Can Summers Play Second Fiddle?
By Nick Ragone | Related entries in News
On the whole, I like President-Elect Obama’s economic team. I think Tim Geithner is a solid choice at Treasury, mostly because he’s been knee deep in the bailout stuff and can jump right into the scrum. He seems to have the confidence of Wall Street and will require little on-the-job training.
And there’s no doubt that Larry Summers is a brilliant man, too, and as such he’ll be useful to have inside the White House as the primary economic advisor.
But we have to ask: Can Summers really play second fiddle? I mean, here’s a guy with a massive ego, prickly personality, and more enemies than Terrell Owens. He made no secret of his desire to be Treasury Secretary, a position he previously held in the Clinton administration, and many see this role as a step down from that.
Clearly he wanted back in the game, or he wouldn’t have taken the job. But for how long will Summers be a team player? Is it possible for him to subordinate to Tim Geithner? President-Elect Obama prides himself on the “no drama, Obama” approach, but with Larry Summers he just invited drama into the west wing.
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November 25th, 2008 at 12:40 am
This may be technically irrelevant to Larry Summers but I feel it should always be relevant at this time of year. May it escape the editor’s wrath.
LET US GIVE THANKS FOR OUR BLESSINGS
THANKSGIVING EXPOSED PART TWO–GIVING THANKS
It’s easy for conservative Americans to feel deep in the dumps this November considering what happened on the fourth day of this month. We still have a great deal for which to be thankful this Thanksgiving.
All is far from lost, even if McCain/Palin did. One thing we should keep in mind is that John McCain was no conservative, except for his pro-life position. Obama’s victory therefore did not represent a victory over conservative principles but rather over a wishy-washy Republican moderate, and we can take heart and be thankful for that.
Also, aside from the grievous national harm which will result from a pro-abortion president in the White House, Obama cannot, at least initially, govern as the extreme liberal that he is in a nation which is still moderate-conservative according to exit polls.
Post Election Day, 2010, if he solidifies his congressional majorities, America may start to witness the changes he promised, changes which will shake us to our national core but, temporarily, we are relatively safe. Should he attempt to “do-a-Clinton” over the next two years, Republicans will have another great shot at taking back the congress in 2010 just as we took it in 1994. We should give a muted thanks for that possibility.
Newt, where are you when we need you?
It’s important, too, to understand that Obama paid dearly and literally for every vote he received. Reneging on his pledge to accept public financing proved to be his most brilliant move, brilliant but scurrilous and demonstrating his lack of honesty and good character.
He ended up spending almost as much money on media alone ($340 million) than McCain raised ($360 million): http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/expend.php?cycle=2008&cid=n00009638, http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/index.php?cycle=2008.
We can be thankful that Obama didn’t win the election as much as he bought the election.
Furthermore, he remains the stealth president-elect who will take office as an unknown quantity thanks to a media which felt collective tingles up their corporate legs and thereby allowed him to wage an extended primary battle followed by two months in the general campaign sans vetting and sans probing questions.
Of course, he had his legions of the faithful, including virtually every black in the country who would have voted for him if he espoused that they all be drawn and quartered on Inauguration Day, and his other faithful contingent who were taken in by this charlatan with a messianic complex.
Add to that blind group the disenchanted naysayers who opposed the war, who hated Bush and Cheney, who are suffering in our blighted economy, and those who simply voted against the status quo and, Voila! the nation was punished with Obama.
There’s a silver lining even in that cloud, namely that America did not knowingly choose as president an arch-liberal over a moderate since they knew not what they did nor for whom they were voting and that, to me, is a pyrrhic victory for which we should all give thanks.
For those who feel all or most of the above is a stretch, a Pollyannish, fantasy analysis of Election 2008 or an exercise in spinning a dash of sugar into a bunch of sour grapes, try these on for size as further reasons to be thankful:
OTHER THINGS TO BE THANKFUL FOR
Thanks to George Bush’s and General Petraeus’ “surge” in Iraq, we are finally winning that sector of the war against terrorism and winning the hard-fought battle for the hearts and minds of Iraqis;
We have not had to endure another 9/11 for over seven years;
Love him or despise him, on January 20th, 2008, Obama will receive the torch to lead, and change for better or worse, this nation after a (somewhat) spirited campaign on both sides and he will do so in accordance with our Constitution and without a violent upheaval that would be the norm in many countries;
We are still the most powerful nation on the face of the Earth despite Europe’s undisguised wishful thinking that our day is past;
Hillary lost;
If you have a roof over your head, food in your stomach, clothes on your back, and since you obviously can look down at the grass rather than up toward it, be thankful for that;
Finally, we should give an appreciative thanks to God for allowing us to live in the greatest nation on the planet.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING DAY TO ALL! MAY GOD CONTINUE TO BLESS US!
(http://genelalor.com/)
November 25th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
With the Treasury Secretary on his spending spree he surely isn’t trying to get a good return on the tax payers’ investment. The bailout was to buy up bad mortgage debt but it never did. What is the purpose of the fund? Paulson’s has warrants on many banks and they average 1 – 3 percent when enacted. Yet the cash investment is about 20 percent of the market cap. Maybe the next Treasury Secretary will be less erratic.
http://nomedals.blogspot.com