Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Book!!! Audio Version
Review: Every "open-minded" person should read this book!! It's one of the best! Clearly, Bush cannot lead people or make intelligent economic decisions. Since Dick Cheney has been around the White House for many years and has known Paul O'Neil for a very long time, it's obvious he's the one that's really running our country.
Rating: 
Summary: O'Neill Left With His Integrity Intact
Review: Ron Suskind uses thousands of government documents and hundreds of interviews with administration officials as well as hours talking with Paul O'Neill in order to paint a picture of G.W.Bush and life within his presidency.Suskind provides several examples of Bush's management style, characterized as a bobble-head doll flying by the seat of his pants and proud of it. It's pretty clear that President Bush is undergoing on-the-job training during a very dangerous, volatile time, and the men who are teaching/training him are really in control. Bush's key personnel have their own agenda and it's hard to tell how much Bush truly understands. He asked Paul O'Neill to come out of retirement to "serve the people" and two years later is asked to resign. Thankfully, O'Neill saved himself and left with his integrity intact. I don't know if the same will be said after Bush and his Administration's term has played out.
Rating:
Summary: Economic Policy Primer
Review: There are three things that make this book interesting: one is the point of view coming from Paul O'Neill as the successful CEO of Alcoa Aluminum, the second is his longstanding relationship with principal members of the administration such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and the third is his relationship with Greenspan. O'Neill's understanding of economics, the open analysis between himself and the Fed Chairman and the real-time economic data model that tracked the GDP (developed by Richard Clarida)for Treasury allowed a far greater understanding of which direction the American economy was headed than any other person or group advising the President, as it should be. O'Neill's complaint, and here I am talking economics only, was that there was no "process" involved in making important economic policy decisons. He mentions the "Brandeis Briefs", first developed by Nixon and continued in the Ford administration. Because of the vast amount of information involved in economic policy decisions, these briefs capsulated important information used in policy meetings. The policy meetings of this administration were scripted and when they did stray off track as he describes the last half of the book concerning the 2002 stimulus package meeting( the 50% tax cuts) there was no hard copy to refer to, only voices bouncing around the table at the President. He refers to it in the book as "june bugs on a spring lake". His complaint is that without process there can be no informed policy decisions.
Rating:
Summary: Best Book I've Read All Year
Review: You might think that a book about politics would have to be dull and boring but this one is written so well that it reads smoothly almost like a Clancy novel. I found republicans that I admired in this book. Thats quite a change for me, a staunch Democrat! This book reveals the shocking truth of who is really in charge at the white house. A must read!
Rating:
Summary: Good book for Bush supporters and opponents
Review: I think this work is a wonderful read. After reading this book, you will want to meet Paul O'Neill. This book takes you right into the meetings of the cabinent and with the president as well as numerous world travels. You won't be able to put the book down if you are interested in foreign or domestic policy. I wonder if the President read the book?
Rating: 
Summary: The Price of Loyalty
Review: This book reads like an autobiography written by Paul O'Neil, I found myself trying to figure if it was O'Neil writing through Suskind or Suskind writing his own account of what O'Neil told him and verified it via O'Neil's documentation. My commnet on this book either way is that O'Neil seems to a bit of an elite cry baby. He seems insulted when Bush did not follow to the letter, his advice, but O'Neil in large part championed causes that were not his to champion, ie pushing the enviroment. This seems a bit ridiculous for the Secretary of the Treasury. He also seemed to be playing around and flying around under the radar in the administration. For example he had numberous meetings with Christine Todd Whitman and others with Greenspan all of which were driven by O'Neil's adgenda, not the agenda of the Bush administraiton. His conduct seemed to be always and ever reaching over the head of Bush, not a good behaviour for one who wishes to keep his job. If O'Neil really wanted his agenda to come to reality in regards to federal economic policy, then he should have kept his mouth shut on the enviroment, and pushed "his good idea" economic principles when he met with Bush, but rather he chose to cram the enviroment down Bush's throat time and again. If you want your Social Security reform measures to be heard O'Neil, and I think his ideas on this were good, then push them, not the enviroment. If I were Bush observing O'Neil's behavior, I would likely ask him to step aside as well, as O'Neil's conduct seemed to try to undermine Bush, which is his exact intent in this book. O'Neil pretends to be a centerist in this acccount, yet his left wing enviromental ideas come out early in the book. O'Neil is a left winger, and I expect his to cast his vote for Kerry. He is trying to convince other "centerists" to do the same. O'Neil if you want your agenda heard as a liberal thinker in the conservative/dumb-dumb Bush administration, its probably better if you not run around like a rock star with Bono in Africa. Grow up Paul. You were fired for good reason, you tried to undermine Bush behind the scenes from within the administration, that behavior got you canned. Now grow up and admit to your faulty conduct as a participate in the administration. You will find O'Neil is another liberal who fails to recognize Saddam's failure on UN Resolution 1441 and paints Bush out to be hungary for another war in Iraq. His economic ideas were good, too bad he had to stick his liberal nose in business that was none of his whatsoever.
