4 New Voices Obama Should Hire

Peter Orszag, Christina Romer, Larry Summers, Rahm Emanuel, Jim Jones: A lot of people have left the Obama administration, but that could be a good thing. The president has a successful team—but he needs “a new agenda, and new ideas,” writes Ezra Klein in Newsweek. He offers four people the White House needs:

• Mark McClellan: He led the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for George W. Bush and helped implement the Medicare prescription-drug benefit, meaning he has “credibility with Republicans on health care and experience making a major health-care initiative work.”

• Dean Baker: A “contrarian economist who was among the first to spot the housing bubble and who’s been a critic of the administration (and most everyone else)” will burst the Obama economic team’s “insular” bubble—and he “can be counted on for innovative thinking.”
• Christina Romer: Yes, the same Romer listed above. The former chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers has the “right perspective,” and she needs to come back—and be allowed to say what’s on her mind.

For the final candidate, click here. (More Christina Romer stories.)