(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- If you want to understand U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, you have to know why he sometimes avoids Pebble Beach. The spot on the North Lawn of the White House has nothing to do with the luxurious golf resort in California or, for that matter, President Donald Trump’s favorite weekend sport. The last few administrations have relegated the 24-hour media scrum here, a once-graveled-now-paved space that still invites plenty of mudslinging. Indeed, more than a few of Trump’s advisers have strolled onto Pebble Beach to go live with their frustrations about working in an infamously adversarial White House—and found themselves in quagmires.
But not Mnuchin, who takes a 200-foot jaunt through the west side of the Treasury Department, past a replica of the Liberty Bell, to reach the White House for private talks with his boss. That’s one way he’s managed so far to stay in the good graces of a president who values loyalty above all—and rates his advisers on their media performances. The strategy of selective silence, keeping any hint of disagreement with Trump out of the press, has also become Mnuchin’s way of remaining faithful to the economic agenda he helped craft—one that’s sometimes put him at odds with others in the White House—and preserving his credibility with financial markets. For now it’s kept Mnuchin, 55, employed in an administration that’s seen, according to the Brookings Institution, 22 high-level officials resign or be forced out since Trump took office. One, Anthony Scaramucci, was cashiered after just 10 days.
Despite Mnuchin’s Wall Street pedigree, Washington insiders and the New York finance elite doubted the political neophyte would last. Yet 18 months after his appointment, Mnuchin has proved them wrong—outlasting even Gary Cohn, the storied Goldman Sachs president who resigned as Trump’s chief economic adviser after just a year. Now the Treasury secretary remains a voice of prudence, if not reason, amid the turbulence stirred up by his volatile master. Not that he complains about it. “Sometimes he’ll agree with me, and sometimes he won’t agree with me,” Mnuchin says, dutifully sticking to script. “He’s the president of the United States. And he got here because he understands lots of issues.”
