Bush memoirs to haunt GOP

For Republicans looking forward to the first Bush-free election in a decade, the book publishing schedule is the bearer of bad news: Between New Year’s Day and next November, as many as five Bush administration officials — including the former president himself — will rehash history in hardback.

First Hank Paulson, that lovable Treasury Secretary, then Laura, then W himself. Should be neat.

The Bush montage plays right into the hands of Democrats, says Democratic strategist Douglas Schoen, who predicts that the midterm elections will be a battle between those who will try to make it a belated referendum on the Bush administration and those who will try to make it a premature referendum on the Obama administration.

Well, jobs will play a significant role, and the Republicans will try to emphasize that, whilst trying to dodge all those books.

For Treasury, Geithner Said to Be Choice; Wall St. Cheers

I was rooting for Geithner. Summers's brilliance can't be denied, nor will it be wasted, but Geithner is a magnificent choice. Same age as Obama (though at 53, merely 6 years older than the other two, Summers can hardly be called old), he has attributes which work: he has a great deal of experience (a Summers protege from the days Larry worked for President Clinton; president of the New York Fed); Wall Street likes and respects him; he represents continuity; and he represents change. Brilliant choice.

A phrase jumped out at me from the story on the Times website this evening; the article discusses the influence and protégés of Robert Rubin (Treasury Secretary under President Clinton, Goldman Sachs alum, centrist):

Michael Froman, Mr. Rubin’s former Treasury chief of staff and Mr. Obama’s classmate at Harvard Law School, is heading the economics personnel search for the transition. Mr. Froman’s head-hunting deputy is Mr. Rubin’s son, James Rubin.

Obama's Harvard Law classmate; Rubin's former chief of staff. Obama is part of the nation's elite by virtue of his Harvard Law degree, and he's tapping his network for his transition and Administration, as he tapped it for contributiond and support for his candidacies.

More and more it becomes apparent that Obama is center-left, the emphasis on center, and not left of it; that he has extensive contacts, and that his organizational skills are superb. That is one of the details that impresses me most: his campaign for the nomination, his campaign for the Presidency, and his transition and Cabinet-building, are all prime examples of magnificent organization.

Palin derided Obama's experience as a community organizer, and some of the masses responded lustily to the insult: community organizer was used as code for black, urban, and poor, as well as liberal, means to insult the urban poor and those who work to help them, liberal intellectuals.

Clearly the ability to organize efficiently is being shown to be a valuable skill. In his campaigns, and now in his transition to the Presidency, Barack Obama is showing his mettle.

Yet it is not only the Republican right wing that derides centrist Rubinism, to coin a term.

The Rubin wing of the Democratic Party has long been disparaged by liberals and union leaders as being too concerned with balanced budgets and free trade. But much of the ideological tension in the party has dissipated as the economy has weakened, and Mr. Obama has signaled that he intends to spend what it takes to get the economy back on track.

What Obama is showing is pragmatism. Yes, he tends to move to the slight left of center on some issues, to the left of center on other issues, but his imprint is clear: what works is what will get done.

Mr. Geithner also seems to fit Mr. Obama’s emphasis on “post-partisanship.” Associates say Mr. Geithner is an independent, though he was a Republican when he first was a staff member at the Treasury Department in the late 1980s under Presidents Ronald Reagan nd George Bush. After college, he worked in the New York-based international consulting firm headed by Henry A. Kissinger.

There are those associates again. But I do declare that Gaithner greatly impresses me.

After leaving the Treasury Department, Mr. Geithner worked at the International Monetary Fund until he was hired in 2003 as president of the New York Fed.

How does someone just get hired as the New York Fed President? He must have had some resume. I think highly of him, and think his appointment continues a strong record for the Obama transition of competency, even brilliance (see Clinton, Hillary Rodham).

Larry Downing/Reuters

Timothy F. Geithner of the Federal Reserve Bank.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Lawrence H. Summers might become a senior White House adviser instead of returning to the Treasury Department.

