Andrew Card as Treasury Secretary?

Bruce Bartlett does not think that Andrew Card is qualified to run the Treasury Department:

The Washington Post reported on Sept. 9 that Treasury Secretary John Snow is once again being shown the door. His rumored replacement is White House chief of staff Andrew Card, who would then be replaced either by deputy chief of staff Karl Rove or Office of Management and Budget Director Josh Bolten. This sounds like a bad plan to me. It was only a few months ago that there were almost daily leaks from the White House about Snow being dismissed. When asked to comment on the record, the White House denied any intention of firing him. Secretary Snow could stay as long as wanted to, a spokesman said, “provided it is not very long,” the Post reported.

Although Mr. Snow eventually got a White House reprieve, he might as well have left.... Even though the secretary of the Treasury chairs the board of trustees of the Social Security trust fund... fundamental reform of our nation’s oldest and largest entitlement program was largely entrusted to a couple of mid-level White House staffers with neither the experience nor the resources to manage such an important project.... Little wonder, then, that the reform effort has gotten no traction, despite an enormous commitment of time by the president in giving pep talks all over the country.... Usually, there is a report drafted by the cabinet department with primary expertise that is published by the Government Printing Office and widely distributed. Such a report would explain the philosophy and rationale for the policy change, and contain a detailed proposal.... Nothing like this was done for Social Security....

Yet despite the widespread criticism of the White House for putting an inexperienced political hack in charge the Federal Emergency Management Agency, it appears poised to do the same thing to the Treasury Department. But as Katrina shows, while it’s not too hard to run a government agency during normal times, it can be extremely difficult in a crisis. In such circumstances, we desperately need people with leadership skills and technical expertise, neither of which former FEMA director Michael Brown had.

Many experts are now deeply concerned about the stresses and strains in the financial sector of the economy and fearful that a crisis could emerge at any moment. The huge budget and current account deficits, rising energy and gold prices, a bubble in the housing market, out of control hedge funds, and a corporate pension system in the process of collapse are just some of the things that could trigger a financial crisis. Should that happen, I fear that Andy Card would be as out of his depth as Michael Brown was in New Orleans...

Certainly there is no reason to think that Andrew Card is qualified to direct either international economic policy coordination, manage the fiscal policy of the United States, or regulate its financial system. And I have not met anybody who has in private praised Andrew Card's performance as White House chief of staff. The consensus is that he has made sure that the president hears only what the president wants to hear. But the job of chief of staff is to make sure that the president hears what the president needs to hear.

Comments

[save_the_rustbelt]

Why would the Rove administration need qualified people in cabinet posts?

Anyone using big words would be banned from the White House anyway.

[dan]

We couldn't make this stuff up if we tried department:

"From 1992 until 1993, Mr. Card served as the 11th U.S. Secretary of Transportation under President George Bush. In August 1992, at the request of President Bush, Secretary Card coordinated the Administration's disaster relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Andrew."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/card-bio.html

[bakho]

I don't understand why they want to dump Snow. Then again, I didn't understand why they appointed him in the first place.

[Ottnott]

Why, oh why can't I find the web page I read last week reporting talk within the administration that Snow would be replaced, because...(heavy sigh) they needed someone with greater marketing abilities?

I didn't imagine it, but I haven't managed to find it again.

[pgl]

The President wants to hear that the deficit is declining. I guess all Jack Snow's heroic efforts to distort reality has not been enough to satisfy Karl Rove.

[dd]

Andrew Card will replace Snow and Allan Hubbard will replace Greenspan. (Yes, that's right Allan not Glenn). It would fit w/the way Rove operates: loyal salesman over qualified economists.

[me]

"Then again, I didn't understand why they appointed him in the first place."

"Snow's appointment also enthused our friends at Public Campaign, who found that under Snow's leadership, CSX became one of the 100 biggest overall campaign contributors from 1989 to the present. 'The company consistently ranked in the top 10 among transportation companies in influence-buying, giving $5.9 million in that period. Republicans got 72 percent of the total.'

