Former US Treasury Secretary Paul Mr O'Neill's portrait of George W. Bush depicts a passive and superficial president surrounded by right-wing ideologues who lacks the intellectual rigor or even the curiosity to think through the effects of his policies.
Mr O'Neill, who served from January 2001 until he was ousted in December 2002, made headlines over the weekend for his assertion that Bush began laying the groundwork for an invasion of Iraq almost immediately after taking office.
That was nine months before the administration began saying Iraqi weapons of mass destruction presented an immediate threat to the United States in the wake of the September 11th, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
In detailed recollections of cabinet infighting and his own one-on-one meetings with Bush, as recounted to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mr Ron Suskind, Mr O'Neill provides a rare insight into an unusually secretive administration and glimpses of a president with sometimes unusual priorities.
The book, The Price of Loyalty, for which Mr O'Neill was the principal source, went on sale today.
The Treasury Department yesterday asked for an investigation into whether a classified document was displayed during a CBS television interview with Mr O'Neill that aired Sunday.
In the book, Mr O'Neill says the tone of his relationship with Mr Bush was set at their very first meeting where he was offered the job of Treasury Secretary.
Instead of a detailed discussion, Mr Bush was more interested in why the cheeseburgers he had ordered were slow to appear. He interrupted the talk to summon White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card.
"You're the chief of staff. You think you're up to getting us some cheeseburgers?" Mr O'Neill recalled Mr Bush saying. "Card nodded. No one laughed. He all but raced out of the room."
At that first meeting and many others, Bush asked no questions. "He looked at Mr O'Neill, not changing his expression, not letting on that he had any reactions - either positive or negative," Suskind writes. Mr O'Neill wondered if Bush did not know the questions to ask or did he know but not want to hear the answers?
In Mr O'Neill's eyes, Bush's "lack of inquisitiveness or pertinent experience" meant he did not really care about long-established positions of the US government and was willing to abandon them without scruple or regret. "The president started from scratch and relied on advice of ideologues without any honest brokers in sight," Mr O'Neill said.
At Cabinet meetings, it was clear Bush had not read the memos Mr O'Neill had sent him, which he kept intentionally brief. In a one-on-one discussion about Social Security, Mr O'Neill said the President just "checked out."
Cabinet discussions were usually pre-scripted with the outcome determined in advance. On one occasion when there was real discussion on tax policy, Bush quickly became "befuddled," according to Mr O'Neill.
"If the president didn't connect in the first minute or two, it was a lost cause," he said.