you see, though, is a president who clearly does not show his mind the way other presidents did.

I think that is indisputable. Meaning that generally presidents, to their senior most advisors, certainly folks at O'Neill's level as secretary of the Treasury, at some point take over debate, they command a room and even with strong-willed and maybe fractious advisors, they say, "Here's what I think and why I think it. Here's how I get to my conclusions. And that's what other presidents that O'Neill served have done, and something that this president almost never does, certainly never does in this book and never does by the estimations of many people that I interviewed.

Paul O'Neill himself comes off as somebody who could be politically accident-prone, is that fair to say? And in the book, I mean look, Paul trips and bumps his head and asks questions that, you know, are befuddled and he says, "Now, why is this the way it is? But I think it's important that people understand that O'Neill is essentially searching for the essence of this president and this presidency all through the book, and he does find some things.

He finds out that, in large measure, he's dealing with at least in some realms a kind of absolutism. He talks to Dick Cheney at the end, after O'Neill says, "We really need an economic policy, we don't really have one.

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We won the midterm elections. Our due is another big tax cut. This stuns O'Neill because all of the facts, as O'Neill has read them and many others, show that deficits have guided fiscal policy for 20 years. Those are the kind of dialogues that define this man's journey and really the journey of many in the building. Office of Management and Budget, where he oversaw the U.

He is now a Republican candidate for governor in Indiana. Welcome to the program, Mr. Does it sound like the place where you worked? No, that's not the president I know, it's not the White House I worked in. And I believe history will ignore this book and should. When you say not the place you worked, have you had a chance to read the book and see some of the descriptions of how business is conducted in this narrative? Most of the book, and I've seen most of the accounts. I think I have a fair take of what Mr.

Suskind has written and claims to have discovered. And it couldn't be further from the reality I know. I find it slanted and misleading — and I'm very sad that a man I admire in many ways, Secretary O'Neill, chose to participate in such a piece. Well, the Suskind book describes in his view, how this White House is removed from sort of traditional policy-making schemes for the American leadership, that it's so politically wired, that it's all about winning, to use a phrase from the book, and not always about the best public policy.

Is this a politically wired White House? In fact, I've told people for a long time that three rules for going to a meeting with George Bush are: Don't be late, don't take your cell phone and never bring up a public opinion poll. You know, I don't know that there is a traditional policy process. And maybe that's part of the problem here, Ray.

I've served in two White Houses, seen a third close up, and I don't think any two are alike. I will say without hesitation that the policy process in this White House was far more intense, more vigorous in its debate, more substantive than the one I knew in a presidency I was proud to serve that got great results; that is, the Reagan presidency, where the process was much more formalized than the president — much less engaged in the substance or the details than this one is.

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My impression is that each White House has its own style, and to be as charitable as I can be to Paul O'Neill, whom I repeat I admire on so many bases, I guess I just concluded that he was gone a long time. He may have … he's four presidencies removed from anything involved in White House decision-making. And he may recall an idealized style of a different president and confuse it with something traditional and for all time. So would you disagree with his description of a place where, for instance, rough-and-tumble debate over the issues is discouraged in favor of pat answers?

You would dispute the narratives that have to do with how concerns over the deficit and other fiscal matters just got subsumed to the drive for a tax cut? Business Week Suskind is a smart writer He deftly picks through some 19, documents and hours of interviews to open an often eye-popping window into the Bush White House.

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