On February 18th Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist, Ron Suskind, spoke at the New America Foundation about the Bush Administration and his most recent book The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism.

Suskind recalled being accused of being part of “the reality-based community” by a source from the White House while writing his first book on the administration, The Price of Loyalty. Suskind explained that the accusation was based on the separation of two camps: the first, a group of people like him who searched for facts, and the second, members of the administration who preferred to use language and propaganda to shape reality through the press and media cycles.

While writing his next book, The One Percent Doctrine, Suskind learned about the Bush administration’s unique decision making calculus. He explained that Cheney had a particularly unique thinking process on how to deal with terrorist threats, which Suskind refers to as the One Percent Doctrine. The One Percent Doctrine was the notion that after 9/11, the low probability of high impact threats had to be treated as is if they were definitely going to happen.

Finally Suskind shared the main points of his most recent book, The Way of the World, in which he describes how America lost its moral authority over the last eight years. He explained how the self-correcting measures in our society such as oversight, an independent judiciary, and the free press were all damaged during that period. Suskind expressed his hope that the ground-up grassroots support of Obama has helped give him the leadership to restore America’s moral authority in the international community.

--Event summary written by William Monroe, Intern, American Strategy Program, New America Foundation