Gary Cohn didn't get much done. But it could be worse - and it probably will.
By Megan McArdle March 6 at 7:52 PM
There was never much danger that Gary Cohn was going to dethrone Alexander Hamilton from the position of “most revered presidential economic adviser.” When he was, for a time, up for the job of chairing the Federal Reserve, Bloomberg Businessweek said that would have been like “a bulldog guiding an institution of eggheads,” and that, as well as anything, gives you a sense of Cohn’s personality.
Before he came to Washington, Cohn was a Goldman Sachs trader who rose through the ranks to become president of that august financial institution, and his manner reflected that background: blunt, glib, more than a little arrogant. His most notable policy achievement was helping to craft a Republican tax bill that made some genuinely salutary attacks on entrenched tax preferences such as the deductibility of state and local taxes and the mortgage-interest tax exclusion, but paired those laudable reforms with massive cuts to corporate and personal tax rates that the bill’s authors didn’t bother to pay for. His most famous moment for the public was probably the time he claimed that the tax bill would spur corporate investment, only to be refuted by a roomful of CEOs.
How many wonks wept to hear that he had resigned from the administration? Well, maybe a few more than you might think. Cohn was a bit of an odd duck as a presidential adviser, and it’s hard to call him visionary. But in this very odd administration, he could also be a voice for good policy, particularly on trade.
When a presidential adviser leaves, it’s not enough to weigh their failures and successes and tot up the balance. You also have to ask whether someone else could have done better. If Cohn has not had a lot of notable policy achievements, that is in part because the Trump administration has been too understaffed and unfocused to get much done; its signature legislative achievement was a tax bill that was basically a wishlist from congressional Republicans, and therefore required relatively little legislative acumen from the White House, either in crafting its details or whipping up votes.
Cohn could have been the reincarnation of Milton Friedman, under an overlay of Machiavelli, and he probably still couldn’t have made much more impact than he did. So it’s hard to fault him for not having more substantial achievements attached to his name. Looking at the fate of so many other high-level administration figures, it seems possible, even likely, that it could have been much worse. And even more likely that it will be, when President Trump moves to replace him.
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