Obama vs Furman

From the ongoing series Now that Obama got elected (thank God for that), we can safely denounce him without aiding the even worse guy running against him:

Greg Mankiw writes an open letter to the POTUS-elect telling him, amongst other things, to listen to his economists.

Mankiw’s advice a couple of months back was vote the economics advisor, not the candidate. In this aspect, Obama won easily. Yet, one always had the feeling that his economics advisors weren’t aware that Obama doesn’t have Reagan’s views of economics.

One of the interesting things in the first months of the presidency will be the tension between Obama’s plans and his economics advisors ideas. As Mankiw points out, McCain’s health-care plan (one of McCain’s better ideas but bad politics—a clear case of a candidate advocating good policy over good politics) was actually advocated first by Obama’s own Jason Furman (who also called Wal-mart a great progressive success story).

Under a Democratic congress eager for change power, I fear that the Chicago economists will be rapidly put to the side.