The Problem With Larry Summers

Ezra Klein lays out the case against Larry Summers and why he shouldn't be heading President Obama's economic team. Its really compelling stuff.

The critique of Summers is very consistent, and it's really not about him or his vaunted arrogance. It's his position. Summers runs the National Economic Council, which is the body charged with coordinating the president's economic process. But Summers, for all his brilliance and charm, is not the guy you want running meetings and smoothing disagreements and making people feel included. Summers doesn't facilitate debates. He wins them. He wants to be the guy Obama listens to, not the guy who listens to everyone else, and to a large degree, he is.


Over time, this has led to problems in the White House's economic process: People get left out, the lines of authority aren't always clear, and the guy who's supposed to be worrying about all that stuff is instead trying to get the president over to his side of the argument. This has made the White House economic process an unpleasant place to be, particularly if you're not one of the few who have a truly direct connection to the president.

One things for damn sure, with the economy still teetering back and forth and the bad jobs numbers that came out today, President Obama should be hearing from EVERYBODY on his team. Not just the people Summers thinks he should hear from.

Stepping Up To The Plate

I haven't been much of a fan of George Stephanopolous and his "This Week" show, but today he was in rare form. First he grilled Larry Summers about the cuts in the "compromise" bill soon to be passed by the Senate. The best part was when George grilled Summers over Paul Krugman's article in today's New York Times that criticized the cuts as dropping 600,000 jobs from the stimulus plan. It was amazing watching Summers do his damnest to not side with explicitly agree with Krugman........while implicitly agreeing with Krugman. I know some have questioned if Krugman has done more to help or hurt the cause on the American Recovery and Reinivestment Act because of his constant criticism that it wasn't big enough. I hope that exchange helps to answer that question for good that he has been a much bigger help than hurt.

Then Big George methodically and tactically smacked around Michael "Step N Fetchit" Steele but good over his ridiculous assertation that government doesn't create jobs. On a side note, does this fool not realize that by saying construction jobs and government jobs aren't real jobs he is alienating the blue collar base of this country which historically votes reliably Republican? Yeah, this might be the shortest tenure in RNC chairmanship history.

By some quirk ABC News doesn't provide an embed code for their videos so I had to link them. But if they come up on youtube I will throw them up later.


Update: As promised here is your new RNC Leader Michael Steele making a total ass out of himself.