Ron Suskind

by Andrew Milner

books

Four years ago, Paul O'Neill was counting the days until retirement. Since 1987, O'Neill had been CEO of Alcoa in Pittsburgh, where he had nearly tripled their sales, and he was planning a cross-country trip with his wife. (And being worth $60 million, he wouldn't have to spend his autumn years clipping coupons.)

Then in December 2000, George W. Bush's transition team offered him the treasury secretary post. O'Neill accepted, hoping he could stem a mild recession in what he presumed would be an honest, rancor-free White House.

O'Neill realized by the end of January 2001 that regime change in Iraq already topped Bush's foreign policy agenda ("Getting Hussein was now the administration's focus") and was beginning to appreciate Bush's lack of knowledge about the economy and cryptic reliance on yes men who didn't always have their facts straight. ("The president is like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection.")

Pulitzer winner Ron Suskind, author of A Hope in the Unseen, turns his focus from inner city D.C. to the inner workings of the Oval Office in The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill (Simon & Schuster). Through lengthy interviews with O'Neill, who resigned from Treasury in December 2002, Suskind tells the story of a levelheaded businessman's gradual disillusionment with the Bush White House. ("Was it possible that the country thought it had elected a centrist when in fact it had empowered an ideologue?") The book is also a reminder that the most damaging stories about presidencies usually come not from political opponents or biased media, but from ex-advisers.

Ron Suskind, Tue., March 2, 7 p.m., free, Free Library of Philadelphia, 1901 Vine St., 215-686-5322.

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