The Washington Post’s David Cho and Alec McGillis take a look at the economic team Barack Obama assembled this week and wonder how Obama can make quick decisions with so many different voices. One issue is who is at the top: Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner or National Economic Council head Larry Summers?

Indeed, there is a fear that Summers could become a Dick Cheney or David Addington figure (hopefully with less disastrous results) who essentially drives the president’s decision-making at the expense of input from other top-level officials. Obama, though, (not to put too fine of a point on it) is much smarter and a much better listener than George W. Bush.

But while Summers and Geithner will surely disagree on some key tactical points, there’s not the intellectual diversity here for truly conflicting policy directions. Only Paul Volcker, head of the newly created Economic Recovery Advisory Board, is not a protégé of Robert Rubin.

There is no liberal economist to question the ultimate good of deregulation, free trade and institutions like the World Trade Organization and World Bank. There’s also no economist, liberal or conservative, who has questioned the overarching government response to the financial crisis.-MB

Time’s Michael Scherer takes a look at the immense importance of the Center for American Progress saying "it is difficult to overstate the influence in Obamaland of CAP." The five year-old mega-think tank was founded by John Podesta who now heads Obama’s transition teams. Incoming Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Daschle is a charter CAP member. And CAP’’s 600-page Change for America is basically a blueprint to run the Obama presidency.

I think I agree more with the recent assessment by the American Prospect’s Dayo Olopade that’s a touch more skeptical of CAP’s sway. For one, the Obama campaign laid out a set of policies distinct from the CAP line of policies. Related, what are the CAP line of policies? Daschle has (positively) called CAP not a think tank but an "action tank" and that sounds right. I’m not sure if CAP has recently distinguished itself with any novel policy prescriptions.

Also, Obama has stocked his economic team with the proverbial best and the brightest (Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Paul Volcker) regardless of their establishment progressive bona fides. There is Melody Barnes, CAP executive vice-president as the new Domestic Policy Council. But in general Obama is choosing his cabinet on more traditional ideas of Washington meritocracy.  CAP is a big influence and part of that meritocracy. But I don’t think they’ve dictated his transition.-MB

Paul Volcker will head a new White House economic advisory board, reports the Wall Street Journal’s Johnathan Weisman. The 81 year-old Volcker, the Federal Reserve chairman in the 1980’s, will head the Economic Recovery Advisory Board, intended to help dig the country out of a recession. Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist and prominent Obama campaign adviser, will be the board’s staff director.

A high-profile pick like Volcker for this new position could be shrewd since Volcker might have the confidence and gravitas to challenge Larry Summers, who will be head of the National Economic Council.

A separate question about Obama’s economic team is what will be the role of current Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman Sheila Bair. The Journal’s Damien Paletta notes that Bair has often clashed with incoming Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, most recently over the Citigroup bailout.

Few have acquitted themselves as well as Bair during the financial crisis. She has been a needed voice of skepticism about Treasury’s bailout fever. And she’s pushed a concrete plan to help homeowners, despite Henry Paulson’s objections.

"Team of rivals" is not just painful cliché. It’s also inaccurate, at least in terms of describing Obama’s economics appointments. Keeping Bair, though, would indicate that Obama is serious about hearing viewpoints that might veer from the Geithner, Summers status quo.-MB

That’s the figure the New York Times’ Edmund Andrews gives for how much the federal government has either invested, loaned or guaranteed in order to mitigate the economic crisis (the size of the entire U.S. economy is about $15 trillion). The latest action by the Treasury Dept. and Federal Reserve is to guarantee $800 billion in lending programs. This includes backing car loans, student loans, credit card debt and small business loans.

It seems almost quaint now when the Bush administration and Congress were locked in a battle on a $700 billion financial crisis. The problems of the mortgage markets have now impacted the entire economy. Tim Geithner will soon replace Henry Paulson as Treasury Secretary, but it seems everyday that Paulson is making a momentous decision. One question is if he’s making them with the input of President Bush who is rarely mentioned in these financial rescue articles.-MB

What with the financial crisis and election, Understanding Government has gotten away from a favorite item: The Food and Drug Administration needs more money! Now! The Washington Post’s Rob Stein reminds us that the agency has a $2 billion budget to oversee food and drug products that make up 1/4 of all U.S. consumer spending. The agency has had a series of sensational mishaps, but it is also generally plagued by a lack of leadership, resources, and, for the past eight years, an administration that didn’t believe in the agency’s mission.

