Geithner And Obama
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Put simply, Obama defends his friends. Ideas are utterly beside the point. If his friends have ideas that are abhorrent, or deeply injurious to his political supporters, or the American people at large, then tough toenails for his supporters and for the American people. ~Paul Rosenberg
As strange as it may sound coming from me, I think this is quite unfair to Obama. It is certainly not true, and it misreads why he is hanging on to Geithner. (By the way, the preoccupation some people on the left have with Obama’s friendship with Rick Warren is almost as bizarre and obsessive as complaints about Obama’s friendship with Rashid Khalidi.) It was typical of Bush to retain his friends and loyalists regardless of the political cost, and this was a habit that was undoubtedly reinforced by the man’s impressive obliviousness to the real world outside his bubble, but this has been the least of Obama’s problems. While it may not be any more flattering than Rosenberg’s assessment, the truth is very different.
Ideas are not beside the point for Obama, but ideas are principally a means to another end, which is Obama’s advancement, so he will use whichever ideas seem to serve that end. This is what his admirers refer to as pragmatism, and which I tend not to find very edifying, but it is how he has been able to rise so quickly. Very plainly, Obama does not protect his friends, but he will promote and defend those whom the establishment embraces and approves. On the contrary, it is his friends, mentors and close associates who seem to be among the most expendable, and they are the ones he tends to drop when they become liabilities. Allies and supporters who continue to be useful are retained. Warren has been useful to Obama because he conveys an impression of moderation and their relationship is supposed to convey Obama’s willingness to engage and understand evangelical Christians. The latter is not real, which is why the connection with Warren is so useful. As I said two and a half years ago:
All of this is supposed to show us that Obama is thoughtful, rather than callous, profound rather than predictable, but it does not. It is the tactic of the man who says, “I appreciate your point of view,” when in fact he does not appreciate it and wants to neutralise your criticism by deflecting the question in an entirely different direction.
Geithner’s presence in the administration represents its acceptance of “centrism” in economics and it is supposed to defend against the charge that the administration is embracing some sort of radical agenda. Above all, Obama keeps Geithner in place because he accepts continuing the collusion between government and the financial sector that Geithner and the decisions he made support. As I wrote in the February issue of Chronicles:
From what we can gather so far, Obama’s Treasury Department is likely to be even more active in intervening in the financial sector. As head of the New York Federal Reserve, Obama’s nominee for treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, endorsed each of Secretary Henry Paulson’s and Chairman Ben Bernanke’s bailout decisions, and Obama himself supported the bailout legislation in the early fall. One of the consequences of the bailout debate in the months since the financial crisis became particularly acute has been that the Democratic Party, already reconciled to financial interests during the Clinton years, has become even more closely allied to Wall Street.
For all of the newfound loathing for Geithner in the country*, he is simply the face of the very same bankrupt establishment, “centrist” forces who oversaw the unfolding of the crisis and crafted the ill-advised, ruinous TARP, which so many people continue to find just as wanting today as we did six months ago. Obama stands by Geithner for two very easily understood reasons: Geithner remains one of the main public faces of the failed establishment that Obama has spent his national career accommodating, and to do anything other than stand by one of his senior Cabinet members this early in his administration would mean political disaster for him. Obama has become trapped by his own accommodationist instincts, as the policies and personnel that the establishment embraces prove to be deeply flawed. Obama does not tend to break with establishment conventions, which significantly limits his ability to break with figures such as Geithner after they have already received the establishment seal of approval.
* It is worth remembering that when Geithner’s name was leaked as the nominee for Treasury, the market rallied amid strangely high hopes that he, the protege of Summers, was Wall Street’s sort of Treasury Secretary. That assessment might very well be right in a narrow sense, but that never meant that he was going to be a good Treasury Secretary. In the last few months, as he has replayed Paulson’s Greatest Hits, not even the markets have much confidence in him. In fairness to Geithner, he still has no confirmed deputies to help him, and many of the deputy posts still lack nominees. The already-labyrinthine vetting process, which has undoubtedly become even more excruciating for the vetted after the embarrassments in January, continues to hold up these basic appointments.
