The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill (Hardcover)

It paints the picture of a President completely detached from substantive policy discussions: sitting passively through high-level meetings, hardly uttering a word except for repeating the mantra of "tax cuts, tax cuts".

The hero of the book is Alan Greenspan, a long-time close personal and professional friend of O'Neill's. Recounted are countless meetings between the two during which they "conspired" - in vain - to preserve fiscal sanity in the federal government. The villain is clearly Dick Cheney, quietly sequestered in some "undisclosed location", pulling the strings that start wars, squash environmental legislation and produce (you guessed it) more tax cuts.

Now, if you look at who is who in this extremely current book, you may wonder what the heck is going on here...

Consider:

- Ron Suskind is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist for the Wall Street Journal (hardly the source of anti-Republican diatribes).

- Paul O'Neill is a life-long Republican: though bitter for getting fired, it must take enormous conviction to produce such a negative tale of a sitting President.

- Alan Greenspan, so frequently and carefully quoted in this book, has denied nothing, has not even attempted to soften the hard edges.

So what gives? My guess is that this is a purposeful public condemnation of Bush II and his Neo-Conservative entourage by traditional Republicans like Brent Scowcroft (and maybe even Bush I ?) who are fed up by the goings-on in Washington.

Needless to say, the book is very well-written and a true page turner. After all, how often do you get to read history as it is made, not many years later?

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Then there was the first meeting of the NSC. From that point on it was clear to O'Neill that the Administration was determined to go to war with Iraq and was just looking for an excuse. Many will not be inclined to believe Mr. Suskind's book especially regarding Iraq but O'Neill brought with him documents that prove his accusations. Before I go farther, let me say that this book was written by Ron Suskind about Paul O'Neill's experiences in the Bush White House and was written with Mr. O"Neill's complete cooperation and backing.

Mr. O'Neill worked with EPA Secretary Whitman on global warming because even as a former CEO he could see that the evidence was pretty conclusive. The extreme right in the White House shot them down however and made Mrs. Whitman look ridicules because she had assumed GWB meant what he said during the campaign. Colin Powell tried to conduct diplomacy in an honorable manner but he too was shot down by Rove and company. When the Enron scandal hit, O'Neill and Alan Greenspan tried to actually fix the problem that had led to that mess. Again Rove and his gang shot them down. Fortunately, O'Neill was able to occasionally push aside the flaky ideas of Larry Lindsey. Lindsey is an extreme right wing economist who on fairly scant credentials had worked his way into the Bush Administration. Give at least some credit to the Administration; Lindsey is gone too.

Finally, as the deficits continued to grow and grow, O'Neill began to despair of ever getting the President to understand what he was doing. As that despair grew so did the Treasury Secretary's boldness. The Rove, Card and Cheney gang finally had all they could stand and managed to get rid of O'Neill, much to the disgust of many Republicans including many who had served daddy Bush. So why did Mr. O'Neill decide to help with this book? The Bush team it seems had engaged in some rather low down tactics to hush some other former Administration officials and O'Neill finally decided that he had to speak up and tell the truth. O'Neill told the author that he was old and rich so there was little the Bush men could do to him and the truth has come out. Of course O'Neill has been smeared and belittled by the White House but even though I disagree with Mr. O'Neill on many things he comes across as a sincere and honest man. Honest enough to put the country before party and tell what the current administration is really like.

You will find that the writing style in this book is fairly good but a little dry at times. The author seems to assume that everyone will understand some of the economic theory put forth but I occasionally found myself exhibiting the same kind of blank stare the President often wore. All in all though, this is a very good book and every American who doesn't believe we should blindly believe everything the President says should read it and decide for themselves.

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Many of the revelations on the working of the White House are spine-chilling. I won't spoil it by commenting on them. Just go ahead and read the book.

I only wish I could have come out of it with a higher opinion of GB than I started. Brace yourselves. Let's hope Kerry wins and is different/better for all our sakes.

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