Early yesterday afternoon, Snow had walked over to a private area of the White House Mess for a meeting of the economic team. During the meeting, Card came in and told Snow the president wanted to see him, aides said. Card then walked him to the Oval Office. The other economic officials waited to congratulate him after the meeting.
Snow, the former chairman of CSX Inc., has a law degree and a doctorate in economics and was co-chairman of a national panel that developed a response by business to the corporate governance crisis after the collapse of Enron Corp.
White House officials did not say whether Snow's invitation to stay was open-ended, but they also noted that the administration had offered no timetable for how long Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld would remain.
Sentiment in Washington conservative circles had shifted to Snow's defense in the past few days. Gramm may have made a highly effective advocate for the president's agenda on Capitol Hill, but with the dollar sliding and worries rising about a potential financial crisis, the outspoken Texan was not seen as the man to soothe foreign exchange markets.
Once Gramm was out of the running, conservatives realized the remaining candidates were Wall Street executives who might put their concern about rising budget deficits ahead of a push for lower taxes, said Stephen Moore, president of the conservative political action committee Club for Growth. Given their options, they decided Snow would be the best Treasury chief to push the partial privatization of Social Security and, especially, a restructuring of the tax code.
Indeed, Snow's record on tax reform would suggest he would be more committed to slashing taxes on savings and investment than Gramm, said Cesar Conda, a former domestic policy aide to Vice President Cheney.
Vince Farrell Jr., chairman of Victory Capital Management in New York, said Snow's reputation has not been harmed, but he said that is because Wall Street viewed Snow as a somewhat ponderous spokesman for the White House's economic agenda rather than a policymaking force in his own right.
Allen Sinai, president of Decision Economics Inc. in New York, agreed. "My perception is this administration doesn't really want a highly creative, independent Treasury secretary who will lead policy," he said, "so it seems to me Secretary Snow is effective at doing his job."