The depressing part of all this is that you’re right. Which means that we are completely screwed as a nation.
Obama has been somewhat proficient in throwing his allies under the bus – Geithner now is increasingly rejected by the same craven establishment which is why Obama’s defense of him is sort of surprising. Geithner brings nothing to the table he is utterly clueless, amazingly incompetent and utterly beholden to the banking establishment. He has completely failed in everything but still gets rewarded with jobs in the IMF and Federal Reserve and now Treasury Secretary.
Obama’s defense of Geithner is baffling precisely because Geithner is no longer considered an asset by Wall Street or Main Street so what does it cost to throw him under the bus? He could pick Summers, who would propose bad solutions but at least look somewhat intelligent and not like a deer in the headlights. And it is not like he lacks talent – He has Volcker locked up somewhere, the only economic advisor who was skeptical of the bailouts and who has some common sense. Vocker is completely establishment but Obama picks the deer in the headlights Geithner and Summers who is one of the guys who is responsible for this mess! This is depressing stuff.
After all your comments about Obama “tossing people under the bus”, actions occasioned when those same people tossed him there then for good measure ran the bus back and forth a few times, I’d say it’s nice to see you showing perspective.
Pledging “Frienemies” makes for a nice sitcom but not much anywhere else.
Congrats on your graduation, and enjoy the pleasant psychological decompression that comes from same.
I wouldn’t mind this analysis if it weren’t so dependent on attributing a purely selfish, even narcissistic motive to all of Obama’s actions. I think it’s clear that Obama has goals he wishes to accomplish, and he obviously has to “use” people to promote himself if he is going to accomplish those goals. Obviously he had to get elected, and he had to use the people who could help him get elected, regardless of whether they were his friend or not. And most of those people were happy to be “used” by him, because they shared his goals. Once elected, he had to turn to the people who he thought could best accomplish those goals in an administration, and those people might not be the same ones who helped him get elected. Is that disloyal? No, it’s pragmatic. Again, most people who supposted him and voted for him, like myself, didn’t expect his administration to be handing out posts as rewards for helping the campaign. That would have been a betrayal of those who elected him to accomplish certain things.
I’m not really sure why you don’t understand this basic fact about politics. Anyone who wants to actually accomplish things must “use” people who can help, and discard those what can’t. It’s not much different than managing a baseball team. One uses one’s roster to get the most out of it, to win the most games, not to reward “loyalty” when performance is inadequate.
With Geitner, I think you simply ignore the reality that Obama supports what Geitner has been doing, not just because Geitner reprents some “centrist” constituency, but because he thinks Geitner has the brains and skills to figure this economic mess out and implement a policy that reverses our problems. He’s patient iwth Geitner, and he doesn’t expect a turnaround overnight, but I think his patience and faith in Geitner’s skills (which clearly don’t include press communication) is slowly being rewarded. The bank plan that got slammed massively by the media over the weekend was met with glee by wall street and a huge rally. There’s a sense in financial circles that what Geitner and Summers have been slowly orchestrating for the last two months isn’t a mess at all, but a carefully thought out set of interacting policies and programs which really will help heal the economy and get us out of this mess. Now, things might not turn out that way, it’s way too soon to tell, but Obama’s “loyalty” to Geitner has nothing to do with “centrism” and everything to do with feeling that Geitner and Summers are on the right track, and we just need to be patient with what they’ve worked out, and are continuing to work out.
Needless to say, if Geitner and Summers and Obama do in fact lead the country out of this mess, and the economy recovers as they say it will, there’s going to be a lot of red faces out there, including your own. Even worse, as Rush Limbaugh says, it will effectively be the end of the Republican party. What rationale would they have any more, having bet their entire future on Obama, Geitner, and Summers failing abysmally? What possible rationale will any of these folks have to run against Obama on? Vote for me, I was wrong about everything so far, so chances are I’ll eventually be right?
Really, Republicans have a lot to be afraid of. Either the economy continues to tank, in which case they are screwed like everyone else because the economy is in the tank and they have no idea what to do about it, or the economy recovers, and they are screwed because the economy has recovered, and they are utterly irrelevant on every level.