Wise Muddling Through

By DAVID BROOKS
NYT

Everybody wants to be a striding titan. Almost all alpha-leaders want to be the brilliant visionary in a time of crisis—the one who sees the situation clearly, makes the bold plans and delivers the faithful to the other side.

It almost never works out that way. The historian Henry Adams concluded that “in all great emergencies ... everyone was more or less wrong.” Abraham Lincoln didn’t feel like a heroic leader: “I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.” In real crises, the successful leaders are usually the ones who cope best with ignorance and error.

David Wessel’s about-to-be-released book, “In Fed We Trust,” gives a revealing blow-by-blow account of the recent financial crisis and illustrates this point.

It is a tale replete with error. In theory, Ben Bernanke, Henry Paulson and Tim Geithner were as well prepared as anyone for this sort of event. Bernanke had spent his life studying the Great Depression; Paulson had led the world’s most prestigious investment bank; Geithner had been involved in financial rescues in Asia and beyond.

(More here.)