In an un-bylined piece on January 13, the Wall Street Journal turns Paul O'Neill's criticisms of Larry Lindsey for not doing his job as chair of the National Economic Council--for being a one-sided ideological advocate rather than an honest broker building a consensus for good policy--into a "he said, he said" shouting match:
Bush Aides Dispute O'Neill Book: Mr. O'Neill criticized Mr. Lindsey for not being "an honest broker" in internal deliberations. Mr. Lindsey said he had three tasks: to forge consensus where possible, to draft memos for the president detailing disagreements when consensus was elusive, and to give his own views. "I did all three." he said. "In that order."
But if the reporter had given a little context, it would have been game and set to Paul O'Neill--because he is correct.
Think of how differently that paragraph above would read if there were an extra sentence at its end, something like: "The Price of Loyalty reports, on page 67, that on the third day of the Bush administration Larry Lindsey was already telling Andrew Card and George W. Bush that the Treasury Department and its Office of Tax Analysis were dragging their feet and were not loyal to the administration":
*p. 67: [On the third day of the administration] [Larry] Lindsey wrote a memorandum to chief of staff Andy Card--a way of getting it to the President without listing Bush as a recipient. The specific chgarge was that Treasury's Office of Tax Analysis (OTA) was unable to provide "the revenue cost for the President's tax proposal before the beginning of next week."... "I personally find this deplorable," he wrote. "I am puzzled that the OTA did not have a model of the President's tax proposal in an operable condition.... This must mean that not only was one not written since it was determined that the President would take office, but that none was written during the campaign either.... O'Neill got his copy of Larry's memo. he read it, half in disbelief. The criticisms of the tax office were absurd. His team wasn't even assembled--the office hadn't started working for this President until two days ago--and Treasury's assumptions... were sufficient [for]... early discussions.... On a second read, [O'Neill] realized that the letter was... a statement of loyalty. Lindsey was saying that he was a stalwart supporter of the President and that O'Neill was not. This was the breach O'Neill had feared: that the "honest broiker" was an advocate. Hard-eyed analysis would be painted as disloyalty.... [O'Neill] grabbed a printout of the memo and scribbled across the top: "Larry: This is bureaucratic chicken****. You must have something better to do with your time than send me memos such as this one."
On the substance, Paul O'Neill wins: no NEC chair has any business dissing OTA on the third day of any administration. But the nameless Wall Street Journal reporter's... what should we call it? lack of feck? failure to have read the book?... conveys a very false perception of the weight of the charge and the weakness of the defense.
Game and set to Paul O'Neill in his critique of the job Larry Lindsey did inside the Bush White House.
And it's not just that passage. Consider this one, from page 174:
Immediately, the White House's attack machine went to work--against O'Neill.... Larry Lindsey's office went into overdrive. "Up to this point, they'd been attacking O'Neill regularly with off-the-record stuff and 'senior official' comments," recalls one of O'Neill's top aides. "Now, it went to an almost daily footing... it got crazy. We would get calls every couple of days, all of them pre3tty much the same: a reporter would call with some out-of-context thing Paul had said at the weekly economics lunch or some metting with Larry. It wasn't even subtle. From the first month of the administration, every reporters in town knew they could get some inside punch at O'Neill just by calling Lindsey's office."
None of this can possibly be news to the reporters of the Wall Street Journal. Why not mention it alongside Lindsey's claims that he was an "honest broker"?
* (2003), The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill (New York: Simon and Schuster: 0743255453).
Posted by DeLong at January 13, 2004 03:08 PM | TrackBack
Brad,
If you're wanting for a better press corps, do not start with the WSJ. They are as idealogical as the Bushies. If we could get the AP to fire Nedra Pickler, it would be a good start.
Posted by: Sabbadoo32 on January 14, 2004 01:39 PM