Book Reviews: The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O’Neill

Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O’Neill (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004). 348 pages. $26.00.

Reviewed by Scott B. MacDonald

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It is the election season and any book that provides insight into the main actors on the political stage will get considerable attention. Hence, Ron Suskind’s The Price of Loyalty is timely as it provides a verdict about one of the men contending to be in the White House post-November 2004 – George W. Bush. Seen through the eyes of former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, this portrayal of the Bush White House is not flattering. Indeed, the book is really Mr. O’Neill’s well-timed and carefully thought revenge on a White House crew – Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and other close political associates – that came to constitute a praetorian guard that encircles the President and made the bringing of any new ideas virtually impossible.

What was galling to O’Neill is that the Republican White House under Bush, Jr. was not like prior Republican White Houses, which placed an emphasis on a rigorous process of examining issues and finding pragmatic solutions. Instead, George W. Bush, Jr. appeared to have a disdain for any such process, took the advice of a handful of advisors (mainly on the political side) and said very little to provide his cabinet ministers with any guidance on policy. According to Suskind, O’Neill warned Vice President Cheney that “without a process that included strongly positioned honest brokers and a rigorous, disinterested vetting of various proposals, “all you’ve got are kids rolling around on the lawn.”

In a sense, the hardcore issues – tax cuts, 9/11, treatment of developing world economic problems, and how to stimulate the U.S. economy – are a backdrop as to the real issues in the book - the price of loyalty. In O’Neill’s mind, the process is necessary to reach policies that are in the best national interest. The President, his advisors and cabinet ministers are there as they have the nation’s best interests at heart. Their loyalty transcends ideology. In contrast, the Bush White House, dominated by the political crew of Karl Rove and the dark eminence Vice President Cheney (former friend and betrayer of O’Neill), had their loyalty to the Bush family. As Suskind wrote: “The Bushes, of course, have relied on a different oath: loyalty to a person, whether ‘41’ or ‘43’, and to the family. There might be disagreements on what position the best available facts or political calculations recommend. But you stick together, no matter what.”

In the end, O’Neill never became part of the inner circle, much to his discontent. At the same time, he was baffled by the opaque nature of the Bush White House and ill at ease with the President, who hardly came off as an intellectual heavyweight. In this light, we see that the President never really earned O’Neill’s respect. Indeed, O’Neill had worked in Washington with other administrations, been a player in Republican party circles, and was a CEO of a major Fortune 500 company. Beyond the clash between someone who is a pragmatist with ideologues (the villains being the supply siders in the White House like Larry Lindsey), the issue between President and Treasury Secretary was over ego. O’Neill had severe problems with how economic policy was made and did not like the lack of what be regarded as intellectual rigor nor the opaque manner of how policy was really decided.

O’Neill, through Suskind, warns: “The President was caught in an echo chamber of his own making, cut off from everyone other than a circle of his own making, cut off from everyone other than a circle around him that’s getting smaller and in concert with him on everything – a circle that conceals him from public view and keeps him away from the one thing he needs most: honest, disinterested perspectives about what’s real and what the hell he might do about it.” It is likely that such words are music to the Democrats, but are also partly a product of a White House that cherishes a lack of transparency and disclosure and is guided by a certain ideological rigor.

For anyone interested in U.S. politics and an inside view of the Bush White House (of which there are few), Suskind’s book is worthwhile reading.