A belated comment about some recent good news, and that reminds me, this counts as my good news post of the week, as it truly is good news that Larry Summers won't be rewarded for helping destroy the economy by getting to run the Fed. This is good news on a number of levels It's the first time in recent history that someone like Summers has been taken to task for incompetence; the usual pattern is that these guys keep falling up; in Washington, nothing succeeds like failure. The other piece of good news is that this truly historical event was engineered by liberals, who have finally signaled that they have had enough. It's about time the left (such as it is in the Congress) took a lesson from the right.
So that's the good news, but here's what interested me. I read stories about Summers' withdrawal in both the Globe and the Times on Monday morning. The Globe's article was fairly straightforward, but the article in the Times appeared to have been ghostwritten by Summers and his flaks, loaded as it was with quotes from people close to Summers who refused to be identified. This has been a pattern, much noted elsewhere, throughout Summers' campaign for the job. What I took away from the article is that Summers truly is a nasty man, for when it became clear that he could not get the votes, he decided to turn on Obama and accuse him of weakness.
WASHINGTON — For Lawrence H. Summers, President Obama’s preferred candidate to lead the Federal Reserve, the messy debate over a military attack in Syria was the final sign.
After weeks of opposition to his candidacy from an array of progressives, the president’s inability to rally Congressional Democrats on Syria persuaded Mr. Summers that his most important audience — the Senate, which must confirm a Fed chairman — probably could not be won over.
He concluded that the White House was also unlikely to overcome opposition to his candidacy from many of the same Democrats, who view him as an opponent of stronger financial regulation, according to supporters who insisted on anonymity to describe confidential conversations with him.
“Clearly Obama couldn’t bring his own most enthusiastic supporters to back him on an issue of national security,” one supporter said. “How was he going to corral them for Larry?”
via New York Times
I suppose it's too much to expect Summers to have enough intellectual honesty to admit that Obama couldn't sell Summers, because Summers as Fed chief, like the proposed action in Syria, is a truly terrible idea. A few details here.
But in an extra dismal news week, month and year, this truly is good news, made a bit sweeter by the fact that New York's billionaire mayor will likely be replaced by a card carrying liberal. Next thing you know, they'll be sending a banker to jail.
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