WASHINGTON — A year ago the expectation was that President-elect Barack Obama’s economic team would be a smooth-functioning machine and the outlook was for turbulence in the national security arena.þþTimothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary-designate, and Lawrence H. Summers, slated to head the White House National Economic Council, were unusually able veterans of Washington and financial crises. They were joined by a star-studded cast of economic advisers, starting with a former Federal Reserve chairman, Paul A. Volcker, the most respected financial figure in the world, and prominent academic economists.þþBy contrast, the national security advisers featured Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom Mr. Obama upset to win the nomination and was still surrounded by aides who thought the wrong person won; Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, a holdover from President George W. Bush’s administration, and the national security adviser and former North Atlantic Treaty Organization commander, Gen. James L. Jones, who barely knew his new boss.þþTwelve months later this conventional wisdom has turned upside down.þþThe foreign policy team, despite a few glitches, wins high marks and is beset by less rivalry and rancor than most any administration in memory.þþThe vaunted economic team is faulted for poor coordination, drawing even the president’s ire, and an inability to convey an overarching policy.þþTwo recent anecdotes illustrate this problem. On Dec. 2, as Mr. Obama prepared to give a major economic speech at the Brookings Institution on Dec. 7, he met with policy makers. He heard a familiar reprise of the previous several meetings, with the budget director, Peter R. Orszag, arguing for more emphasis on reducing the deficit and the Council of Economic Advisers chief, Christina D. Roemer, leading the contingent espousing a greater short-term stress on jobs.þþThe president, by his standards, exploded. “Why are we having this meeting again, the same discussion?” participants quoted him as saying.þþSeveral administration insiders, prominent outside Democratic economic advisers and a few congressional heavyweights all worry this is symptomatic of a process that isn’t working well. Mr. Summers, they argue, is brilliant on policy and ill-suited for a high-level staff job, which is what the head of the National Economic Council is.þþ“If you came up with 10 words to describe Larry, coordination and collaboration would not be two,” says one person requesting anonymity who has worked with Mr. Summers extensively and admires his intellectual force.þþDavid Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s top adviser, cautions not to read too much into one meeting. “When you bring in top-flight players, strong personalities, there’s going to be issues of mediation,” he says. “The president wants strong players, he synthesizes their best thinking and the product is working.” þþStill, others say Mr. Summers too often is dismissive of fellow economic advisers, other than Mr. Geithner, although he gets a bum rap for supposedly freezing Mr. Volcker out of major decisions. The 82-year-old Mr. Volcker wants a freewheeling advisory role. But advisers acknowledge Mr. Summers rarely reaches out to include him. Mr. Volcker takes a much tougher line than Summers or Mr. Geithner toward Wall Street.þþThe other problem, an inability to effectively communicate an economic policy, was typified in a Dec. 4 interview with Mr. Geithner, who was asked what is the “clear, coherent economic message” of the administration.þþHe proceeded to talk about “high-class education” for children, affordable health care, better incentives for energy and infrastructure, public-private arrangements and the like.þþThere are 15.4 million unemployed Americans and another 11.5 million “underemployed,” either having given up looking and thus not counted in the jobless numbers or involuntarily relegated to part-time work. A laundry list of the Democrats’ agenda is unlikely to prove comforting.þþMr. Geithner, who wins praise from Mr. Obama and others for his substantive performance after a shaky start and some more recent cheap political shots, acknowledges that public communications isn’t his forte. It isn’t Mr. Summers’s either. And those who are more effective, including Mr. Roemer and his fellow Council of Economic Advisers member Austan Goolsbee, sometimes are cut out of the action. þþThe result: On the economy, Americans are losing confidence in the president, who gets little credit for policies that avoided an economic calamity and are starting to turn things around. In a survey by the Iowa pollster Ann Selzer a few weeks ago for Bloomberg News, voters by 50 percent to 45 percent disapprove of Mr. Obama’s performance on the economy; the numbers were worse on handling the budget deficit and dealing with Wall Street.þþThe best numbers were in foreign policy, including Afghanistan. The national security apparatus isn’t without problems. There has been periodic sniping at General Jones, and top deputies have different perspectives. The deputy national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, a well-regarded political operative, is seen as an extension of the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel; and a top aide, Denis McDonough, is the keeper of the Obama campaign flame.þþStill, on the big stuff, especially the decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan, Mr. Obama has been very well served by his national security team.þþMrs. Clinton has been a loyal and effective secretary of state, and the Republican holdover, Mr. Gates, has earned great respect from his commander in chief. There is almost none of the bitter infighting like that between Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in the Bush administration. These tensions have been eased in the Obama administration by the constructive role played by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on foreign affairs.þþIf the war in Afghanistan goes south, this could change. But the framework for handling tough situations is set.þþThat isn’t true with the economy. Inexplicably, Mr. Emanuel, a man with little tolerance for disarray, seems to have stayed on the sidelines here.þþIn an election year, with the dueling dilemmas of huge deficits and high unemployment, the president can’t regain credibility if saddled with a decision-making process that doesn’t work effectively and a message that lacks coherence and clarity. þ
Source: NY Times
