Another Wrong Call by the Times
Posted by: Ken Shepherd
5/30/2006 10:02:09 AM

In the Saturday paper, The New York Times virtually dismissed the notion that a Wall Street executive would be the next Treasury Secretary nominee, citing an unnamed "senior Republican aide in Congress." Staff writers Jim Rutenberg and Edmund Andrews predicted that longtime Bush friend and former Commerce Secretary Donald Evans had the inside track for nomination:


Administration allies said that senior officials had made overtures to prominent executives on Wall Street, including Henry M. Paulson Jr., the chairman of Goldman Sachs. White House strategists had been hoping to appoint a big name from the finance world that could help promote positive news on the economy that is being overshadowed by high gasoline prices and a generalized anxiety about the country's direction.

But Mr. Paulson and other executives expressed little interest in taking the post, in part because neither Mr. Snow nor his predecessor, Paul H. O'Neill, had any substantial role in shaping economic policy.

The real power to set priorities, whether it was cutting taxes in 2001 and 2003 or the failed effort to overhaul Social Security in 2005, has always been held by a small circle of advisers in the White House, including Vice President Dick Cheney.

"They couldn't get someone from Wall Street because nobody wanted the job," said one senior Republican aide in Congress, adding that the next Treasury secretary will essentially be a caretaker during Mr. Bush's last two years in office.

Oops.





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