I’ll take bureaucratic politics for $300, Alex
Brad DeLong is puzzled by something: Those of us who worked in the Clinton Treasury have been amazed at the remarkable loss of the U.S. Treasury’s power within the U.S. government that took place on January 21, 2001. The Treasury’s staff resources–both quantity and quality–are enormous. Its institutional memory is deep. Its links with its ...
Brad DeLong is puzzled by something:
Those of us who worked in the Clinton Treasury have been amazed at the remarkable loss of the U.S. Treasury’s power within the U.S. government that took place on January 21, 2001. The Treasury’s staff resources–both quantity and quality–are enormous. Its institutional memory is deep. Its links with its counterparts in other countries are strong. And it is not as though there was anyone in the Bush White House with both significant power and strong views on what economic policy should be. Thus we have been very surprised at the inability of the Bush Treasury to make its mark–either in domestic or in international economic policy.
Brad then offers some explanations — none of which flatter to the Bush White House. Having been at Treasury during the transition, and having ruminated about this question, Brad’s stacking the deck here. Focusing on international economic policy, what’s striking about the second Clinton term is how much of an outlier it looks compared to what took place before and since. This wasn’t only because of the strength of the Treasury team, but also a) the extent to which foreign economic policy impacted national security issues; and b) the relative weakness of Clinton’s national security team. Part of the reason Rubin/Summers were heavyweights was how they looked in comparison to Allbright, Berger et al. In December 2001, David Sanger wrote a lengthy New York Times retrospective on Clinton’s foreign policy in which one State Department official admitted, “The State Department was simply not equipped to handle the new [foreign policy] challenges, so it stuck to the traditional ones.” Fast-forwarding to the Bush team, a spate of stories came out pre-9/11 in which Powell, Rice, and Rumsfeld all said we’re going to take back some slices of the foreign policy pie from Treasury. Combine that with:
a) A Treasury Secretary who had no, repeat, no grasp of the international dimensions of his job — or any grasp of executive branch politics, for that matter; b) A national security team well-versed in the bureaucratic dark arts and with closer personal ties to Bush; and c) 9/11
It’s not that shocking to see Treasury’s relative influence waning.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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