First of all, no. Obama will not, and should not, tap John McCain's chief economic adviser as his OMB director. A crazier set of incentives one cannot imagine. But the bigger question is why Howard Gleckman thinks this a good idea. I'm a big fan of Gleckman's writing for the careful and merciless analysis he brings to both the Obama and McCain campaigns. And I get that Gleckman isn't a progressive and would like someone to tamp down on Obama's more liberal instincts. But Gleckman's primary theme on the McCain campaign's economic policy has been its extraordinary vagueness, internal incoherence, and frequent hackishness. Just going through my RSS reader, we get recent examples here and here and here and here and here and here. And those are just the recent posts in my RSS reader. Doug Holtz-Eakin is the chief economic adviser on the McCain campaign. He is one of the campaign's primary economic surrogates. I've watched him defend these policies at forums moderated by Gleckman, and watched the incredulity pass over Gleckman's face as Holtz-Eakin went on and on with baseline gimmickry and depreciation analyses the everyone knew were wrong -- that Holtz-Eakin has, in past lives, called wrong. You can argue that this is a campaign and Holtz-Eakin is just doing his job, but it's a job he's chosen to do: The guy doesn't lack for alternate employment opportunities. So here's my question: How much political hackishness is required before its incorporated into someone's broader reputation? You see the same effect with Holtz-Eakin's boss, McCain. The common defense is that this is a campaign and hackishness is required, but these guys aren't looking for corporate jobs that will take them far from Washington. We're talking about the presidency, which is a political position that spends about half its time in campaign mode. I had sort of assumed that this race would have done real damage to Holtz-Eakin's reputation, and I guess I'm wrong, but I really can't figure out why.