Rating:
Summary: Great account by the one genius in this administration
Review: This book is an amazing, insider account of the secretive Bush administration by an inside player through the first 23 months of Dubya's presidency. Quite frankly, every voter, no matter what his or her political affiliation, should read this book to gain a better insight into Bush's intellect and the inner workings of his presidency. To begin with, it's amazing that Paul O'Neill, a self-made millionaire who transformed Alcoa into a global heavyweight, would even accept the position as treasury secretary in the first place. He even tried to talk Bush and Cheney out of their offer, but once he accepted it, his quickly became disillusioned on a number of issues, including global warming, the administration's irresponsible stance on reckless tax cuts, a lack of leadership on cracking down on corporate CEOs and, last but not least, Iraq. It's truly amusing that the Republican attack machine is going after O'Neill much like Richard Clarke. But, what cannot be explained about both men is that if they were so bad and awful as is now being portrayed, why did they both survive in this administration for so long? It's a question not easily or adequately answered. One possibility is that both men, bright and smart with more governmental experience than Bush when he "won" the presidency, have valid points to make about the ineptness of this administration. The most troubling allegation by O'Neill is how Bush, almost immediately after taking office, began planning the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. This blows right out of the water all of the president's assertions to be "fighting the war on terror" by getting rid of Saddam, especially when these facts are viewed through a post-9/11 looking glass. Bush likes to subtly tie in Iraq with terrorism against the U.S. and even 9/11, but the facts just aren't there. (For more on the many myths surrounding the war in Iraq, I highly recommend Richard Clarke's book.) This book is a fascinating, quick, educational read about the inner workings of Dubya's presidency. Read it with an open mind, and you will be much more educated about an administration that is tough to learn about because of its secrecy.
Rating: 
Summary: Scathing, if not completely satisfying
Review: The disappointing thing about Ron Suskind's book "The Price Loyalty", which chronicles ousted Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's stormy tenure in the Bush Administration, is that it doesn't provide a smoking gun that pulls back the curtain on all the misdeeds and duplicity of this current presidential administration. That being said, it still may be a 'hot knife', as it still shows a frightening look as the inner workings of Bush's top men. It's frightening to read accounts of powerful and dangerous cabinet men (like Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, and Don Rumsfeld) make power plays in front of a 'leader' (using that term loosely) in George W. Bush who seems passive, indifferent, and perhaps even incompetent.
"Price of Loyalty", which Suskind compiled based on interviews with Paul O'Neill and documents provided by O'Neill is one part biography of O'Neill's term as the Treasury Secretary and one part revelation of the puppet regime of Bush. It's a puppet regime in the sense that the puppet is the president and the puppet-masters are forceful people like the big three mentioned above. The book chronicles the planning stages of the economic policy that O'Neill (in coordination with friend and Fed Chaiman, Alan Greenspan) wanted to effect to help stabilize a weak, and soon to be collapsing, economy. It chronicles how the Bush Administration was minorly supportive at first, then indifferent, and then downright opposed to O'Neill's plans to shore up what he perceived (and was later proved) to be a weakening economy. It shows an administration that demand strict adherence and blind loyalty to its views and harshly punished those who didn't toe the line or spoke out against it. O'Neill's fate was the most telling example.
