Editorial: Missing the real problem

Wednesday, May 31, 2006 | 7:21 a.m.

Henry M. Paulson Jr., nominated by President Bush on Tuesday to be the new Treasury secretary, would bring a wealth of experience to the job.

Having worked four years in staff positions for the Pentagon and White House after earning a graduate degree in business from Harvard, Paulson joined the premier Wall Street financial firm Goldman Sachs in 1974. Today he is chairman and chief executive officer of the company.

Paulson is not only an expert on markets and on the economy in general, but he is also devoted to preserving habitat for wildlife and currently serves as president of the Nature Conservancy. This is a quality that is sorely needed in the Bush administration.

Yet we fail to understand the time and effort spent over the past year in pressuring former Treasury Secretary John Snow to resign, clearing the way for Paulson. It is true that Bush was mightily disappointed when Snow was unable to persuade the voting public of the soundness of the administration's proposed reforms of Social Security and the tax code.

Snow tried, as any loyal Cabinet member would, but as President Lincoln once noted, "You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." The American people weren't about to buy into those so-called reforms, no matter who was selling them.

Most objective observers would say that Snow's performance has been credible and perhaps even exemplary.

Meanwhile, however, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the valiant efforts of our troops, are going badly because of one policy blunder after another. The Taliban are resurgent throughout much of Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden and his top aides have not been caught.

And the news from Iraq is worse. The country is unstable, to say the least, and violence against innocent people is a daily fact of life. Our losses are mounting, and all we hear from Bush is that in some unknown year Iraq will be a peaceful democracy friendly to U.S. interests.

For that to actually ever happen, we suggest that Bush take a long, hard look at who is running the Pentagon. Here is where he will find the real problem in his administration.