Trying times for Bush's economic point man

Critics question how influential O'Neill's policy role is as compared with that of Bush political adviser Karl Rove. "I have a belief that there is a great deal more role for Karl Rove than for the substantive types," says William Niskanen, who served on the Council of Economic Advisors during President Reagan's administration.

Mr. Niskanen also notes O'Neill's tendency to travel while crises are brewing at home, "traipsing off to Africa with [rock star] Bono instead of taking on" the corporate governance issue. On Thursday, O'Neill departed on a week-long tour of Ukraine, the Kyrgyz Republic, Uzbekistan, and Georgia. So on Friday, O'Neill was missing when the president's corporate crime task force held its first meeting at the White House.

"It is odd in the midst of a crisis that he has engaged in so much foreign travel," says Mr. Wittman. "Exactly who is in charge of economic policy at a time the economy is on the precipice of crisis?"

But O'Neill finds travel a valuable link with the real world of hard data and hard-working people.

"The notion that Washington is the center of the universe and creates value, and everything happens because of what goes on here, is not true," he says "If you want to find out where real jobs are created, you ought to go with me on some of my trips."

O'Neill is a study in contrasts with his boss, President Bush. O'Neill grew up poor in a house without indoor plumbing, attended Fresno State in California, and started his government career as an intern in Washington. Bush had all the advantages that came from being the son of a president and the grandson of a senator.

Yet, the Treasury Secretary says he and the president first connected out of a shared sense of the importance of education.

"I saw in private meetings his passion for the issue of [how] every child can succeed and it is up to us to help them succeed. I believed him."

While he did not know Bush well before the election, O'Neill has been friends with Vice President Dick Cheney since they worked together in Washington in 1969.

That long-term tie and freedom from financial worries may help explain the Treasury secretary's penchant for speaking freely – even when the result could be read as implied criticism of the president.

When first asked about Mr. Bush's tardiness in filing a Securities and Exchange Commission form in 1990, O'Neill responds that while "it is not acceptable" to file late, "you will also find that even in some very good companies there are occasional lapses."

But when pressed, O'Neill becomes more blunt. The president "has talked about this. I don't know his case. Ask me about mine. Did I ever do an untimely filing of a form 4. No."

O'Neill is clearly impatient with the partisanship which sometimes characterizes the city. "One of the things I really struggle with is that there is so little fascination and work on facts and how the whole conversation wants to be about a tennis match over hitting things back and forth across the net as though America's future was some kind of bi-polar Republican or Democrat thing."

Whatever role O'Neill ends up playing in hammering out a final corporate reform package, it clearly will be based on his bedrock belief in the importance of character in shaping corporations.

O'Neill clearly feels passionately about the need for CEO's to show moral leadership. The CEO position, "is the determinant of how well or unwell our system of capitalism works," he says. "There is no set of government watchdogs or regulatory processes than can overcome or compensate for the lack of an articulated value structure from the top."

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