With a hat tip to Ramesh Ponnuru, Noam Scheiber has this up at the New Republic Online.
Sunday's New York Times included a truly fascinating Landon Thomas Jr. profile of Stephen Schwarzman, the (almost) billionaire private-equity fund manager who's making a name for himself in national Republican circles. Thomas says the word in New York and Washington is that Schwarzman wants to be Treasury secretary--he's even hired Washington macher Ken Duberstein to help him navigate the fundraising-society complex from whence cabinet secretaries tend to spring. But, despite the fact that Schwarzman apparently donated several thousand dollars to the Bush re-election effort (and raised much more than that), that he and Bush were dorm-mates at Yale, and that he was recently installed as chairman of the Kennedy Center, I have a tough time believing Schwarzman will realize his dream. Why? Because he apparently hasn't figured out that modesty and circumspection are two of the three most important virtues in Bush-world (the third being loyalty).What could Schwarzman have done differently had he wanted to help his cause? Well, not cooperating with Thomas would have been a good place to start. But if Schwarzman felt compelled to open his yap, he'd have been well advised to stick to platitudes like "Helping re-elect George W. Bush is reward enough for me." Instead, the piece reads like a how-not-to manual for aspiring cabinet secretaries. Schwarzman can't contain his glee over the turnout for a party he threw earlier this fall ("[Did you see Lesley Stahl? ... Mike Bloomberg was also there--he came early") or the congratulatory cake Laura Bush gave him after he landed the Kennedy Center gig ("It was two feet by a foot and a half ... There was a black chocolate background, with the stage done in sorbet, the orchestra in peaches and the audience individual raspberries"). And he doesn't seem to understand that paying your would-be boss a back-handed compliment is a less than reliable way of hoisting yourself onto the fast-track. ("It's a personal connection," he told Thomas, recalling his relationship with Bush. "I was fascinated about how that transition occurs with someone who was not achievement-oriented. He could have ended up like most guys from a privileged background.") The piece de resistance is a joke Schwarzman cracks about his chances of becoming Treasury secretary: "I'm being announced tomorrow," he tells Thomas. Right. This guy makes Paul O'Neill look silver-tongued.