Gee whiz! Hoocoodanode!?
From Politico:
The White House and Treasury are not too happy with Ron Suskind’s forthcoming book, to put in very mildly. Beyond the big picture stuff on whether Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner ignored an Obama directive regarding the preparation of plans to dissolve Citigroup (Treasury says he absolutely did not), officials have been busy compiling lists of what they say are a stunning number of basic factual errors.
An administration official sent along a partial list under the headline “The Suskind Book Game: ‘Too Big to Fact Check?’” From the list of alleged errors: “1.) Suskind wrote that Larry Summers needed Senate confirmation to lead the National Economic Council. 2.) Suskind wrote that Secretary Geithner served as ‘Chairman’ of the New York Fed. 3.) Suskind wrote that Gene Sperling served as ‘an assistant Treasury Secretary.’ 4.) Suskind wrote that Geithner had ‘never been an undersecretary’ at Treasury. 5.) Suskind wrote that the acronym for the Bank for International Settlements is ‘BASEL.’ 6.) Suskind wrote that Gene Sperling played tennis at the University of Michigan.” …
The official said all of these statements were false. For instance: “Sperling played tennis at Minnesota. Though, to be fair, both universities start with an ‘M’ and are only about 800 miles apart.” Zing!
I’ll be interested to see what the final list of factual errors looks like. Until I see a final list, I give the entire book a “Pffft!”
[via Politico]
[cross-posted at Angry Black Lady Chronicles]
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Silly White House, facts are for liberal elitist Jesus haters who don’t have a book to sell!
Paul in KY
The list of mistakes in the post are trivial, taken one by one. However, all together, they do point to the “if he can’t get that right, what else has he botched” line of thinking.
Hope it turns out that Mr. Suskind’s book is a load of hooey.
eemom
No one’s gonna get ANY work done this afternoon.
TheStone
Was “Pffft” your initial response when the Bushites denied factual assertions in Suskind’s earlier works?
Swishalicious
@Paul in KY:
i think you’re right on this one: i see these “errors” and am like ok, the best the White House has as a defense is that the author probably made a passing reference to a Senate confirmation that wasn’t required, they’re screwed…
but if there are really dozens of mindless errors, it does point to an overall willingness by the author to just make a story, facts be damned, in which case i can’t believe the underlying narrative.
but we’ll see!
Guster
Whoa. Hit a nerve.
Certified Mutant Enemy
“Facts are stupid things.”
— St. Ronald Reagan
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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There is a glaring typo on page 57, rendering the entire book worthless. Also too, Politico is the last bastion of fact-checked, reality-based reportage.
.
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LeftWingCracker
Clap louder!
4jkb4ia
I’ll read it, ABL. In large part I will do so because I read “The Price Of Loyalty” and this is the sequel. The WH wasn’t particularly happy with the other book, either.
The important thing about “The Price of Loyalty” was narrative–the idea that the Bush WH didn’t have policy process. If you can see things about what the Obama WH calls policy process it is worth reading the book, although “Obama’s Wars” will do just as well.
(ETA: Adrian Gonzales strikes out. 0-for-last-13. With the bases loaded.)
sb
Paul and Swish are correct about the trivial stuff; it’s not a huge deal but a lot of mistakes do suggest a somewhat lazy mind.
Much more serious is the first paragraph about Geithner disobeying a directive. If Suskind made that up, along with the other “big” things, that book will be on the remainder shelves before Halloween.
wilfred
Sputum from the Ministry of Truth, eh? Glenn Greenwald does a good fisking of this sort of thing, as does well-known republican twat Matt Taibbi:
“The more important thing is that the people he’s surrounded himself with are not labor people, but stooges from Wall Street. Barack Obama has as his chief of staff a former top-ranking executive from one of the most grossly corrupt mega-companies on earth, JP Morgan Chase. He sees Bill Daley in his own office every day, yet when it comes time to talk abut labor issues, he has to go out and make selected visits twice a year or whatever to the Richard Trumkas of the world.”
