Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Monday, September 16, 2013

I Ain't Gloatin', I'm Yellin!

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/larry-summers-withdraws-name-from-fed-consideration.php?ref=fpblg

In some ways it's crass to suggest that everything Obama does is motivated by politics.  In fact, he's the first president in my adult memory who doesn't seem to give a flying fudge about how Politco/WaPo/Meet the Press thinks he's doing.

The classic DC narrative is that Obama "lost" on Syria and my guess is that people will say he "lost" on Summers.

If Kerry-Lavrov works, then this is a clear "win" for Obama, in that he got the policy result he's always cared about - the end of the use and proliferation of WMD - without having to go cowboy.

If Yellin gets the nod at the Fed, that seems a clear political winner with Obama's base.  Not because she'd be the first female Fed Chair - though that's not nothing - but because Yellin got it right in 2008, and Summer got it wrong, consistently, from 1999-2010.

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