Harvard Rules by Richard Bradley Read Free Book Online Page A

taxes. Summers was never part of Dukakis’ inner circle, however, and today Dukakis doesn’t remember much of what Summers did on the campaign. “We met a number of times, but I don’t want to exaggerate it,” Dukakis says. Nonetheless, Summers made sure to stay on good terms with the former governor. “Every time he gets another important job, Larry writes me a note saying, ‘Without you, this wouldn’t have happened,’” Dukakis says. “And it’s always handwritten.”
    Dukakis lost that race to George H. W. Bush, of course, depriving Summers of the chance to return to Washington. But the campaign was nonetheless a turning point for Summers. For one thing, he learned that he enjoyed politics; he liked to be not just a student of power and policy, but a player. And during the campaign he met two people who would become very important to his future advancement: a wealthy fundraiser from the investment bank Goldman Sachs named Robert Rubin, and a rising-star governor from Arkansas, Bill Clinton.
    On the surface, Summers was fulfilling everything that might have been expected of him. In 1987 he won the National Science Foundation’s Alan T. Waterman Award, which carried with it a $500,000 grant. The award is given to an outstanding young U.S. scientist or engineer; Summers was the first social scientist ever to win it. In 1993 Summers won the John Bates Clark Medal, given by the American Economic Association to the country’s outstanding economist under the age of forty. The Clark Medal is often a precursor to a Nobel; Paul Samuelson won it in 1947, Ken Arrow in 1957.
    If there was a knock on Summers, it was that he had, perhaps, too many ideas. That his mind was so active, it couldn’t linger on one subject long enough to produce the big breakthrough that separates an outstanding economist from a truly great mind. There was no lightning bolt, no eureka moment. Both Paul Samuelson and Ken Arrow had experienced such insights before they were forty, the age by which most economists do their most original and important work. As Larry Summers approached that milestone, he’d compiled a formidable record, shown abundant evidence of an agile and powerful mind, produced important insights and valuable papers—but no paradigm shift.
    â€œIn the ballpark Larry grew up in, he’s not a first-rate intellect,” said one prominent economist. “He has not made any major contribution to economics. And you have to understand—his two uncles are not just Nobel Prize winners, they are two of the top figures of the century. Anybody who’s in academia knows that there are people who make repeated breakthroughs, there are people who make a breakthrough, and there are people who do good economics. His two uncles made repeated breakthroughs. Larry has done good economics. It’s two steps down from what his uncles did.
    â€œI think,” this economist said, “that Larry knew that.” And may himself have come to doubt that he would ever produce the kind of work that wins a Nobel.
    If so, it would be an awkward situation. Public expectations of Summers were so high that if he didn’t win a Nobel Prize—an absurdly high standard—he’d be considered a disappointment. Maybe, as he approached middle age, he sensed that the likelihood of the prize was slipping away. Especially because he’d already learned that life could be short.
    To be fair, economics, especially at its highest levels, is a viciously competitive field, almost entirely dominated by men, many with rapacious egos and cutthroat instincts. Often they are trained in graduate seminars where aggression is encouraged and survival requires attacking your peer’s ideas before he slices and dices yours. Surely some of the doubts about Summers arise from the culture of economics and from a personal antipathy toward him. Elsewhere in the field, Summers has his