Rebuttals forthcoming, no doubt,
kindness
I don’t need no steenking facts! – any typical republican paraphrasing Cartman paraphrasing Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
the fenian
Perhaps the least surprising post in the history of the Intertoobz.
ruemara
I can’t help but feel such nitpickings aren’t really worth their while. If there’s more meaty errors, they should run with that, otherwise, move on. Just by giving him the time of day with such small pickings is a mistake.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Meh. Small beer and nit-picking. I think this is what old pols call “punching down”. this should’ve been left to some mid-level type at the DNC.
I first read this book almost twenty years ago, written about the Clinton WH with IIRC the focus on getting the ’93 budget passed by a hair in both chambers (again, IIRC). Was it Woodward? It was all about the WH being like a college dorm, with pizza boxes and loose ties and Alice Rivlin with a hunk of chicken salad stuck to her chin while she talked about the budget. The old time pols call this “sausage making”.
Ugh
“Sperling played tennis at Minnesota. Though, to be fair, both universities start with an ‘M’ and are only about 800 miles apart.”
Er, they both start with “U”, but have your snarky fun.
Corey
Well, that settles it, then! Thanks ABL, you rock! TFY for life!!
Samara Morgan
Julian calls this FOXnews effect.
Telling whoppers to sell product to credulous conservatives.
Shawn in ShowMe
I don’t think misrepresenting Tim Geithner’s work history can be considered a minor error.
Corner Stone
@the fenian:
Indeed.
Swishalicious
Not to get all meta, but are ALL comments given a 5 minute waiting period before they post, or am I a special little troll?
Guster
@Shawn in ShowMe: No, but those mistakes are completely unrelated to the assertions that anyone cares about. Suskind made a handful of statement that are damaging to the White House. Call them X, Y, and Z.
The White House is saying, ‘Suskind made major idiotic mistakes with A, B, and C,’ hoping that a certain type of reporter would fill in the blank: “Hence, X, Y, and Z must not be true!”
That’s just stupid. In fact, I bet it’s the type of error that has its very own Latin phrase.
And this game is a bit dangerous for the White House, too. If they show that Suskind was lazy and idiotic on issues A through W, and don’t address X, Y, and Z, then they’re basically endorsing statements X, Y, and Z.
Water balloon
It’s pretty ridiculous to dismiss an entire book because of a handful of typos. Some of the people quoted in the book are disputing their quotes, and that should be investigated more thoroughly, but to just shrug and say pfft to the whole thing? I’m an Obama supporter but I can’t just ignore all criticisms of the guy out of hand.
Wag
Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are nothing but a big mistake.
I’m still waiting.
kindness
@Water balloon: Off with his head, you miserable In-Name-Only-Obot!
DonkeyKong
He went away and you hung around
And bothered me, every night on the intertoobs
And when I wouldn’t go out with you
You said things that weren’t very nice you
My boyfriend’s back and you’re gonna be in trouble
(Hey-la-day-la my boyfriend’s back)
You see him comin’ better cut out on the double
(Hey-la-day-la my boyfriend’s back)
You been spreading lies that was untrue
(Hey-la-day-la my boyfriend’s back)
So look out now cause ABL’s comin’ after you!
(Hey-la-day-la my boyfriend’s back)
(Hey, he knows that you been tryin’)
(And ABL knows that you been lyin’)
He’s been gone for such a long time
(Hey-la-day-la my boyfriend’s back)
Now he’s back and things’ll be fine
(Hey-la-day-la my boyfriend’s back)
You’re gonna be sorry you were ever born
(Hey-la-day-la my boyfriend’s back)
Cause he’s kinda tall and he’s awful strong
(Hey-la-day-la my boyfriend’s back)
(Hey he knows I wasn’t cheatin’!)
(Now you’re gonna get a beatin’!)
(What made you think he’d believe all your lies?)
