The Wonk Contrast

Noam Scheiber responds to a bunch of critiques of his article on the Obama wonks. It seems to me that the strongest part of the response is the one that dealt with me. "After all, didn't Bill [Clinton] employ a lot of academic economists" just like Obama does now?:

Yes, there's no question he did, and that they were influential. But the composition of your inner circle matters quite a bit, more so than who's generally in your administration or in the next circle out. Clinton did hire people like Joe Stiglitz and Larry Summers. But there was never really a first-rate academic economist in his White House inner sanctum. The Clinton insiders most concerned with the nuts and bolts of economic policy were Robert Rubin, Gene Sperling, and Bruce Reed--all very smart, capable men, but none a trained economist.

This seems like an accurate enough characterization of the situation. In a boring sort of way, I think only time will tell the actual significance of this stuff. There's nothing better to do during campaign season than try one's best to figure out how people will govern based on the available information, but the reality is that there's a lot of intrinsic uncertainty in these things. Campaign promises and pre-assembled packages of advisors are probably the best guide to what future policymaking will look like, but it's a pretty imperfect guide.

Comments

I'm not convinced that there's any distinction to be drawn here. How about Berkeley prof Laura Tyson, campaign advisor in 1992 and CEA chair in the first part of the Clinton administration?

Later on in the Clinton administration, besides Stiglitz and Summers, there was Peter Orszag in the White House.

Posted by Don Pedro | March 3, 2008 9:19 AM

Yep, Schrieber is just titling at windmills. And you generally don't want top academics doing management, especially economists. You end up with Larry Summers at Harvard.

Posted by Rob | March 3, 2008 9:22 AM

I would say, rather, that Scheiber is splitting hairs on the difference between employed and "really influential on policy". But one other thing this discussion helps to highlight (not for the first time) is the remarkably expertise-free nature of the inner AND outer Bush circles.

Posted by ask | March 3, 2008 9:31 AM

I just want to note again that I think the big news is not that academic economists are top advisors to Obama, but rather that these academic economists appear to be coming from a behavioralist point of view. That actually does have some broad implications about how they are likely to approach policymaking, although of course it remains an open question what sort of influence they will have on Obama (particularly once he is facing the need to negotiate cooperation).

In that sense, the most important part of this latest round was not Norm's response to Matt, it was Norm's response to Ezra. And by the way, Ezra also missed the point by casting this as a question of how innovative the behaviorialists around Obama might be. The fact is that the behavioralists in general have been around a long time now (formally since the 1970s, and informally back to the very beginnings of economics as a discipline). So, it is not important that people have been kicking around ideas like automatic enrollment in 401Ks or pre-filled tax forms for a long time. What is important is that these people think these ideas are the ones we should be pushing to adopt.

Posted by DTM | March 3, 2008 11:01 AM

If Obama keeps surrounding himself with academically literate people, he'll lose Petey to Nader for sure.

Posted by too many steves | March 3, 2008 11:58 AM

Obama's core economics team consists of Goolsbee of Chicago and Liebman and Cutler of Harvard. Both Liebman and Cutler served in the Clinton White House where they may or may not have been considered 'inner circle' but all in all it seems that Scheiber is trying to draw distinctions that really don't exist.

It looks like another case of Obama swoon. 'Obama! Bold enough to hire teh awesome Goolsbee!!" Well I don't find Goolsbee particularly awesome due in part to the fact that he is George Will's favorite Democratic Economist For all of Scheiber's talk about behaviorial economics there is no real world evidence that I have seen that Goolsbee has seriously taken issue with the standard orthodox classical economics characteristic of his colleagues at the U of Chicago Graduate School of Business. I am not encouraged here. Gregory Mankiw is by all accounts a brilliant academic economist. Gregory Mankiw also has a recent record of being a hack in abject service to George W. Bush, credentials aren't everything.

On the other hand I am in touch with a member of the Economists for Obama group and I know for a fact that Goolsbee is getting some input from some progressive academics and that he is at least listening, which is a good sign. But I am reserving judgement until I see the actual policy proposals out of an actual Obama Administration.

Posted by Bruce Webb | March 3, 2008 1:20 PM

Bruce,

Schreiber reports in his original article about the role Richard Thaler is playing in advising Goolsbee. I would think that constitutes "real world evidence" of the kind you mentioned.

Posted by DTM | March 3, 2008 1:39 PM

So Robert Rubin is no trained economist? He merely manages hundreds of billions of dollars, sends them this way or that, but without the insight that a trained economist could bring to the task. How sad for the giant banking/investment empire that he directs that it has to settle for Rubin's oversight, instead of getting a trained economist to do the heavy lifting.

Such presumption that a man could be relied upon by an American president for advice on a multitrillion dollar administration without being a trained economist. And all he's got to show for his presumption is a sea of earnings beyond all count.

Have I been sarcastic enough for one day, y'figure?

Posted by jeffreydj | March 3, 2008 6:23 PM