Bartlett: Bush Appointees Suck Really Hard
Bruce Bartlett’s view of the Obama economic team:
So far, I am very impressed. Larry Summers at the NEC is brilliant. Tim Geithner at Treasury inspires confidence. Peter Orszag at OMB tells me that we will get honest numbers on which to base policy for a change. And Christina Romer at the CEA puts one of the nation’s top experts on the Great Depression at close hand.
This group has made me realize just how poor Bush’s appointments in recent years have been in the economic area. When slavish political loyalty is apparently the only requirement for a Bush Administration job, and demonstrable competence barely counts at all, it doesn’t tend to attract the best and the brightest. When on those rare occasions, Bush managed to get someone who is competent, there is no evidence that he paid the slightest attention to them, preferring instead the counsel of “Mayberry Machiavellis,” as former White House adviser John DiIulio called them. No wonder we are in the mess we are in.
Indeed. Does anyone even know that the Bush National Economic Council is run by a guy named Keith Hennessey? And if ever there was a time for an administration’s key economic advisers to become known by the general public, you’d think this would be it. But instead, he’s an unknown. And he’s an unknown in part because he’s a nobody. Before he ran the NEC, he was the deputy. Before that, he was on Trent Lott’s staff. He has a master’s degree and it’s not in economics. The stature gap with a Lawrence Summers is enormous.
43 Responses to “Bartlett: Bush Appointees Suck Really Hard”
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November 24th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Keith Hennessey is not a nobody. I am sure that his wife and children love him.
November 24th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
When did everybody start quoting Bruce Bartlett again?
He is not our friend. His interests are not the interests of progressives in any way, and his approval of Obama’s appointments should be considered grounds for suspicion of those appointments.
Greg Mankiw, Tyler Cowen & Alex Tabarrok, Arnold Kling and the WSJ are also just thrilled.
November 24th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
“Larry Summers at the NEC is brilliant.”
Don’t say it out loud, Kim Gandy might be around.
November 24th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
From wikipedia:
Hennessey holds a B.A.S. in Mathematics and Political Science from Stanford University and a Masters in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. His title of his public policy thesis was Unintended Consequences: Critical Assumptions in the Clinton Health Plan.
No comment.
November 24th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Larry Summers tends to go around insulting people, to such a degree that it’s impossible for him to do his job. Given that, Keith Hennessey might be even better than Summers at this particular job.
November 24th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Do they not understand that the entire premise of conservative governance is that government doesn’t matter?
The thing is, conservatives never actually had a president who truly believed that until they had stupid George. This guy is an extremist. He is practically an anarchist. He thinks running government has all the significance of running a sports team–only the perks for President are way better (A chef! A plane AND a helicopter! Public housing! People sucking up to you all the time, everywhere!).
So, of course he appointed incompetents and cronies. Of course he engaged in budgeting that Nobel Prize winner Akerlof describes as “a form of looting.” Of course he didn’t plan for the postwar in Iraq. Of course his idiot advisors say things like “we create our own reality.” Of course he is watching an economic catastrophe unfold and simply refusing to deal with it. Of course even now, loathed and repudiated by the American people, he is fighting his successor, treating it like a concession to “inform” Obama if he happens to make any big decisions.
Of course his administration was hyper-focused on p.r. and press management–after all, policy doesn’t matter, only politics and spin matter. An awesome photo-op gets you an awesome story, and string enough of those together and you get re-elected. Everything else is “beyond your control.”
The only place where they seem to have genuinely believed government could make a difference was when using military force. After all, a guy with a gun can get things done, right? And if a guy with a gun couldn’t get it done (Iraq), then by definition it can’t be done.
Everything else…they just didn’t get it. Domestic policy, nation-building…basically, 99% of government they just didn’t give a crap about.
It’s a miracle we made it this long. Now let’s hope Bush doesn’t pull a James Buchanan and let his incompetent paralysis sink our nation. Thank god we moved inauguration up from March. Can we move it to Dec. 1? Like, now?
