WASHINGTON -- When President Bush decided two months ago to step up his campaign for Social Security restructuring, he assembled his Cabinet. Everyone was expected to play a part, Bush said, but the principal pitch man would be Treasury Secretary John W. Snow.
"You need to be the guy on the Hill. ...You need to be the guy doing the private meetings.... You need to be the guy doing the media and traveling," the president told Snow, according to one administration official's account of the session.
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"I like John Snow and I respect him, but I think he's been put in an untenable position where he's been asked by the president to do things that someone else ought to be doing," said economist Bruce Bartlett, an assistant Treasury secretary in the administration of the first President Bush.
Snow should be spending most of his time managing the government's finances, monitoring currency flows and developing economic and fiscal policy, Bartlett said. "Instead, the secretary is out giving talks to Rotary clubs and high school students."
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