New TARP unfurled

Give him enough time, and enough tries, and Paulson might eventually get it right. Best thing that can happen is that Paulson goes back to the private sector.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson laid out details for the next stage of the government's financial-market rescue package Wednesday, announcing he has shelved the original plan to buy troubled mortgage assets while turning his attention to non-bank financial institutions and consumer finance.

Wait, I meant to say ..

Clueless Hank?

Not everyone is singing the praises of Hank Paulson. I don't believe he's done a good job (his infamous line of having a bazooka and not needing to use it proven utterly, tragically wrong, for one). But this commentator savages Bailout Hank.

Until last week, I was in a minority of one in arguing that Mr Paulson was personally responsible for suddenly turning the painful but manageable credit crunch that had been grinding away 18 months in the background of the US economy into a global catastrophe. Mr Paulson's appearances on Capitol Hill, marked by the characteristic Bush-era combination of arrogance and incompetence, are turning my once-outlandish view into conventional wisdom: Henry Paulson is to finance what Donald Rumsfeld was to military strategy, Dick Cheney to geopolitics and Michael Chertoff to flood defence.

A different perspective, an English one.

Mr Paulson may be a former chairman of Goldman Sachs, but as US Treasury Secretary he does not know what he is doing.

He has learned how to speak without saying anything of substance; I watched some minutes of the televised hearings.

The good news - before I return to the perils of Mr Paulson - is that his blunders no longer matter very much. There will still be a huge US government bank bailout, which will probably avert a disastrous slump in the US and global economies. But because Mr Paulson has lost the political initiative, this bailout will now be led by the Democratic leadership in Congress and will be structured around its priorities - relief from mortgage foreclosures, restrictions on bankers' pay and big government shareholdings in US banks. For President Bush it is a disaster, dashing his last faint hope of having a tangible achievement to his name before he leaves office.

No tangible achievement; that about says it all.

The only substantive clause in the draft was a swaggering demand for untrammelled power: “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to this Act are non-reviewable and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”

Unmitigated arrogance.

The people who do not understand the role of government should not be regulating markets any more than they should be fighting wars or managing flood defences. P.J.O'Rourke, the conservative writer, once remarked: “The Republicans are a party that says government doesn't work - and then get elected and prove it.” This should be the epitaph for the Bush Administration - and Mr Paulson.

Amen.

US markets soar on rescue plan hopes

Now they're smiling.

Paulson Doctrine will save economy - for Obama

One piece of good news amidst an avalanche of bad news.

Two words for anybody who criticizes Treasury Secretary Henry "Hank" Paulson's handling of the great Wall Street massacre this week: Paul O'Neill. Or how about: John Snow.

For all his flip-flopping between bailing out Bear Stearns, letting Lehman Brothers collapse, then seizing control of American International Group two days later, there is nobody better equipped right now to save Wall Street from itself than the former head of Goldman Sachs .

And that certainly includes the two former Treasury secretaries, who there but for the grace of the bumbling Bush administration might still be presiding over this mess instead of Paulson, who understands how banks and investment banks are supposed to work.

Like with the infamous Bush Doctrine before it, there are several ways to describe what is emerging as the Paulson Doctrine for rescuing the global financial industry, which is good news for Sarah Palin.

If either of those two bozos was in charge, o, boy!

...two things that are certain. Paulson is slowly but surely pulling Wall Street from the burning house. And the chaos, which the American public finally woke up to this week, will help usher Barack Obama into the White House come January.

What a wakeup call, too.

Because this crisis – the death knell for the idea that markets and Wall Street can police themselves – is more closely connected to the current administration and John McCain's party than Obama's Democrats. A new order is shaping up in financial services, and it will require an entirely new regulatory structure.

That's not new. What's new is that suddenly people are paying attention. It's not about lipstick and pigs and swift boats anymore.

Obama, who Democrats were wailing about just last week for having dropped into a tie with McCain, is suddenly back up a few points, courtesy of a McCain gaffe on the economy on just about the worst possible day to do it. Obama has been handed a gift in this crisis – a lead in the homestretch – and now needs to really start refining his message to address the details of this crisis.

No, the economy does not look fundamentally sound.