Why Bush picked Bernanke

The above is the title of a WSJ article by Fred Barnes, which I won't bother to link as it's subscribers-only.

The pick does appear to be a really good one. But a couple of amusing (to me) bits in Barnes' article are as follows:

"Mr. Feldstein's appointment as Fed chair was supported by the president's father, former President George H.W. Bush. But he had many critics, notably James A. Baker II, who was White House chief of staff in the early 1980s when Mr. Feldstein was CEA chairman. They clashed when Mr. Feldstein spoke negatively, on and off the record, about Reagan's tax cuts. Mr. Baker thought Mr. Feldstein was disloyal and warned the current White House not to nominate him."

My God, isn't a decade plus of toeing the line enough to atone for the good deeds of one's youth?

"Mr. Hubbard, now dean of Columbia Business School, was CEA chief. He favored the Bush policies of tax cuts and partial privatization of Social Security, but the president felt Mr. Hubbard sometimes talked down to him."

Can you really blame Glenn? I am not a complete fan of everything he did in the Bush Administration, although perhaps he can defended as supporting the bad so we wouldn't get the worst. But he has standards.