Larry Summers
Tomorrow's New York Times Magazine has an article by James Traub on economist and Harvard President Larry Summers. Here's the link: "Harvard Radical". Summers held important positions in the World Bank and in the Clinton Treasury. Here's an extract from the article describing his public policy career:
"...Economics is one of the few academic fields in which you can go straight into the world of policy and politics if you are so inclined. Summers was so inclined. In 1988, he worked as a part-time adviser to Michael Dukakis's presidential campaign. In 1991, he took a two-year leave of absence to become chief economist at the World Bank. His work there generally received very positive reviews, but his reputation was not helped by the leaking of one of his memos. ''I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted,'' Summers wrote. He suggested that the World Bank encourage ''more migration of the dirty industries'' to less developed nations. The memo made Summers sound like the Dr. Strangelove of economics and earned him a very frosty relationship for several years with Vice President Al Gore, who may have never before encountered the term ''underpolluted.'' (Summers says that the memo was written by a subordinate, though he has always accepted blame for the language.)
"Summers's position as an international civil servant precluded him from working on Bill Clinton's presidential campaign, as many of his Dukakis friends were doing, but he was desperate to be in the game. Summers spoke constantly about economic issues to his contacts in the campaign and suggested other economists for explicit policy advice. When Clinton won, Summers joined the transition team, hoping for a big job.
"But Summers still bore strong traces of the Harvard House of Pizza. As Gene Sperling, a member of Clinton's National Economic Council and Summers's closest contact in the White House, put it, ''Here was a guy with a big brain, and you want him on your team, but there was a sense that you needed to have a grown-up around.'' Summers was hoping to be named chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, but when he lost out he accepted the post of under secretary of the treasury for international affairs, where he would be surrounded by grown-ups. Nevertheless, the big brain stood Summers in good stead. He quickly gained a reputation as a master explainer -- the man who could lay out the macroeconomic consequences of any given change in tax policy, who could figure out in his head what effect it would have on the gross domestic product 10 years down the road.
"In 1995, Robert Rubin became treasury secretary, and Rubin came increasingly to rely on Summers not only for economics but also for policy advice. ''Larry had an almost academic sense of purpose,'' Rubin said, ''but not an academic naivete.'' Rubin says that Summers understood how to market highly abstract policy in a way that would resonate with ordinary people. It also turned out that Summers could be a fine tactician, and even something of a diplomat, much to the surprise of White House officials. Summers played a leading role in the controversial bailout of Mexico in 1995, as well as in handling the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and 1998. Most people who worked for Summers at the time have only good things to say about him now. Stuart E. Eizenstat, who served as a deputy when Summers took over from Rubin in 1999, says that he never encountered the Summers of legend and lore. ''He was a prince to work for,'' Eizenstat told me. ''He was considerate of my views, he included me on all major decisions, he did not make snap judgments, he fought through decisions, he gave me a wide swath of jurisdictions.'' Several noneconomists who worked either for or with Summers said that he never condescended to them and that they always felt he was arguing in order to get to the merits. Washington is, of course, a place with a uniquely high tolerance for brusque behavior.
"It is a truism among Summers's friends and colleagues that he ''grew'' during his years in the Clinton administration. Summers concedes the point, but only after converting it into a sort of utility equation: ''Over time, I came to see that mutual interest was often a more important catalyst to agreement than compelling logic.'' What is striking, and a little bit touching, is how very self-conscious this process was. With the model of Rubin ever before him, Gene Sperling recalled: ''Larry started really consciously working on the kinder, gentler Larry Summers. We talked about it all the time for years and years. It was not unusual for Larry to call and say, 'You think I was too abrupt at this meeting?' And I'd say, 'Yeah.' We'd talk about what to do.'' And so Summers rounded off his rough edges. It is a source of genuine wonderment to people at Harvard that the Larry Summers they are seeing is the sanded-down one..."
I learned about this from InstaPundit.
