“BOY I WISH WE HAD ONE OF THOSE (JACK LEW) MACHINES!”

2/22/13

The Wall Street Journal has almost caught up to Mighty Quinn on Politics and Money (“MQPM”) in this morning’s very clever and insightful lead editorial on Jack Lew entitled “Forrest Gump at Treasury.”  See my 2/12/13 post JACK LEW’S LUCRATIVE SABBATICAL AND THE ENVY OF THE GOVERNING CLASS for the real story on Jack Lew’s apparently, but not really, difficult confirmation hearings for the big job at the Treasury.

The Journal recounts Mr. Lew’s various adventures at NYU, where he was paid more than the University’s president to be “executive vice-president for operations,” and at Citicorp, where no one seems to know what Mr. Lew did for an even more lucrative compensation package.   The Journal also mentions that Mr. Lew will get a pass from the Democrats for engaging in the types of conduct they normally find reprehensible…if engaged in by Republicans and big business types not purified by “public service.”   Such activities include opening Cayman Island bank accounts, receiving astronomical pay packages from bailed out institutions, accepting “kickbacks” for directing students to favored loan providers and generally making lots of money.   Most Democrats consider the last a cardinal sin if the money was not made in connection with some “higher pubic purpose.”   See my 2/20/13 post THE PRIVATE SECTOR’S ROLE IN “MODERN” CHICAGO:  SHUT UP AND PAY for examples of acceptable ways to make big money.

The Journal, however, never really gets to the major point concerning Mr. Lew.   If Mr. Lew, and his nominal inquisitors, were to be honest, they would all admit that what Mr. Lew was doing at NYU and at Citi had little or nothing to do with actual work.  What Mr. Lew was doing was selling the influence he had garnered through years of slopping at the public trough.   He was selling his ability to have his phone calls to Washington returned.   The titles he held were mere fluff and window dressing; he was a pol cashing in on his years of “public service.”   As such, he was following a proud tradition, indeed what is becoming a normal career path, for politicasters of both parties.   Rahm Emanuel, Frank Raines (indeed, the entire “management team” at Fannie Mae.  And we wonder why Fannie and Freddie Mac went belly up.   But I digress.), Dick Cheney, Gerald Ford…the list is too long to enumerate and is growing every day.

Since virtually every one of Mr. Lew’s inquisitors, on both sides of the aisle, either have or hope to follow Mr. Lew into a career of selling influence and calling it work “in the private sector,” they will furrow their eyebrows, cluck their tongues, and preen for the cameras.   But they will approve Mr. Lew’s nomination lest the light they throw shine back at them.