Is Obama’s Chief Economic Adviser, Austan Goolsbee, a Flip-Flopping Chameleon?
As the election of Barack Obama for President of the United States seems to be more probable with just a little more than a week before the election attention is beginning to focus on who are his advisers. His chief economic adviser is Austan Goolsbee, the Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.
Early in the campaign he drew attention to himself when a memo surfaced in March 2008 that Goolsbee secretly met with Canadian government officials at the their office in Chicago to tell them that Obama’s tough talk on NAFTA was just political. The writer of the memo, Joseph De Mora, a Canadian official, said in the memo that he was reassured that there was just political positioning underway. This put the Obama campaign on the defensive for several weeks as they had to “spin” this clandestine meeting by saying that even though it had occurred there was no softening on the Obama position. Professor Goolsbee disappeared from the public view for awhile but eventually emerged again unshaken.
Goolsbee has apparently advised Obama since at least 2004. Microeconomics is his specialty which deals the studying the behavior of consumers and businesses in how they make economic decisions. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A prolific writer, he has had many articles appear in the New York Times and Slate. Most recently he is usually the Obama surrogate who will appear on cable news or business channels to debate the benefits of the Obama economic plan.
Professor Goolsbee is a frequent critic of the lack of regulation of the Bush administration and on his television talk show appearances charismatically rants about the damage this lack of regulation has done to the economy sometimes making personal attacks. The demeanor he portrays is more characteristic of a political zealot rather than the cool objective academic disposition usually associated with academic advisers.
Unfortunately, the Professor never seems to mention in his criticisms that he too has been a advocate for deregulation of the subprime mortgage industry and in fact was one of those voices speaking against it almost 2 years ago. In March 2007 he wrote an article in the New York Times defending subprime mortgages and mocked the term “irresponsible” being used by some members of Congress regarding them. Noting that some politicians had complained about the risk since 1981 without any serious consequences having occured as predicted he discounted that risk. The article strongly warned that increasing regulation would seriously impact upon the ability of those whom the policy was meant to help in buying home. Foreclosures were occurring not due to the mortgage policy but due to local economic factors he explained.
McClatchy Newspapers quoted a description of Goolsbee by a fellow researcher in April 2008 as “I would describe him as nonideological. Whether this is good or bad for political reasons, I don’t know, but he is somebody you could easily imagine being a Democrat or a Republican — whatever he is, he is near the center”. However given his flip-flopping on the subprime mortgage issue where he now feigns passionate righteous indignation on cable T.V. and his surreptitious activities with the Canadian government, one is left at lost to explain how this could be same person?
George Will discussed Goolsbee in the Washington Post in 2007 where he noted that he listed one of his hobbies as ‘improv comedy”. Notably Mr. Will and others have noted another inconsistency in Goolsbee’s writings and his political stances about the effect of free trade. One of the tenets of the Obama economic plan is to rein in free trade to improve the domestic job market yet his chief economic adviser, Goolsbee, says that free trade really has very little to do with job loss. Instead, Goolsbee has been an advocate for improving education and the use of technological advancement as the major means to improve job growth.
Americans are used to passionate rhetoric from politicians but from their academic advisers we have a right to expect scholarly discourse uncolored by drama or prejudice. Even the recent appearance of Goolsbee before the Council of Foreign Relations was not without his theatrics. Alan Greenspan recently “came clean” about his involvement in the mortgage crisis and similarly so should Professor Goolsbee admit that he was not for regulation in the past as well. In an Obama administration, the public will not tolerate an economic adviser whose primary goal when addressing the press is to give “one-liners” and be dishonest about his history of opinion.
Tony Magaña grew up in McAllen Texas, attended Texas A&M University, holds a doctorate from Harvard University. The co-founder of Contempo Magazine has participated in Valley business for over 20 years.He is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