November 24th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Big article in yesterday’s Wash Post about the leaders of the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) who basically cheer-lead the banking industry down the tubes under the last 8 years. The article never went into the background of these guys – so I did a little digging just to see – and sure enough the guy who was head of OTS during much of the damage had come over from Sen Connie Mack’s staff.
It’s the way they do these things.
November 24th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Watching the Obama transition so far makes me wonder how things went 8 years ago….
Bush: Lets see here, we’ll put the Arabian Horse Association guy in charge of FEMA. He always cleaned up the beer cans back at Yale after parties. And Fredo, you’ll be my Senior Advisor until no competent Republican want’s to touch my administration with a 10 pole. Then I’ll make you Attorney General. Don’t worry I got Monica Goodling in there as yer right hand man. She went to Pat Robertson’s University so she’s got all kinds of book learnin’. What? Yes, he has a law school. Anyways, Jose, you always cut my grass real good. You can Secretary of the Interior.
Jose: No habla ingles!
Bush: heh heh heh. I always get a kick when you talk that Esperanto. And I’ll appoint Rumsfeld head of Defense. What’s Powell sayin’? ‘Bon’t goo bat?’ Them people sure talk funny sometimes.
November 24th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Hey, maybe Obama can now craft a foreign policy that gets Fred Barnes approval. He can be both the Change president and the Rebel in chief!
I’m not sure of the point of this post. The point, I guess, should be that the neo-liberal establishment thinks that basically, nothing is happening here, and we are gonna move back to our open and free markets uber alles position that binds administration policies from Reagan to W in one big happy family. Minus the pesky automakers, which have to be thrown right out of the club, those scum! It is all creative destruction and how we like it.
Meanwhile, this is the week neo-liberalism died. All economies are political economies – they depend on a political pact that underlies any macro policy. The political pact underlying neo-liberalism was pretty simple: a. expanded credit for the masses; b. a robust shadow financial sector; and c., a continuing influx of money from household savings, in the form of 401(k)s, mutual funds, money markets, etc. These all worked together. The middle class did not bond with the investor class because they are “aspirational”, but because they saw their retirement accounts swelling and their assets becoming pricier. While their everyday economic life, which depends on labor income, became in one sense harder, as the rate of earnings increases decreased and then vanished, the increased credit patched over the spots in the lifestyle. And of course, b., allowed the creditor to take increased risks.
Well, a, b, and c are dead. It would not at all be surprising that the equities markets either stabilize at a low level and stay there for a decade, or keep sinking. That means, in essence, that the accumulated savings of those who went through the boom years from the eighties until now are seeing their future systematically destroyed. That was the future they were willing to trade slower income growth for. And meanwhile, good bye to the expanded credit sphere. You might patch your lifestyle gaps with 9 percent, but 19 percent, 29 percent – that is when we are talking about the pre-modern economy. That is interest that, in effect, retracts the elbow room given by credit. In the final month in which Obama pulled ahead, it was clearly the 401(k) effect. It wasn’t youth, it wasn’t change, it wasn’t hope – it was a vast fear. Which will be speaking out a lot more as it turns out that the fear was understated – things are a lot worse than they seem.
So the “brilliant” Larry Summers, missionary of neo-liberalism when the U.S. was the indispensible nation and architect, with Phil Gramm, of the deregulated marketplace that made the perverse Bush boom possible, is going to find that he simply can’t use the old nostrums. Because the old system is gone. Bartlett celebrating this is like one of Louis XVI’s courtiers assuring everybody that the Bishop of Autan, Tallyrand, being so powerful in the Assembly, everybody’s head is safe. It is a joke.
