What Elizabeth Warren Says About Larry Summers
Posted on April 17th, 2014 in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
The New Yorker’s review of Elizabeth Warren’s new autobiography, A Fighting Chance, contains this anecdote:
In 2008, Warren joined a five-person congressional-oversight panel whose creation was mandated by the seven-hundred-billion-dollar bailout. She found that thrilling and maddening, too. In the spring of 2009, after the panel issued its third report, critical of the bailout, Larry Summers took Warren out to dinner in Washington and, she recalls, told her that she had a choice. to make. She could be an insider or an outsider, but if she was going to be an insider she needed to understand one unbreakable rule about insiders: “They don’t criticize other insiders.” That’s about when Warren went on the Jon Stewart show, and you get the sense that, over that dinner, she decided to run for office.
Fascinating, don’t you think? I love the fact that, in the most arrogant and patronizing of ways, Summers tried to teach the woman how the world works—which inspired the woman to go out and do something that made her considerably more powerful than Summers, and also ensured that she would oppose his nomination to replace Ben Bernanke at the Fed should that ever have happened.
This is why, when people so routinely and unthinkingly characterize Summers as “brilliant,” I generally demur: This is the most ham-handed and boneheaded of power plays. And while you can’t say for sure that Summers felt comfortable engaging in it because of Warren’s gender—it’s possible Summers would be just as arrogant with a man—it’s hard not to think that gender played some role here. Another reason why I am unconvinced of Summers’ all-around brilliance: Did he learn nothing from the women-in-science fiasco?
And one final point on insiders versus outsiders: I expect that Summers’ insight is correct, but what a noxious modus vivendi!
In this particular instance, Summers appears to be suggesting that Warren should shut up cease her criticism of a hugely important, $700 billion program…in order to maintain her status as an insider.
Makes you wonder what public goods Summers has bartered in order to do the same.
3 Responses
4/21/2014 3:57 pm
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/28/larry-summers-national-journal-atlantic_n_5044832.html
It seemed that Hirsh had spoken to Summers for the article. Is the criticism that Summers should have gotten to read and respond to the article pre-publication? Unusual, to say the least
4/23/2014 10:29 am
Pretty interesting. Summers complained to David (no relation to yours truly) Bradley that the author of the critical piece had not contacted him, when in fact he had. Also a “spokesperson”—why does Summers have a spokesperson—complained that “we” felt there were inaccuracies in the piece, but doesn’t say which ones.
Also worth noting that Larry Summers has appeared at at least one, but I suspect several, events sponsored by The Atlantic, and those events are likely the Atlantic’s primary source of revenue.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/2009/09/the_david_bradley_prom.html
4/23/2014 12:36 pm
Certainly proves Hirsh right when he wrote in that article, “behind the scenes, Summers has used his power to bully opponents into silence”