Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

The Clown Show Continues

The Clown Show that is Bush administration fiscal policy continues. Today in the downstage ring Budget Director Josh Bolten practices for his forthcoming marathon of mendacity defending the budget by telling New York Times reporter Elizabeth Bumiller that in discussion George W. Bush is "awfully combative... probing questions... a great knack for... getting right to the nub question."

Shame! The most Josh Bolten's predecessor Mitch Daniels would say was that George W. Bush was more interested and engaged in policy than Ronald Reagan was.

Elizabeth Bumiller won't write down in print that she doesn't believe a word that Josh Bolten says. The most she will do is quietly signal that she thinks Bolten is a liar by attributing disbelief in Bolten's current words to his "old colleagues."

Gotta protect that White House access, after all...

Budget Director Girds for Angry Congress: Many of Mr. Bolten's old colleagues at Goldman Sachs describe him as a moderate, not an ideologue, and they question whether he is a true believer in a White House policy that asserts it is possible to increase spending on national security, make the president's trillion-dollar tax cuts permanent and still cut the deficit in half in five years.

"Yes, absolutely, I am," Mr. Bolten, 49, said in an interview last week in his office. "And this is not radical stuff, I want to emphasize. This is not some fringe perspective. This is serious budgeting, supported by sound numbers."

Mr. Bolten is the most powerful person in the Bush administration that most people have never heard of. As Mr. Bush's policy director in the 2000 presidential campaign, he helped create the economic program he is now carrying out. As the White House deputy chief of staff, his job until June, he effectively took economic policy away from Lawrence B. Lindsey, Mr. Bush's former chief economic adviser, who was fired, along with Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill, in late 2002. At the Office of Management and Budget, Mr. Bolten replaced Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., who resigned to run for governor of Indiana.

Mr. Bolten has attributes that have served him well in the Bush White House: discretion, organizational ability, political sophistication and, above all, allegiance to the president.

"I mean, I've done probably literally hundreds of presentations to the president in five years, and two or three minutes into a presentation I'll be interrupted with a question," Mr. Bolten said. "It's not personal, but it's awfully combative. He asks very probing questions, and he has a great knack for even in complicated subject matter getting right to the nub question that really goes to the presidential decision."