Grover Norquist is an anti-tax evangelist whose special interest group, Americans for Tax Reform, has all but captured the tax and revenue policyapparatus of the Republican Party.
Worse, for Mr Paulson, a brain drain at lower levels in the Treasury leaves the secretary without the sort of deep technocratic policyapparatus that Mr Rubin once enjoyed.
All of this political sniping from both sides is small compared to the powerful fact of the president putting black people at the top of the administration's foreign policyapparatus.