WASHINGTON ...With the stock market plunging last week and surveys depicting Americans as increasingly worried about the way the Bush administration is dealing with the economy and corporate fraud, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, the administration's main voice on economic issues, was in Kyrgyzstan.
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O'Neill's absence - after a trip to Africa in late May and before a trip to South America late this month - reinforced the view on Wall Street and in political circles here that President George W. Bush's economic team was not responding sufficiently to growing economic and political pressures.
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Another top official on economic matters, Mitchell Daniels Jr., the budget director, has aroused such animosity in Congress among lawmakers from both parties that his utility as a budget negotiator has been compromised.
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Political insiders say a third official, Lawrence Lindsey, the president's chief economic adviser, does not have the presence or the political skills needed to be the principal public spokesman on the economy.
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As Americans see their savings diminished daily by falling stock prices, and an election approaches that will determine which party controls Congress and the administration's legislative agenda for the next two years, Bush may have a hard time getting his message heard.
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No prominent member of his economic team has emerged to regularly reassure the public that the government's policies are sound.
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In a series of interviews, supporters and opponents of the president alike criticized the failure of administration officials to deal deftly with economic policy. They contrasted that failure with the confident way Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have handled foreign and military policy and the aggressive stance Attorney General John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge, the president's homeland security adviser, have taken on domestic security issues.
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"We desperately need someone the business community, the financial community, the press and the public can look to as the lead economic spokesman," said Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International. "We need someone who is out there day after day explaining the issues the economy is facing and explaining what the administration's policy is to address them. It's worked so well for Rumsfeld, they should have learned the lesson."
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Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, a political action committee that supports conservative Republican candidates, said that if the stock market did not turn around and the administration seemed to be sitting on its hands, "Republicans will be wiped out in the House and the Senate" in the November elections.
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On all Republicans' minds, Moore said, is the recollection that the first President George Bush lost the 1992 election to Bill Clinton in part because of the public perception that he had not paid enough attention to the economy.
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O'Neill takes issue with the notion that he is AWOL. In Bucharest on Thursday, on his way home from his weeklong trip to Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Georgia, he told reporters that his travels gave him a better perspective on the global economy.
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A senior White House official who usually reflects the president's view said the criticism of O'Neill was "absolutely off base."
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"He has everybody's strong confidence," the official said. "The fact that he's traveling in a difficult week in the markets is unexceptional. He needs to perform all the duties of the secretary of the Treasury, not just sit at his desk focusing on the markets on his screen."
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Daniels, the budget director, asserted that Washington was "in another of those periods of collective solipsism" and should not overestimate its importance in the financial markets.
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To deal with the economy, Daniels said, "this president assembled a tremendous team both in terms of their fitness for their jobs and the way they work together."
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Daniels has been pilloried on Capitol Hill for the spending restrictions he has demanded. Representative C.W. Bill Young, Republican of Florida, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said Daniels was "only concerned about numbers" and "not concerned about what those numbers do for the country." Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Bush was "ill served" by his budget director.
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Lindsey, who briefs the president two or three times a week on economic matters, said the president's staff focused on long-term issues, not "one week or whatever."
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"With the advice of his economics team," Lindsey said, "the president has been out in front leading consistently since he took office."
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In every administration, said Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist who worked in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and the first President Bush, there is competition between policy and politics.
.
In this administration, Bartlett said, "the nonfunctioning economic operation is causing the political implications of decisions to have an undue amount of influence."
.
The problem, Bartlett and many others say, is that there is no dominant figure on government economic policy like Robert Rubin in the Clinton administration, Richard Darman in the first Bush administration and Donald Regan and James Baker 3d in the Reagan years.
.
Republican lobbyists and consultants who are in close touch with the White House say they expect changes in the economic team after the November elections. "They can't make any changes before then," one Republican said, "because it would look as if they were accepting the blame for a bad economy." WASHINGTON With the stock market plunging last week and surveys depicting Americans as increasingly worried about the way the Bush administration is dealing with the economy and corporate fraud, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, the administration's main voice on economic issues, was in Kyrgyzstan.
.
