Word: neill
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...REGIME CHANGE The polite way of saying we want someone ousted. Bush goes after Saddam: Iraq needs a regime change. Bush axes Paul O'Neill and Lawrence Lindsey: Economic regime change...
...didn't help that long-simmering policy feuds between O'Neill and Lindsey--at bottom reflecting the mutual distrust between a corporate honcho and an intellectual--were getting increasingly personal. Lindsey was fingered for leaking damaging criticism of O'Neill and Hubbard. At strategy sessions with Bush, O'Neill frequently interrupted Lindsey to disagree with him. "There was no creative tension," says a senior aide, "just tension." After the bloodletting last week, staff members for each man blamed the other for their boss's misfortune. For a White House that prides itself on unity and order, it was an exceptional...
Better sandbox skills are all the more critical as the economy keeps producing nasty surprises such as last week's report that 40,000 more Americans were out of work (not counting O'Neill and Lindsey) and that the unemployment rate had risen to 6%, up from 5.7% the previous month. With the next presidential election less than two years away, "we recognize that we can no longer blame this on our predecessor," says a senior White House adviser. Nor can the Administration afford to prolong domestic turmoil as it seeks to rally public support for a possible war with...
Whatever the final shape of the package, the White House is looking to put together a new team that is camera ready. O'Neill and Lindsey not only were unskilled at presenting the President's plan but often made news with wayward public comments. Lindsey once called the Enron debacle a "tribute to American capitalism." He speculated on the cost of going into battle with Iraq when the rest of the Administration was downplaying war talk and the President was preaching fiscal discipline. O'Neill repeatedly made pronouncements that were far too candid for the markets' delicate constitution...
...handouts to the wealthy. Administration officials scoff. Says a senior aide: "Show me somewhere in history where someone has paid a political price for deficits." That's exactly the kind of talk that could spook the bond markets. So while it's easy to write off Lindsey and O'Neill as bunglers, they may not be such an easy act to follow until the Bush team gets the sound track right. --With reporting by Michael Duffy and Adam Zagorin/Washington