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September 25, 2008
Hey, Mr. Paulson! What does this mean to me?
Poor Henry Paulson. Our Treasury Secretary is trying to bail out the banks and save the economy with a $700 billion package, and members of Congress keep asking him pesky questions.
Like: “How will this work?” And: “What will it really cost?” And, perhaps most annoying of all: “What does this mean to me (or, more specifically, my constituents)?”
As a former CEO (ironically enough, of Goldman Sachs) Mr. Paulson is used to being the smartest guy in the room. And he’s also accustomed to setting the agenda, laying out the plan, calling the shots.
So it’s no wonder that he seems downright annoyed that he has to deal with senators and members of Congress who are not focused on the big picture, but are taking the hometown view. Fueled by thousands of messages from constituents (Senator Barbara Boxer of California alone has received nearly 17,000 e-mail messages), elected representatives are persistently asking what the proposed bailout means to their districts, and to the people in them.
In response, Mr. Paulson has finally started focusing on average Americans. On Tuesday, he told a Senate banking committee that if the plan isn’t passed, “people aren’t going to get the loans they need, small businesses aren’t going to get the capital they need, farmers aren’t going to get the loans they need.”
Still, one gets the feeling that, like many well-paid and cosseted CEOs (although he’s a public servant now, his net worth has been estimated at $700 million), Mr. Paulson doesn’t quite relate to the average American. He certainly doesn’t communicate like a guy has spent a lot of time on Main Street, driving a Chevy, eating at Applebee’s.
According to a Wall Street Journal article, Mr. Paulson is “angry at having to make the sale” to a reluctant Congress. But once he gets past his anger, maybe he’ll realize that the most important question to answer when communicating change is: “What does this mean to me?”
Posted by Alison Davis at September 25, 2008 12:32 PM