Inside Obama's economic crusade

    Part of reassuring markets that he has Obama's ear means distancing himself from Paulson, his Bush administration mentor and fellow Dartmouth grad. And so far that's exactly what Geithner is doing, not only in policy changes he says will bring the accountability and transparency that had been missing in past months, but also in how he presents his life story.

    Three days before unveiling his new financial rescue package, Geithner traveled to Williamsburg, Va., to persuade a closed session of Democratic lawmakers that he is not a creature of Wall Street. He told them he was the son of a Navy pilot and a teacher, that he tended bar and washed dishes to work his way through school, and that he is married to a social worker and sends his kids to public school.

    As president of the New York Federal Reserve, Geithner made $411,200 last year and spent much of his time earning the trust of Wall Street titans. But in front of Democratic lawmakers, he stressed his credentials as a longtime public servant who was "deeply offended" by what he has witnessed on Wall Street.

    In their rush to action, Team Obama doesn't mind leaving critics on the roadside because of an über-confidence that the facts are on their side. Goolsbee, an economist who has been at Obama's side since day one of the campaign, likes to call the economic team "data dogs" who bring post-partisanship to policymaking because they are driven by evidence rather than ideology. But Greg Mankiw, the Harvard economist who chaired Bush's CEA for two years - and who counts many of Obama's picks as friends - offers a more politically charged label: Keynesians, after the British economist who championed interventionist policy. "They are extremely committed Keynesians," he says. "I hope they show the requisite humility that not all economists share their view."

    I asked Romer if she would apply the label Keynesian to herself, and she reacted the way many successful women today refuse the title feminist. "I think it's an old-fashioned term," she says. "If that's how you define Keynesian - that changes in government purchases are going to matter, then absolutely. But it's based on empirical research rather than what I read or what I was taught in graduate school."

    On an afternoon in early February, Larry Summers emerges from an hour-long meeting with Barney Frank, chair of the House Financial Services Committee and one of the few House lawmakers whose brain wattage is on a par with his. As the President's advisor stands in the hallway conferring with aides, the rumpled figure of Frank flies out the door to offer one last thought on their meeting, which covered everything from TARP's new foreclosure plan to changes in financial regulation. They part ways with cracks about "being bipartisan" that have a sarcastic tone.

    "No comment," says Summers when I ask about it. In fairness, one could overhear the same kinds of conversations among Republican lawmakers. Just weeks after Obama came into office promising an end to bitter partisanship, there is deep distrust on both sides. Part of the problem is that all of Obama's conciliatory rhetoric can't gloss over the fact that there are serious divisions between Republicans and Democrats on the role of the federal government. To Team Obama, the onset of the financial crisis only proves their argument that Americans need a more muscular federal government. "I think events have emphasized for us that while the market system is self-stabilizing most of the time, it is not self-stabilizing all the time," says Summers.

    The President's first budget, expected to be unveiled by budget director Peter Orszag within weeks, will chart much of the administration's ambitious course beyond stimulus and TARP - and it will be a document that Obama's own shop, not Congress, produces. "In his budget the President is going to lay down markers around his seriousness on all the major issues," notes Summers.

    It's likely that the decisions and debates on these issues - ranging from health-care reform to what government programs should be cut to ease the deficit - will keep on coming at Congress at mind-numbing speed. The President wouldn't have it any other way.