The name of Larry Summers's replacement probably won't tell us much about the administration's economic direction

Believe it or not, there really is some urgency on Larry Summers's part to get back to Harvard. He has to . . . uh, Larry? . . . oh, LAR-ry! . . . hey, LARRY!

"Anyone who really knows what the job is won't take it; people who don't know won't work out."

-- a "White House veteran" quoted yesterday by
Al Kamen, regarding Larry Summers's replacement

by Ken

Several thoughts on the departure and replacement of Larry Summers as director of the National Economic Council.

(1) First, let's complete the thought voiced above by that unnamed White House veteran. As Al Kamen explained yesterday in his Washington Post "In the Loop" column:

The job isn't all standing by Obama and whispering economic policies in his ear. There's some of that, but there's much more -- endless hours, actually - sitting in meetings with other administration officials, hammering out stuff, coordinating policy initiatives.

(2) Which leads naturally to the basic point: that Summers's replacement isn't really going to be his "replacement." Presumably our Larry did actually get the job of NEC director done, but that isn't really the job he was doing in the administration -- the job for which he's earned so much animosity from us progressives, which is to say the job as the president's chief economic adviser.

(3) So who will be the president's chief economic adviser once Larry S has gone back to Harvard? Recent accounts have suggested that more and more Treasury Secretary "Tiny Tim" Geithner has already been taking on that role, and with Summers gone, well, that suggests more influence for the Tinyman. (Now quit that groaning, right now! It's very immature.) However the new order of things shakes out, it will probably have very little to do with the person who takes over our Larry's slot at the NEC. That person will probably have to be content spending those endless hours "sitting in meetings with other administration officials, hammering out stuff, coordinating policy initiatives."

(4) And even with all the fairly high-level personnel changes reportedly coming after the election, one thing to remember is that none of those people, not even Master Rahm, seem to have been prodding the president into doing things he didn't want to do. Rather, the ones among them who had actual clout (which is meant to distinguish people like the already-departed Council of Economic Advisers chair, Christine Romer) were there because they think more or less like the boss.

Of course the election results themselves could have an impact on the kinds of people brought into the administration and the mandate they're given. But I expect that any such mid-course corrections will be undertaken for the wrong reasons, in the wrong way (we can already read the wildly incorrect lessons being touted about elections that haven't even happened yet), and so are likely to make things generally worse rather than better.

(5) Contrary to what many of us thought, when Larry Summers voices urgency about returning to Harvard, he's not fooling. As Al Kamen explains:

The Summers announcement also touched off some speculation that his official explanation -- needing to return to Harvard -- hid deeper policy disputes or internal backstabbing. After all, surely Harvard, if he'd asked, would have given him a waiver from his two-year leave of absence.

But Harvard is unusually hard-line about leaves. And Summers's professorship is no ordinary faculty membership: He's a "university professor." There are only 22 of them out of the 1,000 tenured professors at the school.

We're told there was no doubt he'd be reappointed to the faculty, but he might not be able to get the university professorship back. "Not something you want to give up if you want to continue in academia," an academic told us.

And it wasn't exactly a shock to anyone inside the White House that he was leaving. Even if he'd gotten the job he really wanted -- Treasury secretary -- he would probably still be going back to Cambridge now, though it might have been a closer call. Had he gotten the Fed chairmanship last year instead of Ben Bernanke, we're guessing he might have stayed. When he didn't get either, the handwriting was truly on the wall.

(5) Finally, and here's one you probably didn't think of, there's an interesting office-geography issue in play with the selection of Summers's replacement. Here's our pal Al again:

Several women were touted as strong contenders - including former Young & Rubicam chairman and chief executive Ann Fudge, former Council of Economic Advisers chairman Laura Tyson, NEC deputy director Diana Farrell, and former Xerox chairman and CEO Anne Mulcahy.

If President Obama picks a woman for the post, they may start calling the West Wing's second floor the Women's Wing. Here's the current layout of offices:

Senior aides Cecilia Munoz, Tina Tchen and Valerie Jarrett occupy contiguous offices on the south side of the floor.

A woman in what is now Summers's office would continue an uninterrupted string of women in the prized offices with windows down from those offices to Melody Barnes's corner office and then to Heather Higginbottom's office.

In all, women would occupy eight of the 12 exterior offices on that floor. (Okay, okay, they're not on the first floor, but still...)

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