If you happen to run into the journalist Ron Suskind, be nice to him. He has had a rough time recently as the lead thesis of two of his most prominent and controversial projects have proven conspicuously false soon after the publication.
In The Price of Loyalty, Suskind teamed with the President George W. Bush's controversial first Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. Anti-Bush partisans wanted desperately to believe that decision to attack Iraq was made early in the Bush Administration, well before 9/11. Proof of such would lend credence to the belief that the attacks on 9/11 were merely a convenient excuse to go into Iraq.
Suskind and O'Neill believed that O'Neill had seen a smoking gun. Suskind quoted Paul O'Neill has having seen a Pentagon document listing oil contractors for a post-War Iraq. Suskind should have filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the documents like the public interest group Judicial Watch did. If he had, he would have realized that the documents were not what he hoped and believed they were. This particular charge had to wait to be independently debunked and even Paul O'Neill himself backed away from charge. Of course, the thesis persists long after to evidence for it was withered under the harsh sun of open scrutiny.
Then in October 2004, Suskind wrote an investigative piece, ``Without a Doubt,'' that appeared in the New York Times Magazine. The timing was not uncorrelated with then pending election. The piece led off with a provocative sentence from Republican Bruce Bartlett that, "...if Bush wins, there will be civil war in the Republican Party starting on November 3." November 2 rolled around, Bush won re-election bringing with him larger majorities in both the House and Senate, the first time any president had done so since 1936, with nary a Fort Sumter in sight.
Suskind was using a technique as old as political reporting. Find a disgruntled ex-administration official whose ego is a little bruised, and you will likely have someone who is anxious to explain how a foolish administration refused to listed to his brilliant ideas and analyses.
In ``Without a Doubt,'' Suskind's thesis is that Bush is absolutely certain in his policies, brokers no dissent, and is constrained by his "preternatural faith-induced certainty in uncertain times." According to Suskind, "The president has demanded unquestioning faith from his followers, his staff, his senior aides and his kindred in the Republican Party." Suskind views strong religious faith as both a metaphor and reason for Bush's supposed closed-mind and unflinching approach to governance.
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