Cemeteries Are Full of Indispensable Men

I do not personally know Timothy Geithner, the lone individual out of some 306 million Americans whom President Barack Obama, in confronting the nation's gravest economic storm in 75 years, chose to be U.S. secretary of the treasury.

Friends of mine whose judgment I respect do know and speak highly both professionally and personally of Geithner, who may well very well be a superb father, husband, scholar, neighbor and friend. He may even turn out to be "the greatest secretary of the treasury since Alexander Hamilton" (which is what President Bill Clinton publicly called his own treasury secretary, Robert Rubin, for whom Geithner served as under secretary.)

But is he the only possible treasury secretary in whom president Obama can place his confidence? Charles DeGaulle, a man not know for either authentic or false humility, offered this timeless insight: "The cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men."

Yes, Geithner may well be a first-rate intellect and a uniquely experienced professional. But what he is not is a wise and conscientious citizen.

This is a man, recall, who served in increasingly higher and more responsible Treasury posts from 1988 to 2001 before moving to the International Monetary Fund, where he worked until being named president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in late 2003. American citizens who work for the International Monetary Fund — like their fellow citizens who work at World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank — because they do not have their Social Security and Medicare contributions deducted from their paychecks, are four times a year given a separate check, over and above their regular paychecks, which covers the amount of the undeducted payroll taxes.

Employees, including Geithner, sign a document that states, "I will pay the taxes for which I have received tax allowance payments."

A wise, conscientious and patriotic citizen pays what he owes in taxes. America, as the sage Will Rogers observed, "is a great country, but you can't live in it for nothing." When Geithner was audited in 2006 by the Internal Revenue Service (which is the largest bureau in the Treasury Department over which the secretary presides), he was found, predictably, not to have paid the Social Security and Medicare taxes he owed for 2003 and 2004.

He then paid what he had failed to previously pay for those two years, but did not pay what he had to have known that he had not paid, as well, for 2001 and 2002 (some $42,702 in all) until he was chosen in November 2008 for the treasury's top job by Obama. Under oath before the Senate Finance Committee considering his nomination to be secretary, Geithner attributed his failure to pony up his 2001-2002 unpaid taxes — until the hot spotlight of public and press scrutiny awaited him — to "careless mistakes."

The senators, so many of whom showed themselves to be towers of Jell-O in 2002 when they were stampeded into voting to take the country to war against Iraq by George W. Bush, are just as scared in 2009 about the dark economic night now gripping the country. They do not want to be seen as obstructionists who hamper any possible economic recovery by holding up the popular new president's choice at Treasury.

Barack Obama, knowing all these unanswered and uninspiring details, still went ahead, at the real risk of collateral political damage to his young presidency, and named Geithner to be secretary of the treasury. The president thus rejects the words of Charles DeGaulle and instead must believe that in Timothy Geithner he has found his indispensable man.

To find out more about Mark Shields and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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COPYRIGHT 2009 MARK SHIELDS