A president, backed into a corner by his loose tongue and tin ear, ignores unsolicited advice and sets himself up for a bruising vote in Congress he may not win, risking a political and economic backlash.
President Obama and Syria? Yes, but the characterization can also apply to the situation the president finds himself in regarding the most important domestic decision he has to make in 2013: Who will replace Ben Bernanke as the head of the Federal Reserve come January?
The announcement of Obama’s choice for the position that has been called the second-most powerful in Washington was supposed to have come in the week ahead.
But as has happened so often in an administration that is not known for its multitasking skills, “stuff” got in the way. This time it is Syria.
“They will wait until the dust clears,” former Obama strategist David Plouffe told Bloomberg, referring to how the debate on Syria will affect the Fed announcement.
With plenty of dust around, that could mean Obama’s choice for the world’s top money man or woman won’t be unveiled for weeks — pushing the announcement into October, a month that is notoriously volatile on Wall Street.
That nominee is thought to be Lawrence Summers, the brilliant but controversial former Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, who is hated even more by the left than he is by the right.
As the administration is learning from its amateurish stagecraft on Syria, time allows for rumination, and the more senators ruminate about a Fed Chairman Larry Summers, the less they like the idea.
All of this makes it far more likely that Federal Reserve Vice Chairwoman Janet Yellen will end up getting the nod. Not only does she seem like Ms. Congeniality compared with the curmudgeonly Summers, her easy-money policies make her a popular choice with senators up for re-election next year.
As Paul Volcker demonstrated, our best Fed chairmen are seldom popular, and our most popular (see Alan Greenspan) can be dangerous.
Unfortunately, given the events of the past weeks on the foreign policy front, Obama, non-confrontational by nature, will likely choose the path of least resistance on this one