Paul O'Neill's stubborn independence and unpredictable behaviour did not help a US economy already under pressure, writes Conor O'Clery, North America Editor
Paul O'Neill drives himself to work every day in a silver Audi sports coupe. His secret service detail often cannot keep up with him, and the US Treasury Secretary delights in losing them in the streets of Washington.
This behaviour underlines a streak of stubborn independence that made the former Alcoa boss an awkward fit in the Bush cabinet. Right from the beginning he adhered to his own controversial, sometimes misguided, and often bluntly honest counsel.
When appointed in December 2000, he refused initially to divest himself of $100 million of Alcoa stock. He gave interviews that sent the dollar reeling. Once he derided the attempts of Republican Congress members to bolster the economy as "show business". The silver-haired Treasury boss also raised eyebrows in the administration when he accompanied Bono on a tour of Africa to see the problem of the AIDs epidemic and debt repayments at first hand. He was open to changing his mind, which worried more ideological-driven colleagues.
For example, O'Neill threatened to stop the International Monetary Fund from giving financial bailouts to countries in crisis, then supported IMF packages for Turkey, Argentina and Brazil. He antagonised Wall Street traders as "not the sort of people you would want to help you think about complex questions".
Then he disappeared off to Central Asia in July at a time when stocks on the Standard & Poor's 500 Index plunged to their lowest point since the October 1987 crash. As calls grew for his resignation, Mr O'Neill protested that his willingness to speak his mind proved he was an independent thinker who could educate people.
"I've decided, sometimes with considerable pain as a consequence, to say what I think as clear as I know how to say it," he said in September.
All this meant, however, that the principal public spokesman for the US economy was not projecting a consistent message or demonstrating economic leadership. On his watch, the US economy slumped and, in the words of George Bush, just bumped along. So he can't have been too surprised when White House Chief-of-Staff Mr Andrew Card telephoned him at home in a snow-bound Washington on Thursday to say he was being fired as Treasury Secretary.
Indeed, the White House had been dropping hints to the media about his coming demise and the speculation had picked up steam after the mid-term elections. Three weeks ago conservative commentator Robert Novak wrote a column in the Chicago Tribune headed: "O'Neill's days at Treasury are numbered."
The break, he said, was inevitable because Bush's business supporters were telling him that the Treasury portfolio should be given to someone who would carry out his tax-cutting strategy, or else he would follow his father as a one-term president. Mr O'Neill publicly and privately voiced scepticism about the merits of the new tax cuts the president wants in a stimulus package promised for early next year.
As for Mr Lawrence Lindsey, his departure as economic adviser was also only a matter of time and it had more to do with clumsiness than policy. Just last month he revealed to the Wall Street Journal that war in Iraq could cost up to $200 billion. On that very day Bush was preaching fiscal discipline. He had to go.
