Political Punch

"Mark-Stating that there are more men who are exceptional at math is basically saying that they're better at math, all the verbiage aside."

Kat - no this are not the same thing. There are many women better than men at math. All Summers said was that the distribution of ability was different, with men producing more extremes - on both sides of dumb and smart.

Your comment reveals what side of the distribution you are on.

PS Are only some people are interpreting Summers remarks as questioning womens' intelligence in math and science relative to men or is everybody interpreting it that way because that was in fact his point with the issue being whether or not his point was in fact true?

Because I thought it was the latter - the NYT is saying he wasn't saying that, although they didn't specify what exactly it was they thought he was saying. Weird . . .

By the by, there's even fewer blacks in Engineering proportional to population than women . . . wouldn't you have thought Barack would wonder what Summers must think about that? I don't know . . .

I imagine Summer's Harvard pedigree was instrumental with him being chosen. He may prove himself irredeemably so to he another Harvard fool, like the one who couldn't get into the University of Texas law school then opted for the MBA program at Harvard. You know, the guy who mangles the English language and chokes on pretzels . . .

Didn't the two researchers whose work Summers cited in his speech as being the foundation of his conclusion that there were innate aptitude differences between men and women basically call Summers an ignorant clown for misinterpreting their data?

And what was with that speech anyway - he seems like the type of person who deliberately convolutes talk to make himself sound more intelligent and knowledgeable than he really is.

jmo but if he couldn't handle triple integrals in the hypothetical nth dimension or whatever as a physics undergrad, should he really be talking about who is and isn't in the fourth standard deviation of math?

"What he actually did in that talk was quote a study that showed men and women were EQUALLY apt in math, but there was wider VARIANCE among men, and thus the outer tails of the distribution produced more men who were *exceptional* at math."

Mark-Stating that there are more men who are exceptional at math is basically saying that they're better at math, all the verbiage aside. I might add Summers also has a reputation for not being tolerant of the contrarian, which doesn't exactly make him compatible with Obama's goal of having a diverse pool of advisers.

I actually am very glad Obama didn't pick Summers, for a variety of other reasons, but I'm quite tired now of the lazy media getting wrong Summers' statements about women in math and science. Tapper's shorthand here:

"might not be as inherently apt at engineering and math"

is incorrect (though goodness knows he's only the umpteenth reporter who's flubbed it. What he actually did in that talk was quote a study that showed men and women were EQUALLY apt in math, but there was wider VARIANCE among men, and thus the outer tails of the distribution produced more men who were *exceptional* at math.

Summers was an advocate for the 1999 legislation largely written by Phil Gramm that allowed for credit default swaps, which helped immeasurably in bringing down AIG and the other sparsely regulated financial giants. Ironically, Summers' embrace of governmental laissez faire and deregulation is the philosophy which Obama attributed to McCain and the downfall of the economy. Myself, I don't care about Summers' penchant for political incorrectness and sexism, but instead, am concerned about his influence on past practices.

Also from The New Republic:
-----"Geithner accomplished this with his usual light touch. "He would do this thing: 'I'm not that good at math, I don't know anything about this but ...' and whack you with these awesome questions that made clear he understood the issue better than anyone in the room," says another former colleague."-----

Just to follow up with evidence of what I perceive to be somebody who DOES in fact have a thorough attention to detail is this description of Geithner given by one of HIS former colleagues.

That he's risen so far so fast by NOT touting his own horn but rather by being recognized as somebody who raises concerns that nobody else has thought of is really the most you can ask for out of anybody.

People are concerned that he's a bit of a mystery because his views aren't known. But generally thorough people tend to be quite flexible in their views, not particularly wed to ideology unless it's the one appropriate to the given issue of the moment. Hopefully this is what we'll see out of him during the confirmation hearings anyway . . .

BALANCED BUDGET IN THE 90's,,,JOB CREATION AT AN ALL TIME HIGH!!! Now let's look at the GOP in control. Better yet pick up the daily news, it is so screwed up it will take you a week to read how bad things are. So much for retiring in 2010, I have lost $47,000 in 401K alone, THANKS REPUBLICANs

From The New Republic:
-----Radelet, a onetime Harvard economist who worked for both Summers and Geithner. "I'd worked on [the memo] for days and days. He read it in a minute and a half. He looked at me, saying, 'I don't agree with your argument. But, if I were making your argument, I could have made it better.-----

Just to substantiate my take that Summers is NOT a policy wonk with thorough attention to detail, consider his response to this substantive memo - rather than rebut it on the merits, he pulled rank and made it all about him.

