Behind the curtain

I've cited both Timothy Noah and Charles Peters today. Both have recently drawn attention to Ron Suskind's "Bushfiles," an online library of Bush administration documents provided by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. (Peters discusses it here, Noah here.)

Brad DeLong has been working his way through O'Neill's papers in a series of posts that usually begin with the phrase "Why oh why? …" And many others in the liberal quadrants of the blogosphere have been paying attention to the Bushfiles as well.

President Bush is famously distrustful of the "filter" of the media. He tries to avoid the alleged distortions of this filter by, whenever possible, going around the media to "talk directly to the American people."

You can't get much more unfiltered than a massive document dump of internal memos, briefing papers and notes from strategy sessions. Suskind is making Bush's dream a reality — giving the American people direct, unfiltered access to the Bush administration in all its glory.

But you won't hear anyone from the administration touting Suskind's online presidential library. And you won't find too many of Bush's supporters in the blogosphere linking to the Bushfiles. Instead, they seem to be wishing Suskind would just go away. To the extent they acknowledge Suskind's site at all it's only to say "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."

It's interesting that the president's biggest supporters aren't relishing this up-close look. Why do you suppose that is?