Of course, the last joke of the expiring neo-liberal imperium was the very funny one, which MY laughed at heartily, of course, along with other important young public intellectuals, of shooting GM in the head. Funny funny funny. Those people had the gall to ask for a loan of 25 billion – and sharpeyed Matt saw that could reach to 75 billion! Over the weekend, we decide that Citi needs 300 billion and – well, that’s all right then. It might not be a great deal, but shucks, they needed it and all.
Yes, neoliberalism is a corpse, but it will keep kicking for a while among the pundits.
November 24th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Ah don’t be so hard on the guy; apparently he is self-taught:
“Keith has spent most of his career as a Washington policy wonk, after getting a math degree at Stanford and a public policy degree at Harvard’s Kennedy School. But, like most readers of this blog, in his heart he is an econonerd. I recall that in his spare time (a precious commodity for those working in the White House), Keith was reading David Romer’s graduate-level textbook, Advanced Macroeconomics, just for fun.”
That’s from Mankiw, who gave Hennessey his stamp: http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2007/11/congratulations-keith.html
November 24th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
roger-
Absofuckinglutely.
You nailed it, brother.
When I think of MY and the other young intellectuals laughing about killing GM, I think of The Usual Suspects.
The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing people he didn’t exist.
Same with Summers and the other bastards who are running our economy.
Off a cliff.
November 24th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
I just have to note that the photograph accompanying this easily the best thing I’ve seen today. I’m not sure whether that pair belong in a puppet show or a Beckett play.
November 24th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
bob mcmanus:”When did everybody start quoting Bruce Bartlett again?”
Brad Delong on Bartlett:
“It is in all of our interest–all those who want to raise the level of the debate, at least–to read, cite, and carefully respond to the writings of Bruce Bartlett, who:
* is smart.
* is thoughtful.
* is brave–braver than all the rest of us who have never managed to get ourselves fired for writing what we believe.
Such bravery should be rewarded with wide-scale intellectual influence, if only to make future bosses hesitant about firing intellectuals who tell political-inconvenient truths. ”
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/07/dr_bartlett_dia.html
Some background: “Bartlett, 54, the author of a syndicated newspaper column and articles in academic journals, was dismissed in October as a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis… fired because his increasingly critical comments about Bush… had hampered the ability of the research institution to raise money among Republican donors.”
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/02/grownup_republi.html
November 24th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
13:If progressives had any self-respect, Wrong on Race:The Democrat’s Buried Past would have made Bartlett unwelcome on the left side of the blogosphere, like forever.
Just a stealth Norquist. We don’t need him.
November 24th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
I don’t know why, but Larry Summers’ double chin grosses me out something wicked.
November 24th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Dtm, you are off the mark here. I’m livid because the Senate Democrats spent all of one day considering the demise of the American auto industry. I’m livid because this weekend, by contrast, citibank negotiated a deal with the treasury that is an amazingly audacious robbery, which we are going to be assured is of interest to the people cause otherwise, how are they going to get financing to buy next year’s Toyota? And that deal was a collaborative effort between Obama’s team and Bush’s, according to the paper. I’m livid that incompetence is no bar to promotion – hence, the same people, ie Larry Summers, who in the nineties assured us that the world was ‘flat’ and lobbied to scotch any suggestion that the derivative market – you know, the one that just knocked down Citi – should be regulated. I’m livid because that lack of regulation was not just about setting requirements for transparency, it was about doing what the U.S. government has done since, really, Wilson’s days – enforcing institutional norms. I’m livid because the theory that they used about the market, its self-adjustment by way of the price mechanism, ignored the little fact that the traders in it did not know what they were buying – and you don’t need Robert Samuelson to know that such a market is perverse and highly in need of regulating. In fact, more effort is made to go after sellers of rather innocent quack medicines. I’m livid because these things were distributed in such a way that they affected the future of anybody who is on salary in this country, badly. Very badly. As for the ideology, I could give a flying fuck. Bartlett, whose bravery I am supposed to applaud, was mad at Bush for his governmental largesse – during the recession of 2001-2003. I’m supposed to believe it would have been better to contract the government during the recession? Give me a break. I’m so happy he has loopy views he will fight for. But if a man resigns from the Smithsonian because they stubbornly refuse to put up that exhibit that proves that Darwin is wrong, I’m not going to applaud his ideas.
