Washington Post

Treasury's Salesman-in-Training

By Eugene Robinson
Friday, February 13, 2009; Page A17

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will get much better at making his case to Congress and the American people. I'm confident in that prediction because after watching his debut this week, I don't see how he could get much worse.

Reviews of Geithner's performance in rolling out the Obama administration's financial rescue plan were so uniformly negative that to add my own would be piling on. Too much of the criticism, in any event, focused on style rather than substance. Geithner will inevitably become more comfortable speaking from a witness chair on Capitol Hill, which means he will begin to sound more confident and authoritative. The fact that he looks so young -- kind of like "Doogie Howser, Cabinet secretary" -- is something that he's going to have to learn to use to his benefit and that we're just going to have to get used to.

What I hope he learned this week is how closely Americans are following the economic crisis and how angry they are. Geithner rose to prominence in the financial world at a time when it was assumed that brainiacs were running economic policy in Washington and major financial institutions on Wall Street. What did it matter that no one understood a word Alan Greenspan said? There was no need for regular folks to worry about the details.

To put it mildly: Wrong.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/12/AR2009021203013.html