Adam Davidson, who writes the magazine's It's the Economy column, is the author of this week's cover article about the economists Larry Summers and Glenn Hubbard. Davidson is a founder of NPR's Planet Money, a podcast and blog. His last cover article was about the area between Washington and New York along the Amtrak line.
What surprised you most in reporting on the two leading economic thinkers for the two political parties? That the two agreed to the proposition?
I think the most striking surprise was the passion that Larry Summers raises in people, positive and negative.
His friends were incredibly effusive. Tim Geithner, Sheryl Sandberg, Bob Rubin and countless younger folks — staff members at the White House, graduate students at Harvard — told me he had been a generous, loyal mentor. Several people told me they love him. At least 20 people told me things like this. I haven't heard that kind of praise for anybody in a long time, and it was, frankly, out of keeping with the picture I had of Summers as, well, a jerk. And his friends did say he could be tough, that he demanded a high level of intellectual rigor in policy discussions. But they described a very different side, someone who was there for them at pivotal moments.
On the other hand, I heard such angry denouncements of him from some people on the left. One economist told me I shouldn't talk to him at all. He would poison my brain. Another academic told me that Summers should be barred from any role in public policy.
Glenn Hubbard, for his part, seemed to generate the same response from everyone who knows him: He's a nice guy. Some people see him as a real mentor, but didn't talk about him with the level of passion that Summers's folks did. Others disagree with him but still said they like him.
You write that you have had a fantasy of presiding over a grand bargain by the two sides. I think many people have a fantasy instead of strangling the opposite side. How do these two feel about political polarization?
We were making a strong choice by using these two guys as a vehicle for exploring the economic divide. I could have found two moderate economists who don't play a role in politics and, probably, have had a much easier time getting consensus. Summers and Hubbard are smart economists, and they are also savvy political figures. So when they debated in person and when they talked to me one on one, each seemed intensely aware of how his words could play in the political sphere. As a result, they had little interest in actually resolving political issues, since any solution they came up with would, immediately, be used to pressure their political allies.
I think these two men — probably more than any other economists of their generation — think of their roles both as truth-seeking academics and changing the world through the messy business of politics. Which is to say, they play a role in fighting for and against the polarization that drives us all nuts.
What was the social dynamic at the meeting?
Certainly polite and certainly not warm, I would say. They've known each other for decades and have spent much of their lives sitting in rooms not agreeing with other very smart people. They're pros at disagreeing. That's what I felt. It's really impressive watching two practiced minds go at it so openly. There wasn't much anger that I picked up on. It was, for the most part, workmanlike, straightforward and intellectually aggressive.
You highlight the similar training that both Summers and Hubbard received and the fact that they are often analyzing the same data. Does it seem that both of their (very different) analyses are academically defensible?
They are certainly academically defensible. They've both written many papers that have been academically defended through the peer-review process and are used as references in lots of subsequent papers. I believe Summers is one of the most highly cited economists alive and, I think, Hubbard is, as well, in the field of tax policy.
This has been a mini-obsession of mine for a long time: how can economists think such different things? I think partly it's the questions different economists ask. And partly it's the nature of economics. They can't run randomized trials or repeat studies. You can't do the Great Depression 20 different times to test different government policies. All you can do is look at the complicated mix of human behavior and try to piece out a story.
Unlike physics, economists don't settle things. There seems to be plenty of room for different conclusions that are still accepted in the academy.
Some readers have suggested that the answer to the question posed by the article — which economist has better ideas — is "neither." Does it seem likely that any other star economists from the left or the right could take either of their places?
We are not defining Hubbard and Summers as the only two intellectually defensible options. We're not saying the truth lies in either one's story. We are saying — and I think it's demonstrably true — that they roughly define the politically realistic realm of policy outcomes.
I love talking to lots of economists with lots of provocative ideas. But we have a status-quo-biased system. Things don't change that quickly or radically. We're not going to a gold standard. We're not eliminating the Fed. We're not breaking up all the big banks, and we're not turning America into a European-style social democracy. However good or bad any of these ideas — and countless others proposed by other economists — none of them are going to happen.
I don't think that much change comes from economists. I think it comes more from political realities. Probably the two giants of the 20th century, who actually did shift government policy in the U.S. and around the world, were John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman. I don't see anybody in our system who is at that level of influence. Summers probably comes the closest.
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