"The Price of Loyalty" demonstrates a frightening method to how our current executive administration runs. While it lacks the strong bite that such a book could carry, it still gives the reader cause to be concerned over the direction this administration is taking us and forces one to re-evaluate whether or not we want another four years of this.
Rating:
Summary: An outsider on the inside?
Review: O'Neill's experiences with W.'s white house make for very interesting reading. It is the comparison of his own personal dealings with the other white house staffs and organizations that make this book so very important. O'Neill is, after all, a life long Republican. And my impression of O'Neill is that he has no 'hidden agenda' or 'grudge' about the present administration; it's almost as much as what he does not say as what he actually does. The pervasive feeling that I get from my reading of this book is the almost total 'disconnect' that Bush has from any outside source of opinion or information. He has a few, in fact very few, people that are his seemingly only source of information from 'the real world'and these few also serve as his conduit to the 'outside' world of congress, public opinion or any source of differing or dissenting information. Bush comes across as both ill-informed and unwilling or unable to become intelligently informed about crucial decisions. Often making decisons by 'his gut'or 'his faith', temperamentally and personally Bush had nothing in common with the logic driven arguments and findings of O'Neill. There is a sense that O'Neill slowly realized that he, and others, were just 'moderate' window dressing for an ultra conservative agenda driven administration.
I got the impression that O'Neill felt he tried to serve his country first, to do his best for the world and that his actions ran afoul of the administration's and he was 'fired'. O'Neill seems caught between being bemused and bewildered in his recount of his days within the administration but there is not as much hostility in this book as a strong sense of rational dismay. I guess the best way to sum this book up is that of a career professional's reaction to working with and for a bumbling and headstrong amateur.
Rating:
Summary: The Child Emperor and Dark Genius
Review: As I read this book I did not get the feeling that Paul O'Neill was a bitter man even though the current administration tried to portray him as such. I found the telling of the story by the author as a rather straight-laced account. In this I mean that many times the author could have tossed in nasty little comments that a true Bush hater would say, but they were not to be found. This is not to say that O'Neill likes President Bush, you could tell that he does not about 50 pages into the book once the author started to detail President Bush and O'Neill working together. The description of the relationship starts out respectful, and then moves to puzzlement and then straight into a level of dislike and disappointment. O'Neill comes across as truly disappointed by the abilities, at least in the cognitive abilities and focus, of President Bush. I found the detail of the meetings that O'Neill had with both the President and Vice President as the most interesting and insightful parts of the book. The author describes the experience of working in the Bush Administration like something out of a 1940's white color sweatshop managed by an egomaniac. You have Bush acting in some sort of child emperor role who knows he is in the back of the bus when it comes to brainpower so he uses intimidation to try and level the playing field. The Vice President comes across like some sort of mad bomber dark genius type that is really behind the curtain puling all the strings. It is truly a spooky picture the author paints. If we were not living it you would think this book was an Oliver Stone movie script, it is just that odd and scary. The one area I found rather humorous was the healthy sized ego O'Neill has himself. All through the book he was detailing out instance after instance where O'Neill was giving other government officials advice on how they need to handle their environments. From the Department of Defense to the Department of the Interior, O'Neill had the correct path already figured out. You know he has a massive ego because he let the author detail out this "know it all attitude" that led him to opine on almost every government issue big or small. The reason I am not giving the book 5 stars is that the author slipped into some rather bone crushing dull moments when talking about economics and the EPA. It was all I could do to get through these parts of the book and I am interested in the topic. Overall the book was very interesting and well worth the time to read. It is a great view into the Bush Administration and provides the reader a rather eye opening view into what is going on today.
|
