Obama urged to select more business-friendly succesor to Summers
Republicans on Wednesday urged President Barack Obama to pick a more business-friendly successor to economic adviser Larry Summers, a move that would signal a shift to the center.
But a decision on Summer’s replacement is months away, a White House official said.
A day after Summers announced plans to step down as director of the National Economic Council, speculation about his replacement focused on female candidates, many of whom would bring business expertise that some say is lacking in the Obama White House.
The administration needs someone who has a “good understanding of what it takes to create private-sector jobs,” Senator Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, told Reuters in an interview.
“One of the real problems with this administration — it seems like they don’t know how. And they don’t have very many people who’ve ever tried.”
Names such as that of former Xerox Corp. chief executive Anne Mulcahy, former Clinton administration economist Laura Tyson and NEC deputy director Diana Farrell surfaced as possible replacements.
“A decision is months away,” said one White House official, adding “there are a number of names under consideration” and the list will probably continue to grow.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama would consider “a broad group of people representing a whole host of backgrounds.”
DRAMATIC CHANGE UNLIKELY
“Whether it’s a businessperson or an economist or a policy person or that, I don’t know…The president should pick whoever he’s comfortable with,” said Austan Goolsbee, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
In a Reuters interview, Goolsbee defended Obama’s economic policies over the past 18 months and said he didn’t expect “any dramatic change of direction” with the turnover in the economic team.
Summers, a former Treasury secretary, had planned to stay at the White House for a short period of time and is leaving to return to his teaching job at Harvard University.
The NEC director, a role created in the Clinton administration, takes the lead in coordinating economic policy advice to the president.
Summers’ departure at the end of the year will follow the November 2 congressional elections. Obama’s Democrats fear crushing losses amid voter frustration with the sluggish economy and 9.6 percent unemployment.
Obama would be forced to work more closely with opposition Republicans and may emphasize a more centrist message on the economy, including calls for deficit reduction, as he lays the groundwork for his re-election bid in 2012.
Source: Reuters