An Interesting Analysis of Obama and Geithner

Mark Ames, of the ExileD, has a piece on Alternet which provides some very interesting theories about the President and the Treasury Secretary.

Generally, I consider this analysis to be of little use, though it can be interesting, and I think that this applies to this analysis.

His thesis is that Obama and Geithner will avoid conflict, even when avoiding conflict is an immoral thing to do.

In the case of Geithner, Ames uses his actions in the case of the racist Dartmouth review:

The Review lambasted what it called Dartmouth's liberal bias and its minority admission policies, riling many students. During gatherings in which some students said D'Souza should be attacked, Geithner calmed them down, proposing that they start an alternative publication, says Rudelson, the former roommate. Geithner kept his distance from the new publication, called the Harbinger, occasionally taking photos for it.

In the case of Obama, it's a conflict over affirmative action at the law review:

Presiding over an assembly of 60 mostly white editors in a law school classroom, Obama listened to impassioned pleas and pressed conservatives to explain their reasoning and liberals to sharpen their thinking. But he never spoke about his own point of view or mentioned that he believed he had benefited from affirmative action. "If anybody had walked by, they would have assumed he was a professor," said Thomas J. Perrelli, a classmate and former counsel to Attorney General Janet Reno. "He was leading the discussion but he wasn't trying to impose his own perspective on it. He was much more mediating."

Obama was so evenhanded and solicitous in his interactions that fellow students would do impressions of his Socratic chin-stroking approach to everything, even seeking a consensus on popcorn preferences at the movies. "Do you want salt on your popcorn?" one classmate, Nancy L. McCullough, recalled, mimicking his sensitive bass voice. "Do you even want popcorn?"

So Ames thesis is that these are people who are fundamentally unwilling to participate in a confrontation, and instead will go through back-flips to avoid it.

It may be true.

It may be that Obama and Geithner actually believe in the rather right wing ideas that they have put forward in terms of financial reform and healthcare.

I don't know, you don't know, Mark Ames doesn't know.

And at the end of the day, it does not matter unless you could use this information to make them do the right thing.

The question, "Why are they governing like this?" is the wrong question.

The right question is, "What levers and tolls can be used to get them to do the right thing?"

Still, it's a good read. Ames both provocative and eminently readable.