Harvard Rules by Richard Bradley Page B

reelection. In return, Rubin would ask the president to agree to nominate Summers to replace Rubin when he stepped down, which he expected to do in 1998. Clinton agreed to go along with the plan.
    As it turned out, Rubin stayed until mid-1999, not wanting to look like he was abandoning the president during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. But the secret arrangement stayed in effect for two and a half years, unknown to anyone except the three men and a handful of their closest staff members. Just as he would five years later with the Harvard Corporation, Rubin had secretly helped Larry Summers acquire a powerful position. When Summers and Rubin dealt with foreign governments, they pushed for transparency. But when it came to their own fortunes, different standards applied.
    And Rubin didn’t just promote Summers internally; he worked to polish Summers’ public image. Both men agreed to cooperate with the New Yorker and Time in part to promote the perception that Summers was the inevitable heir apparent. So, whereas Rubin used to affectionately tease Summers in public, he now began to refer to his deputy as “Dr. Summers,” and conspicuously deferred to Summers at public events. And even before he’d announced his resignation, he suggested to the New Yorker that Summers “would make a very good Treasury secretary.” The pre-emptive strategy was calculated to defuse resistance to Summers’ ascension.
    Rubin announced his resignation on May 12, and the Dow Jones instantly dropped 213 points. President Clinton promptly nominated Summers to take Rubin’s place, and by the end of the day the market regained all but twenty-five of those points. To the financial community in New York, Summers’ appointment meant continuity, competence, and a reliably pro-business treasury secretary. The Street probably wouldn’t have felt comfortable with the Larry Summers who had advised Mike Dukakis on industrial policy, but it had no problem with the Larry Summers whom Bob Rubin had groomed.
    The Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on Summers’ nomination on June 22, and Summers showed how much he’d learned about politics during his years in the nation’s capital. He brought Vicki and their three children, twin girls named Ruth and Pamela and a younger son, Harry. “Is it not encouraging that Larry can have such beautiful children?” committee chairman William Roth said from behind his microphone. “Some apples fall far from trees,” Summers demurred. When Florida Republican Connie Mack asked Summers if he still felt that “efforts to cut the estate tax are selfish,” Summers ate the requisite crow: “No, I do not, Senator Mack,” he confessed. “What I said was wrong.” Concluded Iowa senator Charles Grassley, “You seem more relaxed now than when I first got acquainted with you, and you smile occasionally.” All the smiling, whether it was in a Senate office building or on the cover of Time, paid off. The full Senate approved Summers’ nomination by a vote of 97–2.
    On July 2, President Clinton swore in Summers as treasury secretary at a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden. “I felt ready,” Summers said. Nonetheless, it was an emotional moment. As he thanked his parents, his family, and Robert Rubin, Summers was on the verge of tears. “I can’t begin to describe how much I have learned from Bob Rubin,” he said.
    Seventeen months later, the United States Supreme Court would rule on the matter of George W. Bush v. Albert Gore, Jr. The decision was heartbreaking for Gore, of course, but it also had a negative impact on Summers. The vice-president, who had once blocked Summers from a White House post, had come to appreciate Summers and was prepared to reappoint him. But now Summers’ tenure as treasury secretary would always have the anti-climactic quality of stewardship. There was only so much you could do