On the contrary. It was fully within Obama’s power to react to the financial crisis in a more aggressive and appropriate way: laws were in place, there was ample precedent, he wasn’t forced to pick the men whom Democrat Senator Byron Dorgan plaintively called “the wrong people” for his economic team.27 It wasn’t the Republicans who made Obama choose Tim Geithner to run the bailouts or Attorney General Eric Holder to (not) prosecute dishonest bankers or Ben Bernanke to serve another term at the Fed.
