From trains to the treasury
Richmond's John
Snow: President Bush's point man on economic policy
by
Jack Milligan
Virginia Business
April
2004
Look
closely and you can see his name on those new, peach-tinted
$20 bills – John W. Snow, Secretary of the Treasury.
Snow, who for 15 years made the trains run on time as
chief executive officer at what was then Richmond-based
CSX Corp., became the point man 16 months ago on President
George W. Bush's economic team.
It's a role for which 64-year-old Snow is particularly
well suited. Running CSX (now located in Jacksonville)
gave him a sense for the challenge of running a large
organization, and placed him in the public eye. A Ph.D.
in economics from the University of Virginia (not to
mention a law degree from The George Washington University)
allows him to speak with credibility about the world's
largest economy. And an earlier tour of duty at the
U.S. Department of Transportation during the Ford administration
taught him how to function in Washington.
The latter may be Snow's most valuable skill because
when it comes to economic matters, these are difficult
times for the Bush administration. Two years ago, when
it showed clear signs of rebounding from the 9/11-induced
recession, few people expected the economy to be an
issue in Bush's re-election. But job growth has
been tepid under Bush — 2.3 million payroll jobs
have disappeared since January 2001 — and he could
be the first president since Herbert Hoover to see the
number of payroll jobs drop during his four-year term.
Of course the comparison is highly misleading, but in
presidential politics virtually any comparison with
Herbert Hoover is a clear sign of trouble.
There have been other contretemps, as well. The shoot-from-the-lip
style of Bush's first treasury secretary —
former Alcoa Corp. CEO Paul O'Neill — eventually
turned him into a political liability. More recently,
N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the president's
Council of Economic Advisors, landed in hot water when
he lauded the positive impact of outsourcing on the
economy, then issued an extraordinarily optimistic jobs
forecast that neither Bush nor Snow would publicly endorse.
Enter John Snow, whose calm, thoughtful and articulate
manner makes him an able spokesman for Bush's
economic policies. What he says comes right out of the
Republican Party playbook: Make the Bush tax cuts permanent
and don't let protectionist fever interfere with
free trade – themes that have already become issues
in the presidential campaign. But one of Snow's
strengths as a spokesman is that he doesn't step
on his message. He knows that people listen closely
to what he says, so he speaks carefully and intelligently.
On a blustery day in March, while Snow was discussing
a variety of issues with Virginia Business in his large,
well appointed office at the Treasury Building just
a few steps from the White House, the weather outside
turned from rain to snow to bright sunshine in a short
space of 45 minutes — the perfect metaphor for
the volatility of election-year politics and the challenge
of being Bush's chief spokesman on economic policy.
Click here for the transcript
of Snow's interview with Virginia Business
Managing Editor Paula Squires and Jack Milligan, a frequent
contributor to the magazine.
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