Timothy Geithner may be musing about stepping down as Treasury secretary but President Barack Obama has ample reason to try to talk him out of it, not least that doing so would avoid a bruising succession battle.
Given the poisonous political atmosphere on Capitol Hill, getting a new Treasury chief through Senate nomination hearings and a vote in which some Republican support would almost certainly be needed would be a struggle in itself.
Beyond that, the process of choosing a successor would create a stage for the administration’s Republican opponents to highlight the economy’s continuing woes just as Obama prepares for a tough 2012 reelection bid.
Simply finding a candidate to bridge some of the divide between the White House and Republican lawmakers and to deal with a business community coming under tougher regulatory scrutiny would be a challenge. “The person can’t have a blackened soul from Wall Street’s sins, but also can’t be a Democratic hack,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
Obama thinks Geithner has done an excellent job and wants him to stay, and analysts say the president has plenty of reasons to try to persuade him to do so.
William Cline, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute, says he thinks it is premature to talk about Geithner leaving. “I think we’re not fully out of the financial crisis yet, and so for that reason you want someone at Treasury who is fully conversant with all the crisis issues,” he said.
OBAMA’S POLICIES ON TRIAL
Geithner is the last of Obama’s original economic team, a trusted adviser who came in during early 2009 to help steer the economy out of the worst of the 2007-2009 financial crisis and into what is still a fragile recovery. He is considering stepping down when an agreement to hike the nation’s $14.3 trillion debt limit is finally reached, according to sources familiar with his thinking. The sources said he has not made a final decision.
