Every night, reporters go to bed with "guidance" from the Obama-Biden team ringing in their inboxes. On today's sched:
[T]he President-elect will hold a meeting with key members of his economic team. Attendees will include: Vice President-elect Biden, Secretary of Treasury designee Timothy Geithner, National Economic Council Director designee Lawrence Summers, Office of Management and Budget designee Peter Orszag, Council of Economic Advisors Chair designee Christina Romer, Domestic Policy Council Director designee Melody Barnes, Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change Carol Browner, Chief Economist and Economic Policy Advisor to the Vice-President designee Jared Bernstein, President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board Chair Paul Volcker, Member designee of the Council of Economic Advisers and Staff Director designee of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board Austan Goolsbee, and White House Chief of Staff designee Rahm Emanuel.
My first reaction to this is, what in God's name are all of these people actually going to do together in a room? Is flying everyone to Chicago for this dramatic meeting really the most efficient way for PEOTUS (an awkward acronym that's growing on me) to get economic advice?
But then I imagined a world where most of this discussion took place over conference calls and in smaller meetings, and some memos were drafted for the chief-executive-to-be. It would probably as effective as this mostly symbolic meeting, but it would also be less transparent and reassuring to people worried about the economy. Reporters would be dying to know what was happening, and the answers (Summers and Bernstein just had an hour-long economic argument with the president-elect, Orzag just took thirty minutes to walk the president-elect through the offsets for the 2009 budget) wouldn't be half so interesting as getting the entire team around a table for a good old-fashioned bull session. Plus, it allows for tea-leaves reading: Browner is part of the economic team now, eh? Bernstein will be attending economic team meetings, putting a progressive voice at the table. So I doubt anything will be decided today, but this meeting is a symbol that things will be decided.
-- Tim Fernholz