(Wah-ooo, wah-ooo)
(You’re a big man now but he’ll cut you down to size
(Wah-ooo, wait and see)
My boyfriend’s back he’s gonna save my reputation
(Hey-la-day-la my boyfriend’s back)
If I were you I’d take a permanent vacation
(Hey-la, hey-la, my boyfriend’s back)
Yeah, my boyfriend’s back
(La-day-la, my boyfriend’s back)
Look out now, yeah, my boyfriend’s back
(La-day-la, my boyfriend’s back)
I could see him comin’
(La-day-la, my boyfriend’s back)
So you better get a runnin’
(La-day-la, my boyfriend’s back)
Alright now
(La-day-la, my boyfriend’s back)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
(La-day-la, my boyfriends’s back)
My boyfriend’s back now
(La-day-la, my boyfriend’s back)
Pfffft!
[Fades]
Know he’s comin’ after you
(La-day-la, my boyfriend’s back)
Because he knows I’ve been true now…
Paul in KY
@Shawn in ShowMe: Compared to some other assertions in the book, it is (IMO).
susan
According to John Adams, facts are stubborn things.
lacp
Suskind’s tales of Summers and Geithner jerking the President around sound like bullshit to me. They’re simply repetitions of the he’s naive/he’s weak nonsense that causes endless ‘progressive’ handwringing. He’s anything but. Summers and Geithner were there because he wanted them there, and they were/are there to do what he wants them to.
4jkb4ia
Gonzalez RBI double with two out. That’s something.
Ash Can
@Water balloon: These aren’t typos, they’re factual errors. And even then, I agree that only a “handful” do not undermine the entire book. However, if “a handful” becomes “numerous,” “significant,” or “substantial,” then the natural inclination is to wonder what else in the book the author got wrong.
bourbaki
Let me see if I’ve got this right:
We have a post consisting almost entirely of a quote of a post on Politico that itself consists almost entirely of a quote from an email of an unnamed “administration official”. This email consists of short list of seemingly minor and certainly uncontextualized factual mistakes in a currently unpublished book.
Am I missing anything?
boss bitch
What part of partial list don’t some of you understand?
Also, no book should have errors like that. These were simple things that could have easily been verified. If I were the author I would be pissed because it takes away the substance of my book. If there is substance.
nellcote
How soon some forget the swiftboaters and Kerry. Suskind in a Villager not some Washington Times wacko. This shit must be addressed.
Paul in KY
@Wag: The Tom Tom Club’s lawyers will be contacting you ;-)
bourbaki
@boss bitch:
I would appreciate me if you could give me a list (a partial one will do) of books that contain no factual errors what so ever.
The Bible, Koran and Book of Mormon don’t count of course — being the literal word of God and all…
Water balloon
@Ash Can: The factual errors seem very minor to me. The elephant in the room is the list of direct quotes from major figures in the administration alleging incompetence and a coordinated effort to sideline the more progressive people on the staff, and even a hostile work environment for women. Those quotes have been disputed, so I’d like to hear more about that, not whether Suskind got some acronyms wrong.
definitely not motorik
Suskind, a well-known racist, is clearly a paid shill for the Klan.
ABL
@Water balloon: Your point might make sense if you ignore my final two sentences.
Reading comprehension seems to be a problem with folks when it comes to my posts.
:)
lamh34
so if the people quoted have denied the statements, who’s word do you take. It basically becomes he said, she said.
Althought, if you are already convinced that Obama is weak and being led by the nose and has created a hostile work environment for females, then you will likely believe that the women are just trying to save face.
I fully expect Tweety today to discuss the book and make a point of talking about how the book alleges making female staffers feel like they were in a hostile environment, why…not because Tweety truly believes so, but it feeds into one of his rants about how the Obama WH does not have enough women in administration, never mind the fact that this WH has hired a more diverse group than even the Clinton, but I guess to Tweety, maybe the non-white women aren’t enough?
ETA: how soon before the PUMA contigent uses the “hostile work environment” to proof their case about Obama hating women…even with all evidence pointing to the contrary
the fenian
How’d Geithner get hired — or Bob Rubin, to run the transition — in the first place? Was it because of Jane Hamsher, the rules of the Senate, or was it all the racists?
LT
“Until I see a final list, I give the entire book a “Pffft!””
