It's Summers Time

By all indications, it looks like Tim Geithner is still going to be Barack Obama's Treasury secretary. But with his confirmation hearing delayed until after Obama's inauguration because of a pesky tax problem, that means the new president won't have his chosen economic point man in place on day one.

Well, it's a good thing there's someone else in Obama's economic camp who A) knows a little bit about Washington, B) is an expert in the nation's finances, and C) is not press shy. Larry Summers (who held the job Geithner is up for during the end of Bill Clinton's White House years) will be heading up Obama's National Economic Council and has "emerged as Obama's ubiquitous economic point man," according to a story today on Politico.com.

Recently, it was Summers who went to Capitol Hill to talk with lawmakers about Obama's request for another stimulus package. Summers also hosted a conference call with top CEOs and business trade groups. And on Monday, he and Jason Furman, another Obama economic aide, spoke with the executive council of the AFL-CIO. Geithner wasn't part of any of those meetings as he was keeping with the tradition of presidential cabinet picks to wait until their confirmation hearings before they start speaking about issues in their portfolios.

Politico points out something just about everyone in Washington and on Wall Street know full well--Summers loves the spotlight. And it rightly asks whether Summers and Geithner can co-exist effectively.

"The hard-charging Summers, 54, is unlikely to take a subservient role to a man who once worked for him. Obama officials acknowledge that Summers has been out front, but contend that his role is perfectly logical," the Politico story said.

Back in September, when Summers was an adviser to the Obama campaign, he spoke with Portfolio.com's Lloyd Grove and reflected on the differences between Washington and academia. Summers had been a professor at Harvard before he worked for Bill Clinton, and returned to Harvard as president--a job he was forced to leave because of a flap over comments he made about women and science.

"I think we all become wiser as we age, and I think I learned a lot in Washington. And certainly I'm sure I learned a lot during my five years as president of Harvard," he said. "At the same time, I'm somebody who wants their errors to be of trying to do too much rather than trying to do too little, trying to make as large and as constructive a difference as I can. That's a perspective that I bring to whatever I try to do."

by J. Jennings Moss