“John W. Snow, the railroad executive President Bush has chosen to be his next secretary of the Treasury, is a pragmatic business executive who once campaigned vociferously to place top priority on balancing the budget rather than on cutting taxes,” writes Edmund Andrews in today’s New York Times.

” ‘The budget deficit puts a hole in the pocket of every American, every day of their lives,’ Mr. Snow declared in 1995, when he was chairman of the Business Roundtable and when the budget deficit was about the same size as it is now.”

“But today, as he stood alongside President Bush at the White House, Mr. Snow made it clear that his views are now closer to the supply-side, tax-cutting philosophy that is at the center of the administration’s economic policy.”

“He and Mr. Bush both alluded to the need for promoting faster growth and more job creation, which for Mr. Bush means more tax cuts for businesses and individuals even if the deficit widens in the short term.”

“In picking Mr. Snow as his chief salesman on economic policy, Mr. Bush settled on a middle-of-the-road Republican whose greatest strengths are not his ideological fervor but rather his skills as a manager and a communicator, his credibility in the business world and his familiarity with Washington. But in making the selection, Mr. Bush may have introduced potential tensions within his economic team over the size and scope of future tax cuts.”

“Many supply-side Republicans said they welcomed the choice of Mr. Snow, saying he is an effective political player who knows how to promote Mr. Bush’s agenda even if he is less than passionate about tax cuts.”

” ‘I don’t want to say that John Snow is a follower of Jack Kemp’s precise philosophy,’ Jack Kemp, a former cabinet secretary and an ardent advocate of tax cuts, said today. ‘I am saying that he is an outstanding choice, and he wants to do what Bush wants to do.’ “

“But if the welcome for Mr. Snow seemed guarded among supply-side Republicans, many expressed alarm at the man Mr. Bush is expected to nominate as his economic adviser at the White House, Stephen Friedman, a former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs. In the past, Mr. Friedman has identified himself as an opponent of deficits, and therefore he is highly suspect to advocates of tax cuts.”