For Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind, a knack for challenging the authorities -- and sometimes infuriating them in the process -- evolved well before his first professional words were printed.
While an undergraduate at the University of Virginia in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Suskind recalled during an interview yesterday afternoon, he defied convention in a way unsuitable to the school's tradition-steeped Southern ideals.
Suskind launched a campaign to eradicate the school's venerated honor code, instated before the start of the Civil War.
The move, he said, led to student protest and alumni outrage, culminating in death threats toward him before meeting defeat. What stayed intact, however, was the now-acclaimed writer's drive to push the given limits.
Now in his third stint as the College's journalist-in-residence, Suskind spoke at length of this objective -- the need to always get to the deeper story -- and its impact on his relations with the White House under President George W. Bush to a full crowd yesterday at the Rockefeller Center.
"I need to learn the 'good reasons' for why you do what you do," Suskind said, referencing reporters' requests for access to multiple sources who can inform them of policy moves and rationales, providing better understanding of what makes public figures -- from political advisers to the Sept. 11 terrorists -- operate.
This is something, he added, that the current Administration refuses to allow.
"They made clear that they feel that there is no inherent value -- zero -- to the great American ideal of public dialogue," he said.
Despite this roadblock, Suskind was able to deeply engage Bush's staff in two extended Esquire magazine feature articles on top advisers Karen Hughes and Karl Rove.
The pieces, he said, revealed frank, candid discussions with a staff run on Rove's framework, hostile to policy talk and extremely centralized.
At the same time, Suskind's stories broiled controversy. The first led to a credibility attack by the White House's chief of staff Andrew Card, which Card later withdrew. In an earlier interview for the story, Card had revealed serious problems in the White House's balance of power following Hughes' departure.
"It was a public wrestling match with the Bush Administration," Suskind said, drawing a comparison to the previous eight years at the White House, in which discourse among officials and the media was plentiful and revealing.
"The Clinton Administration was just a sieve," he said. "It was great -- in terms of policy, they were distinctively candid."
With "countless portals" for journalists to get at the reasons driving policy during the Clinton years, Suskind said, information flowed freely and a greater level of understanding could be attained.
But with Bush's arrival, "people were feeling managed with tactical force," he said. A different sort of politics took over -- one of intimidation -- and has dominated journalists' dealings with the White House since.
"The Administration has been very good with managing its message and providing a command-and-control structure," Suskind said, adding that he views himself as "in some small measure, a wrench in the gears of that machine."
Information is only released on a "need-to-know" basis, Suskind said, characterizing Rove's handling of media relations as "the reign of the Mayberry Machia-vellis."
"Reality-based dialogue," he added, "is considered an actionable offense."
Suskind said that by using intimidation tactics, Rove forced a main, high-profile source in the January 2003 Esquire story about him to commit public political suicide.
John DiIulio, one of Bush's most respected domestic policy advisers, had written a 3,000 word, on-the-record memo to Suskind on the inside happenings of the White House -- one devoid of "white papers" and policy discussions and unfriendly toward the aid of experts.
When his words were printed in Esquire, he was pressured by Rove to recant, Suskind said, ultimately dismissing everything he had written himself as "baseless and groundless."
"It's not about being right," Suskind said. "It's about 'we will because we can.' It's about energizing the base -- preservation and expansion of power."
