CHICAGO---When Barack Obama unveiled two more economic team members Wednesday, he suggested why he'll not be shocked, shocked, shocked with Wall Street realities after Jan. 20, as was a newbie President Clinton, who famously harrumphed, "You mean my entire fiscal plan depends on a bunch of f--bond traders?"
The comment, quoted in Bob Woodward's 1994 "The Agenda," symbolized a tension between ideology and realpolitik. For Obama, there is unlikely to be a similar volcanic eruption inspired by belated recognitions, despite the nattering to his left about campaign promises. His biggest problems may be temporal ones, namely the challenges of meeting unreasonable timetables.
There behind him was venerable Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, hands thrust in pants pockets, looking almost blasé. He seemed like a financial world counterpart to another 81-year-old, Joe Paterno, the legendary Penn State football coach, who's seen everything in his universe and remains a winner. Paterno sometimes watches his team from a stadium skybox, somewhat the same, larger vantage point Obama seeks from Volcker in running a new Economic Recovery Advisory Board.
Volcker, the hulking security blanket, will be assisted by Austan Goolsbee, a very bright and level-headed University of Chicago economist, who was also unveiled, also as if a museum piece, also not allowed to take questions. Goolsbee was born in 1969, the year Volcker was named Under-secretary of the Treasury for monetary affairs. Obama bypassed him for a bigger job Monday but, desirous of his services, assuaged a longtime loyalist by giving him two separate posts.
As Obama noted, the new board is modeled after a still-existing one President Dwight Eisenhower conceived for the intelligence community. That's both a precedent and a potential source of dyspepsia, given the arguably disastrous recent history of U.S. intelligence. But a sound premise remains when it comes to soliciting advice from smart folks not tied to the Washington "group think" and "echo chamber" Obama cited Wednesday.
Once again, Obama strayed from specifics, along the way using both the increasingly "in" (among Democrats) lingo of "economic recovery plan" and "out" reference to a "stimulus." President Bush is still running the show, with assist from frequently cartwheeling Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson; meaning Obama is in a real box.
It's a box made more difficult by all of us in the media, as one was reminded Wednesday. There was all the live coverage, the instant analysis, the quick inspection of the Dow's response, the image of traders in Hong Kong watching on CNN International, or that of venture capitalists in Jakarta staring at their Bloomberg terminals.
The new Fox News business channel felt compelled to instantly inform viewers that a reporter's question to Obama was factually wayward since the Saturday before Christmas, not the Friday after Thanksgiving, is the year's biggest shopping day. As my five-year-old would say, "Sorreeeeeeee!!" Dwight Eisenhower had a bit more breathing room.
The whole information-saturated environment surely makes us all more vulnerable to the craving for instant answers. All the competition, now unavoidably linked to our genuine fear about jobs and our individual financial futures, doesn't make for the clearest of thinking. Many financial pundits, print and cable, should hope that tape libraries and databases destroy most of their unequivocal declarations of the past year.
So Obama did the most he could do here Wednesday, in advance of so many families congregating and mulling this mess as they pass the gravy Thursday. He tried to look confident, not pretentious or precipitous, as he tried to convince us again to do what's almost impossible right now, be patient.
"People should understand that help is on the way," he said.