If Janet Yellen is sworn in next February as the 15th leader of the Federal Reserve, she’ll owe Lawrence Summers a thank-you card.
Until a few months ago, Ms. Yellen had been widely seen as President Barack Obama’s no-brainer choice to lead the central bank.
She would be the first woman to head the Fed since it was created a century ago, relieving criticism about Mr. Obama’s track record in nominating women to top posts. Her Democratic credentials are as good as they get for a policymaker with her experience, including years as a top White House economic official in the late-1990s boom years. Her selection would mark continuity at the Fed, maintaining the Ben Bernanke policies that are supporting a weak U.S. economy amid destructive budget battles between Congress and the White House.
Then Larry Summers showed up.
White House allies of the former Treasury secretary — largely people who once worked for him — advocated for him internally and externally. Obama himself signaled his appreciation of Mr. Summers, a close adviser since the 2008 Obama campaign. Stories about the mesmerizing Summers intellect helped shift the conversation. Some reporters — but not all of them — and Wall Street analysts (taking cues from some reporters) came to expect a Summers nomination as most likely even though Mr. Obama had passed him over three other times for top posts.
As the world started bracing for a Summers nomination, forces on the left rose up with 21st-century pitchforks. Democratic senators petitioned the White House, an unusual act of rebellion against an already embattled Democratic president. An army of academic economists stepped forward to push for Ms. Yellen. Activists activated their networks.
It didn’t take long for them to push Mr. Summers over the cliff. One by one, the senators who mattered sent a message that others in the White House already knew: Summers could not be confirmed. Some twisted his record to do it, but they got the message across.
Democratic senators want Ms. Yellen to be the first Democrat to lead the Fed since Paul Volcker left a quarter-century ago. And after seeing the alternative, they’ll fight even harder to make sure she gets confirmed. Plenty of Senate Republicans will surely vote against her, opposed to the easy-money policies she has advocated at Mr. Bernanke’s side. But Senate Democrats will be energized to watch her back.
When Ms. Yellen steps into the White House’s East Room at 3 p.m. Wednesday, alongside Mssrs. Bernanke and Obama, her smile will not reveal how she probably felt six weeks ago. She did not expect to become the Fed chief.
White House aides, through the press, made it look like she would be returning to California. She probably won’t be, at least until her four-year term as chairwoman ends in 2018.
If this had been a strategy of misdirection by the White House, it couldn’t have worked out much better for Mr. Obama. His team might look politically naïve for even considering the nomination of someone — Mr. Summers — whose prospects should have appeared dim from the start. But in the end, the White House’s Summers debacle helps ensure Mr. Obama will get a central bank chief committed to propping up the U.S. economy while a dysfunctional political system — in the middle of a shutdown and debt-ceiling fight — keeps pushing in the other direction.
For a president who claims to care more about the end result than winning style points, he’ll get what he might have expected all along.
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