The Times looks at Bob Rubin’s political influence while giving some gentle reconsideration to his economic halo.

While noting that various people whom Rubin has mentored are rising to power in the Obama administration—sometimes returning to power—the paper writes,

On Wall Street, Mr. Rubin is facing questions about his role as director of Citigroup given the bank’s current woes. And in Washington, he and his acolytes are calling for a new formulation to address the global economic crisis that Mr. Obama will inherit — and rejecting or setting aside, for now, some of their old orthodoxies.

Among those orthodoxies: balanced budgets, which we’re not going to see for a while, and deregulation, ditto.

As for Mr. Summers, he has “truly evolved,” [liberal economist Jared] Bernstein said, based on his reading of Mr. Summers’s columns in the Financial Times this year. Both men have been advisers to Mr. Obama, and at a recent meeting, Mr. Bernstein recalled: “I told him, ‘Boy, Larry, your views on trade, on income inequality, on stimulus spending, they’re approaching ours at E.P.I.’ And he sort of huffed and puffed, and said, ‘Oh well, changing circumstances.’ ”

No one who knows Larry Summers can imagine him huffing and puffing.

Bernstein implies a question that I’ve been pondering for some time now. Certainly there can be virtue in flexibility, but as I asked recently on this blog, what exactly does Larry Summers believe, or than that which will advance him politically? His current positions are tailored to the inclinations of Barack Obama just as his past ones were to Bob Rubin and Bill Clinton.

I’d very much like to hear someone familiar with economic thought tell me what Summers has consistently advocated. (I tried to ascertain this when I was writing Harvard Rules, but failed.)

Why does this matter? Because Summers is, according to the Times, the man most responsible for promoting the $500 billion economic stimulus plan—a plan which would put the man in charge (i.e., Summers) in a position of vast power. A stimulus plan means the allocation of huge sums of money, and as anyone in Washington (or Harvard, for that matter) knows, when you have money to dispense, you are powerful indeed.

When Summers’ advice happens to elevate his own status within the Obama administration, can we say with confidence that it is disinterested?

Already it sounds like some of the concerns about Summers’ personality are resurfacing.

By all accounts, the trait that ties the 70-year-old Mr. Rubin and the younger men is their braininess. All but Mr. Summers are seen as cautious about policy. And all but Mr. Summers share their mentor’s low-key affability and conversational ease; many wonder just how Mr. Summers, whose brusque ways left a trail of enemies when he was president of Harvard, will perform as director of the National Economic Council in the White House when the job demands someone who can coordinate with others, listen to them and fairly represent their views to the president.

“There’s no way he will be confined to the N.E.C.’s turf; he will be sticking his nose into everything,” said Bruce Bartlett, a Treasury veteran of the Reagan administration…..

The Times piece notes that Rubin “privately” favored giving Larry Summers a second chance as Treasury secretary. That word “privately” is fascinating. First, what does it mean? That Rubin didn’t publicly advocate for Summers? (Well, of course not.) That he told only a few people? That he told no one except the mirror when he was brushing his teeth? It’s an odd formulation.

What it really suggests, I’m inclined to think, is that he spoke to the reporter on background. The quote certainly feels that way, as I haven’t heard a thing previously to suggest that Rubin was backing Summers for Treasury. If it came from someone else, it’d be likely to say just *how* Rubin was supporting Summers—to whom did he speak of his support? What did he do on Summers’ behalf?

But if it came from Rubin and Rubin provided no details, that would explain why the reporter didn’t include the tidbits that would flesh out the term “privately.”

Rubin hates to be quoted, but he doesn’t hate to talk to the Times.

And in return, it appears, the Times reporter goes easy on him: though that line about Rubin “facing questions” about Citigroup is one half of the article’s thesis paragraph, it proves to be the only mention of Citigroup and Rubin in the entire article.

But the Citigroup fiasco, and Bob Rubin’s $150 million role in it, aren’t likely to go away: As the government crafts a plan to bail out Citigroup, costing taxpayers more billions, surely someone will ask just why one man was paid so much money, and what role that money played in his steadfast support of disastrous former CEO Charles Prince?

Someone?