Russell Roberts interviewed Gregory Mankiw, former Chair of the Bush Administration Council of Economic Advisors (CEA): here's a link An Interview with N. Gregory Mankiw: Library of Economics and Liberty.
Russell and Mankiw cover a lot of ground - here are some of the bits on the organization of economic policy making in this administration.
How is economic policy decision-making organized in the Bush White House:
If you've watched the TV show the "West Wing" you get the sense that all important decisions are made as you're walking from one meeting to another. The truth of it is that the White House has a very structured policy apparatus where staff meets and discusses issues and they report to their principals and then the principals meet and discuss issues. I was the principal for the Council of Economic Advisers. I would meet with John Snow, Secretary of Treasury and Steve Friedman, head of National Economic Council and the other economic principal, Josh Bolton of the Office of Management and Budget. We would discuss the issues and try to reach a consensus or at least sketch out the list of options. Then we'd have meetings with the President. We'd say "Mr. President, we have this consensus recommendation." Or, "we don't have a consensus recommendation, here are the options and the pros and cons as we see them and here are our personal opinions." Ultimately, the President would make the call. So getting to participate in those discussions and see how the process worked and see how the economic and non-economic issues came into play was truly fascinating.
Friedman, as the head of the National Economic Council, would be responsible for coordinating this process. The NEC was set up at the start of the Clinton Administration to perform a coordinating function: acting as an honest broker among different interests and perspectives within the administration, and making sure the President was presented with a full suite of options. Mankiw's description sounds like an idealized version of the process; I imagine that in practice it runs a lot rougher, and that there is a lot of maneuvering to circumvent the process.
How does the President approach economic issues?
I think he's got a great intuition for economics—he doesn't think like an economist in the sense of thinking in terms of equations and graphs. He was an undergraduate history major and that's a pretty good description of how he thinks about things. He thinks about things more intuitively, more verbally. But he also has an MBA and so he thinks about things very much from the standpoint of what institutional framework is going to allow businesses to flourish and allow markets to work.
Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill provides a very different picture of the process in his memoir The Price of Loyalty.
The Chair of the CEA is acts as a conduit for economic information and analysis to the president. He's not the coordinator, and not the public face of the administration. At one point, Mankiw made some controversial remarks about trade...
Roberts: Did you get any internal political heat in that fight?
Mankiw: None. Obviously, it's not the job of an economic advisor to make headlines and I deeply regret that...
See also Mankiw's interview with Peronet Despeignes in Fortune: "Economist Greg Mankiw Sounds Off on Karl Rove, Paul Krugman, and More".
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