Too Big to Fail [24]
He agonized for months before making his decision. As far as he was concerned, he already had the best job in the world: CEO of Goldman Sachs, the most revered institution on Wall Street. As its chief executive, Paulson traveled around the world, focusing much of his attention on China, where he had become something of an unofficial U.S. Ambassador of Capitalism, arguably forging deeper relationships with Chinese leaders than had anyone in Washington, including the secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.
Joshua Bolten, President Bush’s new chief of staff, was pushing especially hard for Paulson to come on board. He had convinced the president that Paulson’s close ties in China could be a huge plus, given the rapid and geopolitically significant rise of the Chinese economy. Professionally, Bolten knew Paulson well. A former Goldman Sachs insider himself, he had worked for the firm as a lobbyist in London in the 1990s and served briefly as the chief of staff to Jon Corzine, when he headed the firm.
But Bolten wasn’t making any headway with Paulson—or the Paulson family, for that matter. It didn’t help that Paulson’s wife, Wendy, could not stand the president’s politics, even though her husband had been a “pioneer” for Bush in 2004—a designation given to those who raised more than $100,000 for the president’s reelection campaign. His mother, Marianna, was so aghast at the idea that she cried. Paulson’s son, a National Basketball Association executive, and daughter, a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor, were also initially against his making the move.
Another key doubter was Paulson’s mentor, John Whitehead. A former Goldman chairman and a father figure to many at the bank who had served in the State Department under Reagan, Whitehead thought it would be a big mistake. “This is a failed administration,” he insisted. “You’ll have a hard time getting anything accomplished.”
In an interview in April, Paulson was still dismissing talk that he was a candidate for Treasury secretary, telling the Wall Street Journal, “I love my job. I actually think I’ve got the best job in the business world. I plan to be here for a good while.”
Meanwhile, Bolten kept pushing. Toward the end of April, Paulson accepted an invitation to meet with the president. But Goldman’s chief of staff, John F. W. Rogers, who had served under James Baker in both the Reagan and GHW Bush administrations, urged him not to attend the meeting unless he was going to accept the position. “You do not go to explore jobs with the president,” he told Paulson. Rogers’s point was impossible to dispute, so Paulson awkwardly called to send his regrets.
Paulson and his wife, however, did attend a luncheon at the White House that month for President Hu Jintao of China. After the meal they took a stroll in the capital, and as they walked past the Treasury Building, Wendy turned to him.
“I hope you didn’t turn it down because of me,” she said. “Because if you really wanted to do it, it’s okay with me.”
“No, that’s not why I turned it down.”
Despite his reluctance, others believed Paulson’s decision was not quite final, and Rogers, for one, thought his boss secretly did want the job. On the first Sunday afternoon of May, he found himself fretting in his home in Georgetown, wondering whether he had given Paulson bad advice. He finally picked up the phone and called