Are we all confident that when some underling approaches him with a memo documenting potential dangers of say like a subprime mortgate industry possibly taking down the economy in the event of a housing bubble bursting, he's not just going to dismiss it as being disagreeable and an argument he could have made better?

Like I've said before, I really don't think Barack's out to get the best and the brightest to fill his cabinet - he's out to get the people perceived to be the best and brightest, who may or may not actually be the person their reputation makes them out to be.

The Geitner pick looks like a real find. Summers makes me instead question what specifically people are looking at that makes them conclude that he's so 'brilliant'. Is it the fact that he was Treasury Secretary during a time of economic prosperity? Because Greenspan was considered by many to be brilliant for that same very reason. Until he 'wasn't' because the economy took a downturn.

I mean like the whole premise of voting for Barack was supposedly that the best and the brightest weren't necessarily the people who had been given the opportunity to acquire experience, such that there were other indicators of ability to best perform. I guess my larger point is that the criticisms that Barack's relying too much on those who served in the Clinton administration is legitimate because those who were in charge during a time of prosperity might just have had a correlative rather than causal relationship to the end result.

Change? The change for America on
Jan. 20, 2009, will be to have an
extremely bright President who listens
to those who disagree with him -- and
surrounds himself with extraordinarily competent people who will, unlike Colin
Powell, be allowed to serve without
their integrity being compromised in
the course of their service.

Nancy,

I have no problem with with revisiting some of the Clintonites. I supported Hillary and like the direction we are going with all the Clinton people. At least they know what they are doing. Though I don't think that was what Obama was telling people when he said "Change".

All of you complaining that this is Clinton all over again, not change, etc etc. This IS change...in a BIG way. It's been 8 long years since we've had people in office who knew their ass from a whole in the wall. Obama promised change, not new faces. When I think of change, I think of competency, accountability, effectiveness and efficiency, transparency, an ability to put "sides" aside and get things done, and a return of ethics, morality and respect for the Constitution. On all of those fronts, Obama is way ahead of the game. As for those of you who have a problem with revisiting some of the Clintonites, try to remember these are the most recent guys to have gotten it right on the economy, jobs and these are the guys who left GW with the trillion dollar SURPLUS that he burned thru in no time flat, only to leave us now 3 trillion IN DEBT. I have no problem with people who know what they're doing because they've actually done it, and can hit it running. Think about it from that perspective and maybe you'll realize "change" has more than 1 definition.

Looks like BILL CLINTON IS BACK!!!!!

Change! It appears that Hillary had everything right all along! Right about health care (NYT recent article), right about the economy (Obama stating he will institute her economic policies) and right about foreign affairs (as in SOS appty). The only thing Hillary was missing, was anatomically related. Unfortunately in this country, as in Indonesia and China, and a host of other backwoods countries, that precludes the presidency.

I as a Hillary supporter am very pleased with the direction we are now going with Hillary Secretary of State, majority of Obama's cabinet Clinton people and much of Hillary's ideas and issues being used. I am just wondering how many Obama supporters might not be feeling like they were used at this point?

socratesM,

I am from the south too, and proud of my heritage,
don't put what you just wrote in your comments, on being from the south.

being from the south has nothing to do with what you wrote, we are smarter than that.

but i will say, i suppose you are correct when you say what you wrote was part of your heritage,
because what you just wrote was
just pig ignorant.
once again,
it had nothing to do with being from the south.

Obama's considerations for these very important national positions must be tried and true. The crucial issues facing our country and government today require "experts", and if they served previously on a national level, that gives them more experience. There is no time for training!!

While I certainly think that we need to respect one another and can hate speech and incendiary rhetoric, I'm not a big fan of "political correctness." I think it stifles rather than stimulates the free exchange of ideas and ends up shifting the focus from rational, constructive discourse to personalities.

Summers seems to me to be a case in point. Instead of villifying him for his Harvard comments about women, engineering and math, why isn't it enough to simply demonstrate that he was wrong?