HLS Hosts Pulitzer- Winning Journalist

When it comes to governance, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind said last night, the United States is on probation.

In a lecture at Harvard Law School entitled “America at a Crossroads,” Suskind tried to make sense of the “extraordinary” legacy of the Bush administration and the subsequent challenges the next president will face.

“The office of the presidency has been stretched out of shape, and it won’t snap back on its own,” he said.

There will need to be an extraordinary effort by the next president, Suskind said, to give back power that had been inappropriately seized.

Suskind explored the post-Sept. 11 rise in the power of the executive branch and its influence on everyday people in his most recent book, “The Way of the World,” which debuted at number three on the New York Times’ bestseller list last summer.

Looking ahead to next week’s election in an interview before the event, Suskind said that regardless of who wins, the need for “bold, innovative, and clear-eyed leadership” is as great as it has ever been in this generation.

He argued that the next president will not have the luxury of feeling his way along.

“There will be a great desire for swift and dramatic actions to show here and abroad that it is not business as usual in the United States,” he said in the interview.

Suskind said that the first goal of the next president will be to bring about transparency and accountability in America’s financial system.

Both qualities are necessary for an effective economic policy, he said.

He also emphasized the importance of the elimination of the “laissez-faire approach” in which the driving rules were “whatever you could get away with” and “denial.”

In addition, Suskind argued that the next president will have to battle to win the hearts and minds of the rest of the world.

“Non-voting constituencies look at the United States and say, ‘I wish I could have a vote in your election because it affects my life,’” he said.

Suskind said that the goal of his book was to cut through the secrecy and message discipline that has defined the Bush administration’s relationship with the media and establish the truth of how the newly unified world we live in operates.

“What is real is like nectar,” Suskind said, “and how do we arrive at evidence that alters our assumptions and helps us access the world as it is?”

Law School student Nathan P. Hamilton said that though he did not agree with all of Suskind’s points, he appreciated his hopeful message.

“This kind of took a step back and made us realize that despite our sometimes great ideological differences as Americans, and to a large extent with people outside America, there are values we all share, and those things are worth defending and promoting.”