The real stuff in Paul L'Neill's expose book

Once again, the main stream media have missed the most important revelations in O'Neill's book as they concentrate on the trivia. This op ed is an exception.) Political policy dominates and shapes every decision taken by the Bush administration. The welfare of America and its citizen's be damned as long at the "base" (read that rich) is satisfied. --- BBB

January 14, 2004
EDITORIAL OBSERVER New York Times
Paul O'Neill, Unplugged, or What Would Alexander Hamilton Have Done?
By ANDRÉS MARTINEZ

Read Robert Rubin's recently released memoir and "The Price of Loyalty," Ron Suskind's new book on Paul O'Neill's time in the Bush administration, and a few things become apparent. The first is that Mr. O'Neill would have really liked having Mr. Rubin's job.

Of course, Mr. O'Neill thought he was getting Mr. Rubin's job when George Bush appointed him Treasury secretary, but in fact he was only assuming the title. Mr. Rubin's job, as described in his book, "In an Uncertain World: Tough Choices From Wall Street to Washington," was to analyze an often mystifying world, alongside Alan Greenspan and an insatiably curious president, and to shape domestic and global economic policy accordingly.

Mr. O'Neill, who had been a budget wiz in the Nixon and Ford administrations and a successful chief executive at Alcoa, was able to sift through economic data to his heart's content with his old pal, Mr. Greenspan. But he soon discovered that this was merely an academic undertaking. In addition to the damage that Mr. O'Neill did to himself with his erratic public statements, he was serving in an administration that was not eager to have facts get in the way of policies set by a "praetorian guard" of ideologues surrounding the president.

Mr. O'Neill can't tell you what it feels like to steer the world economy. For that, read Mr. Rubin's book. Mr. O'Neill's is a woeful tale of what it feels like to sit in the office once occupied by Alexander Hamilton and be subservient to people like Karl Rove and Karen Hughes.

"We need to be better about keeping politics out of the policy process," Mr. O'Neill told Dick Cheney, his old friend from the Ford administration who had recommended him for the job early on. In this tale, the Treasury secretary repeatedly implores the vice president to foster a more open and rigorous policy-making process in the White House, but to no avail. These scenes are reminiscent of a spy thriller in which the protagonist warns the head of counterintelligence that there is an enemy mole in their midst, only to discover that his confidant is actually the mole.

Long after the reader has figured it out, Mr. O'Neill finally realizes that Mr. Cheney is the leader of the inner circle, which keeps facts ?- whether about global warming, the deficit, steel tariffs or Iraq ?- from getting in the way of policy.

Mr. O'Neill did manage, for a time, to head off talk of a tax cut on dividends. But when the issue comes up once more right after the midterm elections, and Mr. O'Neill again notes that the country cannot afford it, Mr. Cheney cuts him off: "Reagan proved deficits don't matter. We won the midterms. This is our due."

To his credit, President Bush, who is depicted as having a hard time following the discussion, wonders at the same meeting whether he hasn't already given wealthy people enough of a break. That's when Mr. Rove chimes in that the president ought to "stick to principle."

Mr. O'Neill came to feel that he, Christie Whitman and Colin Powell were essentially hired for cover by a president who had pledged to govern from the center, but really had no intention of doing so.

Mr. O'Neill was a Nixonian Republican caught up in a Reaganite restoration. He had admired how President Bush's father, when faced with a dire fiscal outlook, had reneged on his "no new taxes" pledge. And while some Democratic liberals had viewed President Bill Clinton's fiscal discipline as a betrayal, for the likes of Mr. O'Neill it represented the triumph of Republican values.

The new Treasury secretary and Mr. Greenspan shared concerns that even the bulk of the first round of tax cuts in 2001 could prove unaffordable if projected $5.6 trillion surpluses over the next decade turned out to be a mirage (as they did). That's why Mr. O'Neill, whose presidentially conferred nickname was downgraded over time from "Pablo" to the "Big O," tried to get Mr. Bush to agree to condition the phasing in of these cuts on the availability of surpluses.

He failed. "I won't negotiate with myself," the president told his Treasury secretary, as if responsible economic stewardship was a compromise too far.

The White House is upset that a departed cabinet member has provided such an intimate and devastating portrait of presidential decision-making ?- in an election year, no less. But Mr. O'Neill, who comes across as somewhat naïve and politically tone-deaf in this thick stew of self-justification and insider revelation, also feels betrayed by a White House that discouraged any serious policy debates.

Whether it's Mr. Cheney's energy task force, the supposedly independent commission on Social Security reform or the president's ridiculously scripted Waco economic summit meeting in the summer of 2002, the Treasury secretary continually registered his deep shock at what he rightly considered shoddy, if not dishonest, decision-making.

"When you have people with a strong ideological position and you only hear from one side, you can pretty much predict the outcome," he says of the energy task force. Too often, the fix was in, as when steel tariffs were imposed, and when Mr. O'Neill's post-Enron efforts to make chief executives more accountable for their companies' misbehavior were thwarted by White House concerns about "the base."

When Mr. Cheney finally called to fire his old friend in November 2002, the O'Neill account quotes him as saying, "We'd really like to do this in an amicable and gracious way."

It was clearly too late to start down that road.