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=John_Snow

[rea]

Keep spinning, ron--maybe you'll manage to convince yourself . . .

[me]

Dizzy yet ron?

[Grumpy]

But isn't Card's cousin still accused of spying for Saddam Hussein? Oh sure, like the fact that he's the one who turned her in is supposed to make him look all innocent.

[ctm]

Ladies and Gentlemen, the United States Secretary of Treasury, Andy Card.

[Hinterlands]

We're Doomed.

[Hinterlands]

Should qualify that by saying. We're doomed to a very hard landing, at supersonic speed. It isn't gonna' be pretty.

[JackNYC]

Andy Card.
Good Lord, we're not going to make it to 2008 intact. Are we?

[João Carlos]

Hey...who you think will replace Greenspan? A competent guy or someone with the same qualifications that Card have to be Treasury Secretary?

It is time to forget soft landing...the economic disaster will be a DISASTER, worse than Katrina's Disaster.

João Carlos

sorry the bad english, my native language is portuguese.

[Bruce Webb]

I found this amusing. On Social Security reform:

"Such a report would explain the philosophy and rationale for the policy change, and contain a detailed proposal.... Nothing like this was done for Social Security....:"

Because the fundamental philosophy and rationale behind private accounts is "We hate Social Security and always have, and Long Live Ayn Rand". Think I am exagerating for rhetorical effect? Well the Cato Journal had a Fall 1983 issue totally devoted to Social Security reform http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj3n2/cj3n2.html and a sampling will show that Cato regarded the demographic challenge of the Boomers as more of an "opportunity" than a "crisis". This is seen in the most starkest terms in Butler and Germanis http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj3n2/cj3n2-11.pdf "Achieving Social Security Reform: a Leninist Strategy".

You will look long and hard in these pages before you find any concern about retirement security in its own right. These people were simply enraged that the Right didn't take the impending shortfall in the Trust Fund (at one point in 1983 we were within about 83 days of zero) to kill it once and for all. Instead Reagan blinked and agreed to a 2.0 point boost. Cato avowed that that would never happen again, even if it took the whole of the 20 some years until the next crisis point and a self-avowedly "Leninist strategy" of political re-education and ideological propaganda. The results are all around you, people parroting Cato talking points without even knowing they are Cato talking points, because after all "everyone" "knows" this stuff. Yes they do. Because Germanis and Butler laid out a brilliant campaign and the Right by and large followed it to the letter.

As for a "detailed proposal". There is no detailed proposal that works numerically for people making below the economic median. Period. To the extent there is a plan a tall it has been eviscerated by Lee A Arnold's animation: Social Security: the Real Connections http://www.ecolanguage.net/ . Not familiar with the concept of "clawback", not fully clear on the requirement for a minimum annuity that won't leave a dime for heirs of lower income workers? There is a reason for that. The moment they lay out any kind of numeric detail it is clear that for the majority of working Americans "doing nothing" provides a better economic result, even if you grant them their pessimistic economic model.

Once again this is no accident. Bush openly proclaimed he was going to go around the country selling "crisis" before laying out any details. Because this "reform" is all sizzle and the only steak is across the fence at the rich people's house. You get to take your pottage and like it.

It is all like Flat Tax. Once Forbes et al actually lay out the actual proposed rate and detail the range of services it covers, it is glaringly obvious that it works only for upper income workers. So they don't lay out the rate. They just try to sell the postcard tax return.

[glenn hefner]

He seems no less qualified than Snow. In other words, he could be a complete hack, but as long as he's a loyal dog, he's in the running.

[Julian Elson]

Well, at least once Card is Secretary of the Treasury, our retrospective view of John Snow will improve, much as our retrospective view of Paul O'Neill improved once John Snow was Treasury Secretary.

By the end of the Bush administration, Rubin and Summers will probably have a distorted mythology surrounding them which claims that they were capable of curing blindness with a touch, could walk on water, etc.