Fixing the bank system is obviously the One Big Thing in the short-term. If that goes down, so too does our economy. But the articles attacking the Obama administration's broad ambitions haven't quite clarified why a fix for the banking system is more likely if Obama declines to address climate change, health care, and education. The fix for the banks will be built in the Treasury Department. The climate change, health care, and education proposals will not be. When the amended banking proposal is finally presented, the markets will presumably respond to the merits of the plan. It's hard to imagine them changing their response because Obama wants to change Pell Grants to mandatory money. This is the problem with thinking of the presidency primarily in terms of the president. The better question is to ask whether this is too much for the federal bureaucracy to engage. The education work is largely going on inside the Department of Education. The health reform efforts are sucking up staffers from the OMB, some staffers on he National Economics Council, some staffers on the Domestic Policy Council, and some staffers at the Department of Health and Human Services. The banking reforms are primarily a conversation between the Treasury Department, the Council of Economic Advisers, and some members of the National Economic Council. And so on for all the initiatives. You're dealing with a vast bureaucracy pursuing a number of priorities across an array of different agencies. Taking education off the agenda would not necessarily free up a lot of resources for the banking fix. And though all these different agenda items are certainly sucking up Obama's time, it's not clear that a non-specialist president devoting 24/7 to the banking issue would actually speed the development of an incredibly delicate and technical policy, the details of which he has limited involvement in. Indeed, in this case, would faster even be better?
THE PRESIDENT CAN'T MULTITASK, BUT THE BUREAUCRACY CAN.
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