Cox looks like right pick for SEC in new era.

HERE'S what executives and other businesspeople are thinking but not necessarily saying about Christopher Cox's nomination to head the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Cox stands to usher in a transition at the commission, away from the tough regulation of the Enron era to a less confrontational relationship with Corporate America.

No doubt, Cox will enforce Sarbanes-Oxley and other stiff rules resulting from the corporate wrongdoing of the past few years. But the over-tiding tone of Cox's political career has been a promotion of free enterprise, not heavy-handed regulation. And that seems like the right approach as companies grapple with a minefield of Enron-inspired rules and procedures.

Still, we suspect Cox will surprise some people as Wall Street's top cop. Cox has the demeanor and breeding of a Wall Street banker, but his sympathies have been with the Main Street businessman and tech entrepreneur. Big corporations are likely to find him less pliant or gullible than the typical Republican, or many Democrat, politicians.

Cox won't favor measures that make it easier for trial lawyers to ply their trade, but he is likely to support the sort of public accountability that helps to inform and protect investors.

In fact, this could be a breakthrough for Cox, a cautious sort whose pattern as a congressional leader has been to achieve bipartisan consensus for incremental gains. No longer needing a couple of hundred lawmakers to go along with him, Cox could use his administrative powers in creative and productive ways.

There will be critics. Some (think Barbara Boxer) will say he could be too soft on public companies. But the chances of nomination being derailed are slim. As one observer put it, Cox is "user-friendly."

--Michael Lyster, Rick Reiff

'I Trust Him'

IN' terms of intelligence and integrity, I don't think George W. Bush could do better.

I've known Chris Cox for (gulp) 30 years. We were classmates that long ago. We served together on the Harvard Law Review. We have kept in touch, across the aisle, since I moved to California 16 years ago.

What makes this case easy is that Chris has strong ideological views, but he puts reality ahead of ideology and people ahead of intellectual purity, and he always has.

I don't know any senator who could best him in a conversation on business, although Chris is extremely polite and not inclined to show off for the sake of showing up.

That goes a long way these days, too. Manners.

There are legitimate worries that with Chris at the helm, investors will be unprotected against corporate abuses and management tyranny, because Chris adheres to a less regulatory, lower tax, classic conservative, free enterprise model, the kind that allows good businesses to flourish and bad ones to get away with murder.

In Congress, he has fought for bills calling for fewer lawsuits--which, of course, means the trial lawyers will oppose him. In a post-Enron world where even his predecessor has been outdone by state attorneys general the idea that he will be less aggressive than his predecessor will cause groups concerned with protecting shareholders rightly to raise an alarm.

I understand that. I'm a shareholder who is frankly appalled at the lack of democracy in corporate America. But I don't need to oppose Chris Cox. I trust him. The difference between very, very smart people and mediocre ones is that the mediocre end up hiding behind their ideology, while the very, very smart ones end up determined to get it right, whatever it is.

I can't see Chris Cox letting anyone else take the lead if he sees real corruption out them, not the Chris Cox I know, not if he sees something really wrong.