The weakest cabinet in history

Quick: Name a single cabinet officer other than Condoleza Rice or Donald Rumsfeld. Of all the cabinets I have known, the Bush administration’s is by far the quietest. What do they do all day?

Shortly after the Senate confirmed John Snow’s nomination as Treasury Secretary, he phoned to thank me for the guidance I’d indirectly given him for how to survive a nomination hearing in my erstwhile memoir, Locked in the Cabinet. I had written there that if a Senator asks for your view on a controversial issue, refrain from expounding. Say instead “I look forward to working with you on that, Senator.” But since he became Treasury Secretary, Snow has continued to refrain from expressing his views on controversial issues. He may have looked forward to working with the Senators on significant pieces of legislation but there’s no evidence to date he has done so. I can’t remember a Treasury Secretary who’s been less visible. It’s now rumored that he is on his way out. By the time you read this he may already be gone.

Why is this cabinet so invisible? Because they’ve been cowed by a White House that has imposed extraordinary discipline. All policy pronouncements must flow through Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. Everyone else is out of the loop because there is no other loop. The result is the loopiness we’ve seen again and again, such as the Medicare drug benefit’s “doughnut hole” that hits seniors after they receive the first $2,250 in drug benefits, or Bush’s silly band aid of a one-year extension of relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax. It’s policy doo-doo. Moral: When you try to run everything out of the White House you end up with the runs.