NYT: Paul O'Neill, Unplugged, or What Would Alexander Hamilton Have Done?

[BlueEyedSon]

Read Robert Rubin's recently released memoir and "The Price of Loyalty," Ron Suskind's new book on Paul O'Neill's time in the Bush administration, and a few things become apparent. The first is that Mr. O'Neill would have really liked having Mr. Rubin's job.

Of course, Mr. O'Neill thought he was getting Mr. Rubin's job when George Bush appointed him Treasury secretary, but in fact he was only assuming the title. Mr. Rubin's job, as described in his book, "In an Uncertain World: Tough Choices From Wall Street to Washington," was to analyze an often mystifying world, alongside Alan Greenspan and an insatiably curious president, and to shape domestic and global economic policy accordingly.

Mr. O'Neill, who had been a budget wiz in the Nixon and Ford administrations and a successful chief executive at Alcoa, was able to sift through economic data to his heart's content with his old pal, Mr. Greenspan. But he soon discovered that this was merely an academic undertaking. In addition to the damage that Mr. O'Neill did to himself with his erratic public statements, he was serving in an administration that was not eager to have facts get in the way of policies set by a "praetorian guard" of ideologues surrounding the president.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/14/opinion/14WED4.html

[lovedems]

1. Right, they saw tax cuts as an economic policy, and it isn't

that is why we are record deficits right now. By the looks of it, the deficit will just keep growing with our new "mars and marriage" campaigns.

O'Neill wanted to create an economic policy, not blindly give away tax cuts that the country couldn't afford.

[Manix]

2. I am struck by how such an incredibly naive man was ever a

successful CEO of a major corporation!

[PATRICK]

3. Be afraid

Isn't everyone proving pretty easily sidetracked and naive? Bush is bringing out terrible truths about everyone by the fact of himself being a lie they can't see.

Even our best Dems get walked down the path, sidetracked from reality, playing rules that simply don't exist for the titular Great Leader.

The Feast of Fools. Erasmus, a good book still.