In the Spin Room

David Frum makes a lame effort at distinguishing his good book about the White House from Paul O’Neill’s bad book:

ZAHN: All right, but, even in your own book, you describe the president as this: “He is impatient and quick to anger, sometimes glib, even dogmatic, often uncurious, and, as a result, ill-informed.”
FRUM: But here’s a difference. And notice when you listen. The president sometimes didn’t ask every question that you might want him to ask.
But my description of him is a man who is engaged. And he’s complaining the president withdrew from him and didn’t listen to him and didn’t seem to pay attention. Whenever you’ve got a problem with other people, there are always two candidates to blame. One is yourself and one is somebody else. And you always start with somebody else and only reach yourself by a long process of elimination.

Right. It’s the cabinet’s fault that Bush daydreams in lala land.

ZAHN: All right, David, you’ve got to help me with something. I’m listening to you and I’m hearing what you’re saying. You find this criticism of the president very personal. Yet, on the other hand, you’re a guy that made some money off the president’s back. You left the administration. You wrote a book some folks in the administration weren’t crazy about.
Secretary O’Neill is not taking a dime from this book. Everybody knows he’s a multimillionaire. And if what he’s saying, as you just said, is not untrue, then how can you have a problem with him writing this book?
FRUM: I didn’t criticize him for writing this book. I criticized him for saying things that, while true, might lead people to draw false conclusions.
Everybody who goes into the White House has the experience of not being treated as the important person they think they are. And that’s a comment theme,whether they’re as important as Paul O’Neill or whether they’re a speechwriter. That’s your feeling. If you’re going to write about your experience in a way that is interesting to anybody other than your immediate relatives and the people who hate the guy irrationally, you have to get past your own feelings about, gee, why wasn’t I treated like the important guy I think I am, and say, this story was never about me. This story was about the president.

I’m don’t even understand what this means. Apparently, O’Neill’s job as a writer is not to relate a true account of his experience inside the White House, but rather to put forward the president’s point of view, or something. Whatever.