FDA is especially unresponsive to a changing marketplace where many drugs are now made in China.  This has lead to calls for inspectors at these Chinese plants as well as inspectors at U.S. ports of entry.

But, as I learned writing my report on the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a related agency with related problems, there are simply not enough resources to investigate the entire consumer supply chain. FDA would be wiser to invest its money in labs that will test drugs when they come to America instead of trying to game an often maze-like production and distribution system.-MB

The Washington Post’s Michael D. Shear and Ann Scott Tyson tell us that Defense Secretary Robert Gates will remain atop the Pentagon for at least another year. Barack Obama wants him as Sec Def, though the Obama administration is expected to replace other political appointees at the Pentagon. The heart of the national security line-up has now been decided: Gates, Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, and former NATO commander James Jones as National Security Adviser.

The next months and years will determine whether these are good choices. But I don’t quite understand the infatuation so many in Washington have with Gates. I guess the case for Gates is–to paraphrase Obama campaign adviser Richard Danzig– that he did pretty good in the down and out Bush administration so he could do even better in the Obama administration.

To be sure, Gates has done some interesting and important things like slam the Air Force weapons budget. But he has hardly been a courageous dissenting voice on Iraq or Pentagon-authorized torture. Like Obama, though, he wants more troops in Afghanistan. And like Obama, he’s failed to articulate why more troops will remedy that quagmire.-MB

The new president needs to understand the civil service. Republicans tend to come in with a hostile attitude toward career civil servants, and Democrats with too rosy a view. The truth is that while there are some civil servants who are both talented and dedicated, there are others who are mediocre time servers and a few who are downright incompetent.

New blood is desperately needed at all levels, so the president and the agency heads he appoints must make a major effort to attract able people to the career service. He should know that when civil servants are left to their own devices, instead of aggressively recruiting the best talent available, they prefer filling vacancies by promoting from within, and hiring from the ranks of their friends, a practice known as the buddy system. So any push to recruit outside talent has to come from the president and his agency heads.

Reprinted by permission from The Washington Monthly.

Like the Obama transition, Bill Clinton’s transition team was preoccupied with a faltering economy. But the crisis wasn’t as bad and Clinton also found himself tackling a disparate mix of other issues. One such subject was whether gays can serve in the military. Clinton pledged in his campaign to lift a ban on gays in the military, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff strongly objected, claiming it would harm "unit cohesion." The result is the tortured "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy that allows only closeted gays to serve.

Writing at the New Republic, Nathaniel Frank makes the case that now is the time to end "don’t ask, don’t tell." The American public– and its Congress– are significantly less prejudiced against gays than in 1993. And military leaders opposed to gay service members increasingly admit their opposition is about personal values, not military cohesion.

Frank argues that ending "don’t ask, don’t tell" could benefit national security: the military urgently needs more personnel yet is turning perfectly qualified people away on the basis of their sexuality. A related argument is that it could make people of all sexualities take a more favorable view toward the armed services. It seems self-destructive in 2008 for any public institution to still discriminate on the basis of sexuality.-MB

The Washington Post’s Josh White and William Branigan report that Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama Bin Laden’s former driver, will be sent in the next 48 hours to Yemen from Guantanamo Bay. Hamdan has been detained at Guantanamo since January 2002 as an "enemy combatant."

But when a military commissions trial was conducted this summer, they found that Hamdan was nothing more than Bin Laden’s driver– not someone in the loop about terrorist plots. He was sentenced to 66 months in prison, but his 61 months already spent at Guantanamo were counted. Hamdan will serve out the rest of his sentence in Yemen until Dec. 27. Then he’ll be free, or at least free enough to see his wife and two children, one of whom he has never met.-MB

The Washington Post’s Lyndsey Layton looks at the problems Obama’s yet to be named Transportation Dept. secretary will inherit: an inadequate national highway trust fund which is the dept’s main funding source, a disjointed Amtrak rail system, the need to repair about 12,000 bridges, and the need to modernize the air traffic control system. The new Transportation Secretary also has to work with Congress on a new five-year bill for cash for transportation projects. The current spending bill of $286 billion expires in September.

One problem with the highway trust fund is that the gas tax is not adjusted for inflation and has stayed at 18.4 cents per gallon for 15 years. By relying on this gas tax, the Dept. is giving states more money than it’s taking in.

Layton does not go into how Barack Obama’s proposed economic stimulus plan may impact national transportation policy. A big part of the estimated $500-700 billion is expected to go to infrastructure improvements.-MB