What recalls all this is the fuss stirred by “The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill,” written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind. Based on extensive interviews with the former Treasury secretary, the book purports to provide an insider’s view of the administration. Its revelations briefly dominated the news, because they echoed the most damaging anti-Bush views: that he’s a semi-dunce bored by policy discussions (“a blind man in a room full of deaf people,” says O’Neill); that the administration was dishonest because it plotted to get rid of Saddam from the start (the first National Security Council meeting focused on Iraq), and that policies are driven mostly by politics (“Reagan proved deficits don’t matter,” Vice President Cheney tells O’Neill).
We ought to be skeptical; that’s the lesson from the past. Presidential scorekeeping is an inevitable part of politics and democracy, but when it slides into instant history–pretending to determine the character and significance of a presidency in progress or just ended–the conclusions often have pitifully short half-lives. Witness Hughes’s book as a useful reminder.
Or consider Truman. In 1948, almost no one expected him to win, as David McCullough notes in his biography. A month before the vote, NEWSWEEK polled 50 top political writers. The verdict was unanimous: 50-0 against Truman. In editorials, the Los Angeles Times called him a “blunderer,” and the Chicago Tribune labeled him “an incompetent.” The Baltimore Sun professed affection for him but said his election “would be a tragedy for the country and the world.” Well, Truman now ranks fifth on the C-Span historians’ list behind Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Washington and Theodore Roosevelt.
Some pitfalls of instant history are obvious. Even the deepest insider–and O’Neill wasn’t one–has only a partial view of events. Some juicy allegations in Suskind’s book suffer from this defect: for example, the early resolve to dispose of Saddam. Aside from that first NSC meeting, Suskind provides little supporting evidence. Another danger is political ax-grinding. Suskind’s book is being marketed as a rabid anti-Bush treatise. It “depicts an administration in which personal loyalty to the President trumps loyalty to the truth,” says the publisher’s press release. O’Neill himself is uneasy with the spin. Interviewed on “Today,” he repudiated some incendiary accusations, and when asked whether he would vote for Bush, said: “Probably. I don’t see anybody [who] strikes me as better prepared or more capable.” Read the book, he says. If you do, you discover that it’s tedious and boring. All the controversy is packed into the six-page press release.
But these are small matters. The real problem is that we can’t know the future. Presidents are not ultimately judged on everything that happens while they’re in office but on a few large issues where their decisions are critical. Lincoln is not revered because the Homestead Act–which transferred 10 percent of the country’s land to settlers–passed in 1862. He’s worshiped for his dogged determination to hold the country together and for abolishing slavery; another man might have done differently. Truman’s many problems, including charges of cronyism, are now largely forgotten because his instincts at the start of the cold war (leading to the Marshall Plan and NATO) were sound. Eisenhower’s reputation has risen because his quiet achievements–keeping the country out of war, striving for balanced budgets, maintaining low inflation–eluded his successors. And all these men projected a basic decency.
Bush’s reputation won’t rest on whether there’s more oil drilling in Alaska or a tax cut on dividends–or many of the dozens of issues that now stir partisan passions. These controversies are mostly political noise. It will rest on a few big matters (terrorism and the war in Iraq, possibly the budget and economy, perhaps something we can’t now imagine) where his judgment altered events and where the outcomes are now unclear–and also on a detached view of his character. History’s tests are harsh; Bush’s grades remain incomplete.
