James Fallows ponders why former OMB Director Peter Orszag’s new position at Citibank has attracted virtually no media attention (by the way, I guess the Orszagasm folks are going to have to find something else to do with their time…). It’s worth reading in full. He prints someone defending Orszag:

It is neither structural nor personal corruption that leads government officials to leave the government and fall into lucrative private sector jobs. This is just how it works, and there is no corruption involved at all: Orszag is a brilliant man, and his skills are in high demand, as is his reputation. It is not corruption for a man to be compensated according to the prestige and cachet his pedigree deserves. [...]

I could go on but I think the point is made: it is a false and unfair ‘populist’ argument to assert that anyone who leaves a government post for a lucrative private job is somehow corrupt. I mean, that is the basic premise of your article but I’m sure if you thought about it you would realize how simplistic and wrongly idealistic it turns out to be. If your point was timing, it is simply a ridiculous and immature point to make: if its wrong now, it’s always wrong. If not, then it is never wrong. Otherwise you merely patronize peoples’ sense of outrage and its correlation to timing.

I have to admit that I find this somewhat compelling, though the tone and reasoning is a bit off from what it should be. I got a slight twinge of when people used Hillary Clinton’s service on the Wal-Mart board as a talking point against her, when it turned out she actually tried to do some good things in the position. If it’s corrupt for any progressive to take any job in the financial industry (or just industry, period), then don’t be surprised when it’s dominated by conservatives who donate to Republicans in huge numbers and use their positions to try to destroy whatever regulation they can. This might be beneficial for certain muckrakers who want implacable villains in order to advance narratives, but I don’t really see how it benefits anyone else. It’s possible (and I use that word carefully) Orszag could get Citi to behave more responsibly from a position of power within the company. A Times article says he won’t be interacting with the government from his new position. I think there’s a good case to be made that smart, committed progressives should go into the business world and try to advance a more responsible and progressive corporate ethos. Much has been made of how conservatives infiltrated school boards and city councils in the 1960s, and radically affected how government programs were administered as a result, so why not encourage progressives to try to infiltrate boardrooms? It seems to me that this is actually a significant obstacle to the progress of liberalism at this point.

Having said all that…Citibank!? It’s pretty damn hard to swallow. I mean, could it parallel the journey of Bob Rubin any more closely?