John Taylor's woes.

• Position: Off The News - U.S. Undersecretary of the Treasury for International Affairs John Taylor

It is hardly a secret that U.S. Undersecretary of the Treasury for International Affairs John Taylor has been under fire since taking office at the beginning of the Bush Administration. The Wall Street Journal in particular issued a blistering critique of Taylor's easygoing style and relatively hands-off approach to policy.

In recent months, however, Taylor's Treasury defenders have begun what amounts to a kind of low-key counter-attack. There is no dispute, they say, that the Treasury undersecretary, the inventor of the "Taylor Rule" in monetary policy, is a world-class macroeconomic theorist who managed to overcome many bureaucratic hurdles in the academic world. So why has he been so slow-footed in negotiating the hurdles of public policy?

His defenders offer two observations: First, to a certain extent, Taylor coming into office found him self in a no-win turf battle. His predecessors, top Clinton Treasury chiefs Robert Rubin and Larry Sumers, had demonstrated extraordinary skill at grabbing bureaucratic turf. For decades, both the State Department and the White House had some say in international economic affairs. Not so during the...