A wartime consigliere for Obama

In "The Godfather" the Corleones discuss whether Tom, their hanai brother, is the right advisor, or consigliere, for a time of mob war. Maybe, one of the hotter-headed brothers says, we need a wartime consigliere. This is an interesting concept -- that optimal characteristics of personality and character may be different in normal times than abnormal ones. It is a concept that appears to be in Barack Obama's mind, as he names what strikes me as a wartime economic team. The war consigliere is Paul Volcker. Volcker was Federal Reserve chairman during the Carter administration and the first Reagan administration. He and the other Fed governors reined in the money supply to bring inflation down from more than 13% to 3% in less than three years, at the cost of a recession which briefly produced the highest unemployment of any time since the Great Depression. No one needs to trigger a recession to curb inflation now. We already have a recession. We learned this week that it started over the summer (in other words, total economic activity shrank during the third quarter) and it is surely still going on. But the point is that Volcker was in the Fed hot seat for the last major recession and knows more than most people about how one works. By making Volcker head of his advisory economic panel, the president-elect obtains his advice without tying him down with duties by reappointing him to the Fed. In brief, the 81-year-old Volcker is his consigliere. Very smart. Similarly, Lawrence Summers has been chosen to be head of the Council on Economic Advisors, which means he can be a thinker on the administration's behalf without being a mouthpiece. Summers is notoriously stupid at being a mouthpiece. He resigned the presidency of Harvard after remarking that women aren't as good at math as men. He wrote a memo at the World Bank describing Africa as underpolluted. As a diplomat or politician he's not ready for prime time and never will be. Better to give him an office and direct access to the Oval Office from time to time and order him not to appear on "Face the Nation." Another choice also strikes me as smart. A recessionary economy generates lower tax revenues, and the federal government has been pouring megabillions into a war on terrorism, the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, and now the war on the economic crisis. Spending cuts cannot be avoided. "Not an option...a necessity," Obama said. Exactly. So how does one effectively cut so large and complicated a budget? Obama is tapping someone who has run the Congressional Budget Office to be his budget director. Excellent. He'll know where the sacred cows are and how sacred they are. An outside fiscal surgeon would think solely in terms of the economy and wouldn't realize until the screaming started that certain comparatively affordable items ought to be left alone.