Obama's Choice For Education: Reform or Status Quo?

New York magazine reporter John Heilman, on the Chris Matthews show this morning, suggested Obama's going for reform. I hope he goes for big time reform.

David Brooks mulls the choices for education secretary: Arne Duncan, Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, someone else:

On the one hand, there are the reformers like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, who support merit pay for good teachers, charter schools and tough accountability standards. On the other hand, there are the teachers’ unions and the members of the Ed School establishment, who emphasize greater funding, smaller class sizes and superficial reforms.
In public, Obama shifted nimbly from camp to camp while education experts studied his intonations with the intensity of Kremlinologists. Sometimes, he flirted with the union positions. At other times, he practiced dog-whistle politics, sending out reassuring signals that only the reformers could hear.

Each camp was secretly convinced that at the end of the day, Obama would come down on their side. The reformers were cheered when Obama praised a Denver performance pay initiative. The unions could take succor from the fact that though Obama would occasionally talk about merit pay, none of his actual proposals contradicted their positions.

Obama never had to pick a side. That is, until now. There is only one education secretary, and if you hang around these circles, the air is thick with speculation, anticipation, anxiety, hope and misinformation. Every day, new rumors are circulated and new front-runners declared. It’s kind of like being in a Trollope novel as Lord So-and-So figures out to whom he’s going to propose.

Arne Duncan in action:

Michelle Rhee:

Joel Klein:

Larry Summers For Obama Treasury Secretary?

On the Chris Matthews Show, John Heilman of the New Yorker suggested, under Obama, Larry Summers could replace Hank Paulson as treasury secretary. Summers served as treasury secretary with Bill Clinton.

Heilman also said that Obama is further along in the transition from campaign to White House than any one knows. McCain mocks that. He says Obama is measuring for drapes. It just underlines Obama's smarts and intentions to hit the ground running.

A Q&A with Summers:

Lloyd Grove: So, first of all, what's your reaction to what has happened with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?

Larry Summers: Oh, it's a sad story. Something like what Secretary Paulson did was almost certainly necessary, given the problems the economy and those firms found themselves in. To have allowed the general financial failure of those firms would've been to invite catastrophe in financial markets, the housing markets, and the economy. It's a sad thing that things came to this point, and it's a reflection of the eight years of relatively unsuccessful economic performance that has fed through the financial system and the housing market. It's a reflection of the special interests that, over many years, created the "heads I win, tails people lose" privatized-gain-socialized-loss formula for the G.S.E.'s (government-sponsored enterprises, like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). And, in a different way, it's a reflection of the fact that their regulator was cheerleading for their capital adequacy until the very absolute last moment. So while it's often said that success has many fathers and failure is an orphan, this unfortunate episode probably does have a fair number of parents.

L.G.: Are you one of them?

L.S.: Um, I hope not! During my time as secretary of the Treasury, to the outrage of a very large number of lobbyists in both political parties, I spoke out about the G.S.E.'s as a potential source of systemic risk, and raised questions about the adequacy of the regulatory framework within which they were operating, and pressed for clearer procedures to deal with any financial problems that they might have. Unfortunately, I was sorry at the time that there wasn't more Congressional responsiveness to those expressions of concern.