White House pushes back on claims in Ron Suskind book [video]

The White House has found common cause with an unlikely ally in its campaign to discredit author Ron Suskind’s unflattering portrait of the inner workings of the administration: Karl Rove.

Communications director Dan Pfeiffer, in a Twitter posting Tuesday, quotes the former George W. Bush right-hand man’s assessment that Suskind “tends to exaggerate,” even as Rove explained that he’s not “certain how much” of his new book is accurate.

Strange bedfellows, indeed.

Suskind’s new book, “Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington and the Education of a President,” officially hits bookstores today. But it has been the subject of a vigorous pushback effort for days from the administration over its portrayal of President Obama’s leadership.

Suskind, a Pulitzer Prize winner who was granted extensive access to West Wing aides and an interview with Obama for the book, paints a picture of Obama as a passive commander in chief struggling to manage a staff with experience in past administrations.

Larry Summers, the former head of the National Economic Council, reportedly told a colleague that “there’s no adult in charge,” and that Bill Clinton “would never have made these mistakes.”

Another passage quotes Pfeiffer’s predecessor, Anita Dunn, as saying the executive office of the president was a “hostile” environment for women.

Aides have since said they were misquoted, or comments were taken out of context.

At a White House briefing Monday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was asked about claims that his department was slow to act on Obama’s policy decisions.

“The reality I lived, we all lived together, bears no relation to the sad little stories I heard reported from that book,” he said.

Press secretary Jay Carney, at the same briefing, made a general critique of the book and even accused the author of lifting passages from Wikipedia.

“Very simple things, facts that could be ascertained -- dates, titles, statistics, quotes -- are wrong in this book,” he said. “I would caution anyone to assume that if you can’t get those things right, that you suddenly get the broader analysis right. That analysis is wrong.”

Suskind defended his work in televised interviews Tuesday. On NBC’s “Today” show, he said the passage he was accused of “lifting” from Wikipedia bore little resemblance to what he wrote.

“The White House should be doing something better than Wiki searches on a 500-page book,” he told Ann Curry.

He says the core of the book is how Obama “learned how to be the president,” and key to that are the stumbling blocks he faced on the way.

“Everything in this book is solid as a brick,” he said, calling it “densely sourced” and the analysis “picture perfect.”

“When the curtain is pulled back, they often respond vigorously. They are,” he said.

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