Ron Suskind: White House pushed ‘tough times are over’ narrative

Since the release of Ron Suskind’s new book, “Confidence Men,’’ White House officials have sought to disparage his reporting and paint the book as an unfair depiction of the Obama presidency.

And yet someone in Obama’s orbit opened an important door for the author: Suskind landed an interview with the president.

A White House advisor said Thursday the sit-down with Obama was an attempt to alter the “trajectory’’ of the book -- to let Obama provide a corrective to any misleading bits of information Suskind might have heard.

Suskind denied this was the case. He said his interview with the president “wasn’t to correct anything.’’

Rather, “they wanted me to sit with Obama in February so he could respond to my reporting over two years of what really happened in his presidency.’’

Suskind, in an interview Thursday night, said: “The view was that the tough times -- so heavily reported in the book -- were over. And after the midterms, with a new staff, rising approval ratings and a more dynamic style of leadership, he was like a new man -- an improved president.

“That’s what he says in the interview – that he’d grown through adversity -- but that case looked unconvincing a few months later with the summer’s debt debacle. At that point I knew they’d come at me hard and may have to attack me personally, because it’d be hard to attack the book’s substance after all the interviews I had.’’

In his source notes, Suskind writes that he interviewed more than 200 people over a period of 746 hours.

Suskind, a Pulitzer Prize winner, added: “They knew the trajectory of the book. The whole idea was for Obama to take ownership of his presidency.”

As for the book’s portrait of Obama, Suskind said readers should decide for themselves.

“When people read the book, I think they find it sympathetic to the difficult times the president has faced,’’ he said.