According to Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of the Lincoln biography ‘A Team of Rivals’ and apparently Obama’s muse the colorful Lyndon Johnson said of rival cabinet members that it’s better to have them inside the tent pissing out, than to have them outside the tent pissing in.
Obama has said he’d like to follow this advice and choose people with various viewpoints to challenge each other to come up with the best solutions to the nation’s problems. The problem is so far it seems like most of his appointees are a team of ex-Clintonites inside the tent, pissing this way and that.
The economic team assembled is the clearest example of this. Obama chose Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary and Summers as economic coordinator. Being ex-Clintonites is not an automatic black mark but Tim Geithner and the oh-so-tactful Lawrence Summers are disciples of Robert Rubin. Robert Rubin was the Treasury secretary under Clinton and is the current Citigroup bigwig who got Citi in its current mess. Both Summers and Geithner were raised in the ways of extreme deregulation and banks too big to fail at Rubin’s knee. Is this a rivalry? Or is this is a collusion of Rubin/Citigroup figures teaming up to give their team (Citi) a very expensive (to tax payers) ‘get out of jail free’ card?
But hey, let me upend what I just wrote by adding that Nobel laureate Paul Krugman seems impressed by the Obama econ team. What I’ve read from his blog doesn’t say how much he agrees or disagrees with their policy stances, but he does seem happy thatthe grown ups are coming. I’m sure a renown economist with or without a Nobel prize under his belt knows better than me so I’m going to be happy along with Paul.