That you would so openly show such blind devotion to the WH is just creepy, ABL. You get a list of typos, basically (they actually criticized an incorrect acronym in a WH response? AYFKM?) and the whole book gets panned because of it?
Did put your fingers in your ears and “LA LA LA CAN’T HEAR YOU LA LA LA …” when yo finished writing that?
28 Percent
@ABL: When vast swathes of your reading public consistently miss the point entirely, the problem may not lie entirely with them :)
Water balloon
@ABL: What don’t I get? You’re ignoring the direct quotes from high level staffers in the book because Suskind got some minor facts wrong. The only thing you’re interested in seeing is a final listing of minor factual errors, and until then nothing else about the book matters? That seems odd.
LT
@ABL:
ABL’s trump card, the “reading comprehension!” gag, which is unfortunately a nine of any suit that’s not trump. (I suggest you read your very last sentence to see what Water balloon was responding to.)
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
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@the fenian:
Oh, you think you’re so clever – everybody knows those are the exact same thing.
—
“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.” – Jeffrey Dahmer
.
.
bayville
Not surprisingly, the “feminist” author of this post is outraged…at the victims.
A great place to work if you’re a lady, eh?
I’m donating $25 to Feminists For Obama today.
Sleeper
Honestly, the idea that it’s a list of possible errors which leads ABL to dismiss this book is foolish. It’s the fact that it’s critical of Barack Obama in any way, shape, or form. I don’t begrudge her the right to take that position, of course – I don’t understand it, either – but pretending to ignore the book because Politico, of all places, blew the lid off the sinister Suskind Spin Empire and their dastardly anti-Obama agenda is kind of ridiculous.
I have no opinion on the book; like most of these works, it’s probably got loads of errors, mostly minor and maybe a few major, that are the natural result of he-said/she-said insider accounts that rely on people who have axes to grind but also want to keep their careers.
slightly-peeved
The first dispute mentioned – whether Tim Geithner disobeyed Obama – seems a pretty substantial one. So I don’t get why people think the White House is only focusing on the little errors. The comment from the White House, while snarky, is accusing him of not doing a decent fact-check. If the resumes of key players have numerous errors in them, it sounds like a fair critique.
sistermoon
I give anything that gets NY Times approval a “Pffft!”
Robert Waldmann
@TheStone:
“Was “Pffft” your initial response when the Bushites denied factual assertions in Suskind’s earlier works?”
Did the Bush administration contest Suskind’s claims of fact ? I thought their reaction was to investigate his co-author for allegedly making secret information public. Turns out that, when a private citizen, he asked for information and someone in the administration sent it to him (O’Neill is fine that person is in trouble).
IIRC there were no factual errors in that book. At least none have come to light. The closest was a paraphrase of something Bush said made in an interview on 60 minutes. It was not an accurate claim of fact, because it was a paraphrase from memory not a quote. Since most of the factual claims of the book could be made by cutting and pasting official records (although I’m sure Suskind and O’Neill chose to write more elegantly) it was not hard for them to get the facts right.
Look this post is about fact checking. What is the basis for your assertion about the Bush administration and Suskinds earlier works.
Furthermore, the contested claims of fact are all matters of public record. The BIS is in a city called Basel it isn’t the BASEL. No responsible journalist would make so many blatant errors in a single book. We can conclude that, previous evidence to the contrary, Suskind is not a responsible journalist.
Tim Connor
Really, ABL, the larger question is why our president has done such a poor job of dealing with the economy and financial mess.
Ezra Klein has an upbeat post suggesting he’s finally learned his lesson about trying to compromise with people who bargain in bad faith:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/why-the-white-house-changed-course/2011/08/25/gIQAjS8PfK_blog.html
Basically, he says Obama would have preferred to be a post partisan, non-confrontational guy, but he –finally –realizes that is impossible.
Brad DeLong has a comment on this post:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/09/ezra-klein-claims-that-the-obama-white-house-has-finally-33-months-late-woken-up-to-reality.html
DeLong has two points:
1. 33 months is a long time to take in grasping reality when your mistakes are hurting a lot of people badly.