There’s such a thing as groupthink, you know. It is the shadow side of expertise. When the experts are all connected to each other, and can give each other prestige points and promotions, it encourages a gross conformity – and that is not even a bad thing all the time. But in a period in which all the routines are broken, group think is the royal road to disaster.
Luckily, the experts simply can’t use their usual tools. Unluckily, they have been using the same tools since Bear Stearns, and they haven’t learned yet that they don’t work – they simply go out and buy more expensive ones. This is not what I want to see Obama’s economic team doing. And it would have been nice if that team, which found a way to enter into the negotiations with Citi – how charming! – had found a way to enter into last week’s discussion of manufacturing.
November 25th, 2008 at 12:42 am
I don’t know why, but Larry Summers’ double chin grosses me out something wicked.
Why are there so many fat ecomomists? Or is that just an American trend (because in America everybody is fat)?
November 25th, 2008 at 3:28 am
Yglesias in love with credentials who would have guessed. There is a vast surplus of Math, Economics, and Engineering PhDs floating about after the financial collapse maybe the Republicans can turn to those geniuses for their next administration.
November 25th, 2008 at 3:59 am
Generalship during World War I was pretty bad, because military doctrine has lost touch with reality after a hundred years of nothing but short, localized wars. But its true that the military establishments where the generals had kept up to date on the bad doctrine, such as the British and the French, did better than military establishments such as the Russian that promoted alot of people to high positions that just didn’t know what they were doing.
It still sucked to be a British or French soldier on the Western Front. And wars are different than economic crisises in that to win them you just have to be better than your opponent.
November 25th, 2008 at 6:51 am
roger, what would more debate have proven? The votes just weren’t there. And the little debate we had looked like it was turning people against the auto companies.
November 25th, 2008 at 10:07 am
I’ll repeat what was said above: Conservatives appoint nobodies and suck-ups because they believe government doesn’t matter. They are looters – literally and figuratively.
Look, the right uses power to defend and entrench privilege. The left uses it to expand privilege. This is very nearly definitional. So when a movement conservative gains office, pretty much the only thing one can expect is that he will reward his pals, erode governing competence and performance, and – you know – prevent the expansion of opportunity and privilege.
I hope everybody who reads this will remember that when the GOP “reinvents” itself and promises – really promises – that this time it will take governing seriously, will restrain spending, and will stop tilting the tables toward the already wealthy and lucky, we have to call BS on it.
The past 8 years is precisely what we’ll get if the country ever again entrusts these goons with power. It’s just like when commies say communism was never really tried. Well, yes it has been. What you see is what you get. Same with movement conservatives.
It’s like Jerry Seinfeld’s deal with Kenny Banya. The salad is the dinner.
November 25th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Matt’s being “in love with credentials” is right though arbitrary (or, conveniently in line with his political biases). Robert Rubin, the first head of the NEC, had a law degree from Yale. Is that better than an MPP from the Kennedy School? Who the hell cares? This is just a cheap shot with no point.
November 25th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
It’s about time we got rid of the old “piggybank” mentality and introduced electronic commerce. Thank you OBAMA for bringing us into the 21st century and bringing educated people to run our country.
December 23rd, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Bosch’s Poodle is correct. I would also note that Mr. Hennessey’s lack of qualifications are somewhat ironic. Years ago when he was working on his MPA at Harvard he was our intern at OMB — Keith was especially pleased with himself for having caught out Mr. Reich, then Secretary of Labor, on some point of economic theory that Reich did not understand. Keith noted with some derision that Reich did not even have a degree in economics while on the Harvard faculty. My, my.
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