Columnist David Broder: Treasury's Rubin will be missed

THE ASSUMPTION in Washington about the future of Robert Rubin -- and before you pick up the phone to call your broker, let me emphasize it is no more than an assumption -- is that the Treasury secretary will pick a quiet moment some time later this year to resign from his position as the guiding light of administration economic policy.

The reason people think this is that Rubin wants to give his loyal associate, Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, a crack at the top job -- without his having to sweat out the uncertainties of the next presidential election. It is characteristic of Rubin that folks believe he might be motivated by such a generous impulse. The Treasury boss is that Washington rarity -- an official of enormous talent who thinks more of others than of his own ego needs.

It probably helps that Rubin was a certified success before he became chairman of the White House National Economic Council at the start of the Clinton administration, moving on to Treasury in 1995. As the managing partner of Goldman Sachs, the New York investment firm, he had already established his financial acumen.

What was not known, at least to reporters, was that he would help produce a record of economic growth unrivaled in this century and combine it with a personal modesty almost unknown in a Treasury secretary.

This, after all, is the king-sized office occupied in the past three decades by such huge egos as Donald Regan, William Simon and John Connally -- to say nothing of such historical characters as Henry Morgenthau Jr., Andrew Mellon and Alexander Hamilton.

By contrast, Rubin's sense of self-importance has remained as slim as his waistline, even as his reputation and influence have grown. The qualities that endear him even to reporters like me who can barely fathom a balance sheet, let alone decipher the roots of the Asian economic crisis, were on display at a press breakfast last week.

Godfrey Sperling Jr. of the Christian Science Monitor, the host, asked Rubin, "How long can this wonderful prosperity last?"

"It will go on," Rubin replied with a smile, "until it ends."

Not one to be put off, Sperling said, "There's nobody better to answer that question than you."

"And nobody less likely to try," Rubin said.

Then, turning serious, he added, "This prosperity is the result of people in the private sector and the public sector doing the right things. As long as they continue, it can last."

Earlier in the session, Rubin had answered another Sperling question about the roots of the nation's remarkable economic performance. Disdaining normal White House "spin," he did not say it all began the day the Clinton administration took office. Rather, he said, "you have to go back 15 years to the remarkable job the private sector did in adapting to the new international economy."

But public policy, he added, with equal accuracy, was "indispensable," starting with the Clinton decision in 1993 to put fiscal discipline ahead of the middle-class tax cut he had promised in the campaign and attack the budget deficit -- a decision (Rubin did not mention) that was strongly urged by Rubin and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan.

Rubin also credited Clinton for the courage to "bail out" Mexico in the face of adverse congressional and public opinion.

And, he said, "it was also important what we did not do," such as bash Greenspan for raising interest rates or endorse proposals urged by many congressional Democrats for subsidies of favored technologies.

Also important, Rubin said, was the administration's successful fight against the balanced-budget constitutional amendment. He did not mention his personal role in that battle, but if there is one thing above all others for which he deserves credit, this is it.

Following the 1996 election, which strengthened the GOP hold on the Senate, Clinton wobbled on the balanced-budget amendment, telling a press conference: "I don't believe we need it ... but we'll find a way to deal with the amendment," if, as many were predicting, it passes.

The very next day, Rubin reiterated the administration's adamant opposition, reinserting Clinton's missing backbone. When the fight was raging, he told another Sperling breakfast that "the histories of our era" will record in bold type whether those in office allowed that simplistic, straitjacket measure to enter the permanent charter of government.

Last week, he commented happily that the mischievous amendment, which came so close to passing, "now seems to be forgotten." Whenever he steps down, Rubin's contributions will be remembered.

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