{"id":2801,"date":"2004-10-19T12:02:29","date_gmt":"2004-10-19T17:02:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/2801.html"},"modified":"2004-10-19T12:02:29","modified_gmt":"2004-10-19T17:02:29","slug":"why-cant-bush-pick-a-decent-treasury-secretary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/why-cant-bush-pick-a-decent-treasury-secretary\/","title":{"rendered":"Why can’t Bush pick a decent Treasury Secretary?"},"content":{"rendered":"

At this point, Bush is 0-for-2 in finding capable officials to head the Treasury Department. Paul O’Neill was brilliant but prickly — he didn’t get along with Congress, he hated talking to the media, and he ultimately grew frustrated by the White House’s twisted priorities. He was shown the door after two years on the job.<\/p>\n

Next up is the current secretary, John Snow, who doesn’t appear to be enjoying himself at all. In May, he got caught making an $11 million investment mistake, caused by the fact that he didn’t read<\/a> his own financial statements for more than a year. More recently, Snow stuck his foot in his mouth<\/a> by insisting in Ohio that the fact that Bush has lost jobs on his watch is a “myth,” when, of course, it’s true. (Snow later issued a statement expressing “regret” that his comments had been “misconstrued.”)<\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal’s Alan Murray raised<\/a> the question today: Why has Mr. Bush failed in his first four years to find an effective Treasury secretary? Fortunately, Murray also points at the explanation.<\/p>\n

[Much of the answer comes from the fact that, for this administration, economic policy has been a direct extension of political strategy. The tax cuts that characterized President Bush’s first term were forged during the campaign, and were as much a plan for election and re-election as for economic reinvigoration. The Treasury secretary’s job was taken over, in effect, by political adviser Karl Rove.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yep, that explains it quite well.
\n
\nHistorically, Treasury secretaries wielded enormous power, including principal authority over an administration’s policies on taxes and budgets. The Bush administration clearly doesn’t work this way — responsible fiscal management is utterly meaningless when compared to political considerations. Bush has asked those who hold the position to be little more than a cheerleader. Rove is in charge.<\/p>\n

Remember, as John DiIulio, Bush’s first director of his “faith-based” office, told Esquire<\/a>, “There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you’ve got is everything — and I mean everything — being run by the political arm. It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis.”<\/p>\n

Truer words were never spoken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At this point, Bush is 0-for-2 in finding capable officials to head the Treasury Department. Paul O’Neill was brilliant but prickly — he didn’t get along with Congress, he hated talking to the media, and he ultimately grew frustrated by the White House’s twisted priorities. He was shown the door after two years on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2801\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}