President Obama's operation is so eager to create an air of inevitability that it's already leaking names for a second term. Politico's Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei have details. They report that Roger Altman is "actively lobbying for Treasury," that "Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer and chief of staff at Treasury under Bill Clinton, might be asked to be Treasury Secretary or, more likely, to succeed Gene Sperling as director of the National Economic Council" and that "Dan Doctoroff, president and CEO of Bloomberg L.P., would be another possible ambassador to business."
This is the Roger Altman who wrote an op-ed for the New York Times hailing President Obama's "courageous decision to put General Motors and Chrysler through bankruptcy," without disclosing in the piece that Mr. Altman's firm, Evercore Partners, after being paid $46 million by GM pre-bankruptcy, turned around and asked for a $17.9 million "success fee." A U.S. bankruptcy trustee termed the fees "staggering" and "inordinately large" and said it "clearly exceeds the bounds of reasonableness" given that "Evercore had no success at finding a purchaser or funder for the Debtors."
And the Dan Doctoroff who famously said, "There is an inherent conflict between someone who is market-driven and the city's interests, which should be rationally discussed."
And the Sheryl Sandberg who, for all of Facebook's many amazing and admirable successes, has seen shareholders who bought in to Facebook's initial public offering lose nearly half the market value of their investment in three months.