2. He sure hopes Obama really has learned his lesson.
I have to agree with both DeLong’s points. In particular, I sure hope the Obama administration HAS learned a lesson.
AMD
@47 bayville:
Did you miss Romer’s statement last week when she said “I can’t imagine that I ever said this…. What was different in the Obama administration is that there were so many women in important positions and, when problems arose, the president worked hard to fix them. I felt respected, included and useful to the team.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/book-portrays-dysfunction-in-obama-white-house/2011/09/16/gIQAdxloYK_story.html
Now, granted, it’s possible Romer is covering her ass for embarrassing her boss, but given Suskind’s glaring errors it’s just as if not more likely that Suskind was sloppy about sourcing his quotes.
General Stuck
@Tim Connor:
Delong is full of shit, and so are you/
J. Michael Neal
People seem to fundamentally misunderstand what this sort of book means. They assume that it is a look at the inner workings of whatever organization it is about. It’s the way you can learn what really happened.
That just isn’t true. Authors like Suskind, Woodward, John Helyar (Barbarians at the Gate) or any of the other such authors rely entirely upon a subset of the people involved for their information. The other principals, for reasons good and bad, aren’t interviewed.
This means that you are getting the biased viewpoint(s) of some of the players. These books aren’t objective, and they can’t be objective. As such, they ALL are likely to contain significant flaws and errors. That’s not to defend what appears to be some elementary sloppiness on the part of Suskind here, which does cast some doubt on his capabilities. It’s to say that you shouldn’t trust any of these books to be the whole picture, including The Price of Loyalty.
When evaluating such a tome, you need to not only look at the competence and trustworthiness of the author. You also need to scrutinize the main sources and how much you trust them to be giving something close to the real version. Sometimes, that means you have to figure out who the main sources are, if they aren’t explicitly named. That is usually pretty easy, but not always.
For instance, it’s very clear from reading Barbarians at the Gate that F. Ross Johnson is the largest source Burrough and Helyar used, Nick and Ted Forstmann are important secondary sources and that no one from Kravis, Kohlberg Roberts provided information. Because I think that Johnson is a self-agrandizing, responsibility denying, ridiculous, clueless fuck, I take the book with a very large grain of salt. It’s extremely entertaining, and I think that it gives a good overview of what the process of a leveraged buyout is like, but I don’t take any of the specific claims very seriously.
In the case of The Price of Loyalty, the largest source was Paul O’Neill. My take on him is that he was a moderately competent CEO for a pretty unexciting or unchallenging company before becoming Treasury Secretary, that he had honest disagreements with the White House over policy and that he had a deep dislike of a number of the individuals in the administration. On the whole, I think what he says is credible, despite the score settling. So I discount the charges, but not very much.
I haven’t paid enough attention to figure out who Suskind’s biggest sources are for this book, and thus how much credibility to give it. However, one thing to keep in mind is that Larry Summers is a deeply polarizing figure and has been since long before he joined that Obama administration. So, keep in mind that a lot of the criticism of him is coming from people who have had beefs with him for a long time. That doesn’t mean that the criticisms are wrong, but it does mean that one should treat them carefully before accepting them as gospel. (Put me down for thinking that Summers has been getting a bad rap on a lot of his economic views because of ax grinding (I think that he has been more on the side of the good guys than is often appreciated), but that he is also a colossal asshole, even by the standards of economists, and so I wouldn’t find even horrifying tales about his personal behavior to be implausible. And I find claims about him manipulating access to the president and trying to control the entire policy making apparatus to be inherently plausible; I’m only surprised that there isn’t evidence that he tried to take over military and foreign policy, too.))
Argive
I’ve always thought Suskind was kind of a hack, but that’s mostly because of his writing style, which I find unnecessarily florid and melodramatic. These mistakes mainly point to him needing a different copy editor, I think.
ABL
@bayville: busted! you got me, dude! my post is positively teeming with hostility towards women.
you’re so clever! how do you do it?