Ex-Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said he thought about it.
Geithner, who departed the administration at the outset of President Obama’s second term, wrote in his new book “Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises” that he considered recommending then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as his replacement. Clinton was on her way out at the same time Geithner was.
“I gave the President a long list of potential replacements for me. Jack Lew, who had just replaced [Peter] Orszag as budget director, was an experienced fiscal negotiator. Erskine Bowles would have credibility with many Republicans, which would be important with a divided government,” Geithner wrote, according to excerpts published in POLITICO Playbook. “I even suggested asking Hillary Clinton to take her star power from State to Treasury; among her many strengths, she had an underappreciated ability to reach across the aisle.”
Lew was the eventual nominee for the post and was confirmed.
The Washington Post reported in June 2012 that Geithner had privately made the case for Clinton to be his successor, though the White House said at the time that it does not comment on “internal personnel discussions.”
Geithner also wrote that he jested about his role in the formation of the tea party.
“I used to joke that I was personally responsible for the birth of the Tea Party, because Rick Santelli’s rant on CNBC was a response to the mortgage modification program, and the Tea Party movement focused so much of its initial fire on the financial rescue.”
That’s mildly funny given Geithner’s former identification as a Republican during his college years; he wrote that he was one “without much conviction,” though, and found himself at odds with “the strident conservative Republican political movement that was spreading across college campuses.”
Geithner attended Dartmouth College with conservative author Dinesh D’Souza, who he personally asked “how it felt to be such a d–k” in response to the actions of the Dartmouth Review, a right-of-center campus publication of which D’Souza was a member.
