Commenter Steggles asked me to respond to a passage in Elizabeth Warren’s new book: A Fighting Chance. It involves a dinner Warren had with Larry Summers in the spring of 2009. Here it is:
A telling anecdote involves a dinner that Ms. Warren had with Lawrence H. Summers, then the director of the National Economic Council and a top economic adviser to President Obama. The dinner took place in the spring of 2009, after the oversight panel had produced its third report, concluding that American taxpayers were at far greater risk to losses in TARP than the Treasury had let on.
After dinner, “Larry leaned back in his chair and offered me some advice,” Ms. Warren writes. “I had a choice. I could be an insider or I could be an outsider. Outsiders can say whatever they want. But people on the inside don’t listen to them. Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas. People — powerful people — listen to what they have to say. But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: They don’t criticize other insiders.
“I had been warned,” Ms. Warren concluded.
Most of the attention paid to this passage has focused on the last part of what Summers said. The idea that insiders don’t criticize insiders comes across as a rebuke of Warren for daring to criticize the Treasury Department. If people are afraid to give their honest analysis for fear of contradicting some other arm of the government, that’s a problem.
But, that doesn’t mean that the first part of Summers’ comment wasn’t true and important. If you want to have a real impact on policy, you have to be an insider or, at least, gain the insiders’ trust. You can stay on the outside and lob bombs at everyone but that will have minimal effectiveness. Sen. Warren seems to have gotten the message. She’s the senior senator from Massachusetts now, and she is in a position to impact policy. Other insiders have to listen to her. I’m glad she seems to have disregarded the part of Summers argument that was stupid and to have accepted the part that was wise.
This is an example for progressives everywhere.