Geithner: The smartest man in the room?

The smartest person in the room can only claim that title if the others think s/he is. That's because personal and corporate reputations are built on third party opinion. Or, as one mentor was fond of pointing out, “PR is what you do, not what you say you do.”

And it surely was with such awareness that President Obama named Timothy Geithner the nation’s Treasury secretary, and the point man to fix America’s piece of the global financial crisis.

Why else would Obama on Feb. 9 say, "My instruction to [Geithner] has been let's get this right. Let's create a template in which we're restoring market confidence.... We've got to restore confidence, so that private capital goes back in."

Those expectations have been so deeply unfulfilled that even the very liberal Time Magazine this week repeatedly defines Geithner’s performance as less than inspiring. Among its observations on the head of Treasury are the following.

• Geithner’s presentation of a “half baked plan to save the banks” was “less than inspiring.”
  
• That delivery “left Washington and Wall Street whispering that Geithner wasn't ready for prime time.”
  
• Time’s own assessment of that performance is that, “He survived.”
  
• Then Time echoes Florida Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite's assertion that “every time Geithner speaks in public ‘the stock market plummets.’”
  
• “He doesn't seem to fill his suit.”
  
• “He talks too quickly.”
  
• “He swallows the ends of his sentences.”
  
• “He gives the impression of a grad student taking an oral exam, not leading the country out of perdition.”
  

Time concludes that Geithner was named Treasury in part because he “was considered a smoother salesman” than Larry Summers.

However, the publication notes that when the Administration rolls out its more detailed bank bailout plans in the next few weeks, Geithner will have another chance to salvage his reputation as a salesman…. But the truth is, if the plans fail on their own, it won't be Geithner's tone of voice or his demeanor that brought him down, no matter what the Washington crowd may say.”

Nonetheless, Geithners reputation as the smartest guy in the room will forever be bloodied and tarnished by abundant skepticism and accusation, which once again proves that reality is what people perceive to be real and reputation is defined by public perception.

Read the full Time story here.