O'Neill's absence - after a trip to Africa in late May and before a trip to South America late this month - reinforced the view on Wall Street and in political circles here that President George W. Bush's economic team was not responding sufficiently to growing economic and political pressures.
.
Another top official on economic matters, Mitchell Daniels Jr., the budget director, has aroused such animosity in Congress among lawmakers from both parties that his utility as a budget negotiator has been compromised.
.
Political insiders say a third official, Lawrence Lindsey, the president's chief economic adviser, does not have the presence or the political skills needed to be the principal public spokesman on the economy.
.
As Americans see their savings diminished daily by falling stock prices, and an election approaches that will determine which party controls Congress and the administration's legislative agenda for the next two years, Bush may have a hard time getting his message heard.
.
No prominent member of his economic team has emerged to regularly reassure the public that the government's policies are sound.
.
In a series of interviews, supporters and opponents of the president alike criticized the failure of administration officials to deal deftly with economic policy. They contrasted that failure with the confident way Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have handled foreign and military policy and the aggressive stance Attorney General John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge, the president's homeland security adviser, have taken on domestic security issues.
.
"We desperately need someone the business community, the financial community, the press and the public can look to as the lead economic spokesman," said Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International. "We need someone who is out there day after day explaining the issues the economy is facing and explaining what the administration's policy is to address them. It's worked so well for Rumsfeld, they should have learned the lesson."
.
Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, a political action committee that supports conservative Republican candidates, said that if the stock market did not turn around and the administration seemed to be sitting on its hands, "Republicans will be wiped out in the House and the Senate" in the November elections.
.
On all Republicans' minds, Moore said, is the recollection that the first President George Bush lost the 1992 election to Bill Clinton in part because of the public perception that he had not paid enough attention to the economy.
.
O'Neill takes issue with the notion that he is AWOL. In Bucharest on Thursday, on his way home from his weeklong trip to Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Georgia, he told reporters that his travels gave him a better perspective on the global economy.
.
A senior White House official who usually reflects the president's view said the criticism of O'Neill was "absolutely off base."
.
"He has everybody's strong confidence," the official said. "The fact that he's traveling in a difficult week in the markets is unexceptional. He needs to perform all the duties of the secretary of the Treasury, not just sit at his desk focusing on the markets on his screen."
.
Daniels, the budget director, asserted that Washington was "in another of those periods of collective solipsism" and should not overestimate its importance in the financial markets.
.
To deal with the economy, Daniels said, "this president assembled a tremendous team both in terms of their fitness for their jobs and the way they work together."
.
Daniels has been pilloried on Capitol Hill for the spending restrictions he has demanded. Representative C.W. Bill Young, Republican of Florida, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said Daniels was "only concerned about numbers" and "not concerned about what those numbers do for the country." Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Bush was "ill served" by his budget director.
.
Lindsey, who briefs the president two or three times a week on economic matters, said the president's staff focused on long-term issues, not "one week or whatever."
.
"With the advice of his economics team," Lindsey said, "the president has been out in front leading consistently since he took office."
.
In every administration, said Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist who worked in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and the first President Bush, there is competition between policy and politics.
.
In this administration, Bartlett said, "the nonfunctioning economic operation is causing the political implications of decisions to have an undue amount of influence."
.
The problem, Bartlett and many others say, is that there is no dominant figure on government economic policy like Robert Rubin in the Clinton administration, Richard Darman in the first Bush administration and Donald Regan and James Baker 3d in the Reagan years.
.
Republican lobbyists and consultants who are in close touch with the White House say they expect changes in the economic team after the November elections. "They can't make any changes before then," one Republican said, "because it would look as if they were accepting the blame for a bad economy." WASHINGTON With the stock market plunging last week and surveys depicting Americans as increasingly worried about the way the Bush administration is dealing with the economy and corporate fraud, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, the administration's main voice on economic issues, was in Kyrgyzstan.
.
O'Neill's absence - after a trip to Africa in late May and before a trip to South America late this month - reinforced the view on Wall Street and in political circles here that President George W. Bush's economic team was not responding sufficiently to growing economic and political pressures.
.
Another top official on economic matters, Mitchell Daniels Jr., the budget director, has aroused such animosity in Congress among lawmakers from both parties that his utility as a budget negotiator has been compromised. |
