Office of the Independent Blogger

If you need proof that environmentally sound is the way to go, come to Chicago. There’s a lot to see, from Navy Pier to a White Sox game, from the Loop to that Gregory Pratt fellow to the greenery. People don’t realize it, and a lot of Chicagoans don’t appreciate it, but our town’s probably the greenest city in America, and I’d recommend the path it’s taken to most Mayors, for its economic purposes and because it’s pleasant. So come to town and we’ll make a show of the greenery, and then you can badger your Mayors.

Secretary Tony Snow, the Bush Treasury Secretary, has resigned to be replaced by Henry Paulson, a man from Goldman Sachs. It was a matter of time before Tony Snow resigned, as Tony Snow was to the Treasury Secretary what green snow is to nature — not good, and unnatural to boot. Unfortunately, Paulson is destined to be worse.

Paulson is an environmentalist, and a supporter of the Kyoto Protocol. By all means, he’s an intelligent, logical man. And that’s why he won’t fit in the Bush White House. Paul O’Neill was run out of town for having fact-based beliefs, as you can read in The Price of Loyalty, and there’s nothing to suggest that Paulson’s ideas will be taken any more seriously. At the end of the day, Bush knows what his gut tells him, and that’s that Global Warming is not to be taken serious, tax cuts are always good, and Karl Rove has the right ideas about everything.

Paulson is a pawn in their political game, a cheap tribute to the Republicans who wanted a new Treasurer and an appeal to Democrats who they are counting on to be blind to history. Don’t get your hopes up for him to make any sort of major impact on a positive level, or even a negative impact. This is George Bush’s White House, I predict, and I doubt that anything will change. I’d like to add a caveat, however: if Josh Bolten is as excellent as I feel he is, and Bush has really turned the corner in regard to seeking good government, Paulson will be listened to.

I don’t expect that, however. I expect Paulson to leave Washington in a couple of years deeply disillusioned, and it won’t be a surprise to me.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 30th, 2006 at 5:13 pm and is filed under Outside Retort (Current Affairs).