Who's Who.

Republicans are starting to whisper that Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill might be on the way out in another year or so, perhaps to be replaced by Larry Lindsey, currently chairman of the National Economic Council. O'Neill has publicly expressed doubt that big tax cuts will stimulate the economy and forestall a recession. Lindsey, on the other hand, is an abiding believer in the gospel of supply-side economics.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been known as a ruthlessly skilled bureaucrat since the Gerald Ford administration, when he killed off one of Henry Kissinger's arms control treaties. But his management style seems to be rubbing people the wrong way these days. It was widely noted in the Pentagon, for instance, that when a Navy submarine commanded by Scott Waddle inadvertently sank a Japanese fishing vessel in February, Rumsfeld didn't go before the press to accept the tough questioning. When the White House and Capitol Hill reacted angrily to a Pentagon order halting all military-to-military contact with the Chinese, Rumsfeld again skirted blame and claimed his orders had been misinterpreted by Christopher Williams, the aide who wrote the memo.

His most damaging subterfuge has been keeping Congress uninformed about the progress of his "top-to-bottom" Pentagon strategy review. Senate Republicans, including Majority Leader Trent Lott, have shown their anger by stalling the confirmation of some of Rumsfeld's proposed aides.

It looks like former Congressman James Rogan, a House impeachment manager whom the DNC successfully targeted for defeat last year, has made a savvy career move. Rogan had been thinking of running for the seat that was expected to be vacated by his fellow California Republican, Rep. Christopher Cox, who was expecting to be nominated to the federal court of appeals. But Rogan foresaw that Cox's nomination would run into trouble because of fierce opposition from California's two Democratic Senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer. And indeed Cox's name was conspicuously absent from the list of 10 court nominees the White House announced in mid-May.

So instead Rogan has accepted an invitation by the Bush Administration to be Commerce Department undersecretary for patents and trademarks. It's a big job because the regulation of intellectual property is increasingly vital to high-growth sectors of the economy such as the biotechnology industry (see "Gene Blues" by Nicholas Thompson in our April 2001 issue). Also, a couple of years in that position and Rogan will be able to write his ticket on K Street.

Big time national Democrats have long understood that they don't have to spend time courting local Democratic leaders in the District of Columbia. District voters almost automatically support Democrats for president, and D.C. residents don't have voting representation in Congress. Why, then, was newly elected Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe eager to show up as the keynote speaker at the D.C. Democratic State Committee's recent Kennedys-King awards dinner? Two probable reasons. First, the DNC just launched its new Voting Rights Institute in the wake of the Florida election debacle, and D.C. makes a good launch platform for talking about disenfranchised voters. Second, D.C.'s local Democratic establishment may have new clout thanks to Al Gore's former campaign manager, Donna Brazile, whom the committee named "outstanding Democrat" of the year and who is contemplating a run for the D.C. city council.

Bill Clinton's White House operated on the theory that one of the best ways to forward the administration's agenda was for the president to speak publicly about big news events--from school shootings to rising fuel prices. The Bush White House, in contrast, prides itself on sticking to its planned message and not reacting to the news. The result, apparently, is less harried lives for Bush speechwriters. Last March, during the week the Dow plunged below 10,000, senior economic speechwriter David Frum was attending a three-day conference at the Bacara Spa and Resort in Santa Barbara, CA, sponsored by Talk magazine and UBS Paine Webber. As the market crashed, Frum was seen walking the lobby in tennis whites with fellow attendees such as Barbara Streisand and Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein.

Seemingly completely tone-deaf to pop culture, George W. Bush has finally captured the public's imagination by organizing T-ball games for kids on the White House's south lawn. Major Garrett of CNN offered us an intriguing answer to why the events work so well. While "soccer moms" defined the Clinton era, "baseball dads" define the Bush era. Soccer is international; baseball is quintessentially American, though it includes Latin America--the W. world view. Soccer moms were all about work and family, the gender gap and the way we live now. Baseball dads are about nostalgia and getting back to the way we used to live. Soccer is chaotic and team oriented; every kid touches the ball. Baseball is individualistic, disciplined, leisurely, manly without being macho, a sport, unlike football, that is male but doesn't alienate women.

The key to passing any education bill in the Senate is winning the support of Sen. Ted Kennedy. The man credited with persuading Kennedy to back the Bush education plan is White House education adviser Sandy Kress. Part of the key to Kress' success, according to Dana Milbank of The Washington Post, is that he is a longstanding Democrat who still contributes to the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. It should be added that the blueprint of Bush's plan was a paper written in 1999 by another DLC member, Andrew Rotherham. Rotherham later became Bill Clinton's special assistant for education before returning to the Progressive Policy Institute, the DLC's think tank, and Sen. Joe Lieberman turned Rotherham's idea--fewer federal regulations in return for more accountability and money--into a bill. Kennedy, however, fought the bill, because it was opposed by liberal interest groups such as the teachers unions. Vice President Al Gore also shied away from adopting the plan, despite urgings from Lieberman. Bush then made the plan his own and ran on it. Here's the irony: Had Kennedy supported the plan two years ago the way he is now, George Bush might not be president.