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During the past 20 years, the author has watch China move from being a developing country into an industrial superpower
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Get Four
|  | NOVEMBER 24, 2004
By Howard Gleckman The Rise of a New Economic Czar? Bush loyalist Tim Adams may be the favorite to head the National Economic Council. If he does, he's likely to boost the position's power The remaking of the Bush economic team continues. Stephen Friedman, who heads the National Economic Council, is resigning to return to New York, White House aides say. And whoever replaces him may well find that the best place to shape economic policy in the second-term Administration will be inside the White House, at the head of the NEC. Friedman, who served as a behind-the-scenes policy coordinator, came to Washington as a consummate Wall Street insider. He had been co-chairman of Goldman Sachs (GS ) and senior principal at Marsh & McLennan Capital (MMC ) before joining the Bush team in December, 2002. Friedman, who never seemed comfortable in Washington, barely put his stamp on big policy initiatives. INSIDER AND PRAGMATIST. But the NEC chair may soon become a much more influential post. While Bush hasn't yet named a replacement, the inside track belongs to Tim Adams, the former Treasury Dept. chief of staff who served as policy director of the President's reelection campaign. Adams, a low-key policy expert, would fit the recent Bush pattern: Choosing long-time loyalists to fill sensitive posts. At Treasury and on the campaign, Adams was able to manage sometimes-nasty policy spats among conservative economists. Like Friedman -- and unlike Lawrence B. Lindsey, who was the NEC chair from 2001 to 2002 -- Adams is a pragmatist who's unlikely to bring his own agenda to the job. But unlike Friedman, Adams is considered a savvy Washington insider. As a result, Adams could fill a key role as the Bush Administration pursues its twin second-term domestic-policy initiatives: Creating private Social Security accounts and revamping the federal tax system. Sources say Adams strongly supports early and aggressive action on both initiatives. And should he become the NEC chief, Adams and Budget Director Joshua B. Bolten could be central players in developing both policy and strategy inside the White House. The third key player: Top political adviser Karl Rove. THE DUO'S REWARD. Control of these top initiatives is likely to belong to strong White House loyalists, rather than the Cabinet. The normally powerful Treasury Dept. could take a secondary role. While Treasury Secretary John Snow is expected to remain at his post into 2005, he's widely seen as leaving sometime next year. Commerce Secretary Don Evans, a close Bush friend, has announced his resignation and has yet to be replaced. And Gregory Mankiw, who heads Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, is also expected to leave his job. It may not be a coincidence that Budget Director Bolten served as Bush's campaign policy director in his 2000 run for the White House. Along with Adams, that means the President's second-term domestic agenda will be shaped by two largely invisible aides who made their mark in Bush's campaigns and, as a result, will be given immense policy and political clout.  Gleckman is a senior correspondent in BusinessWeek's Washington bureau Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | |
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