HE TOLD THEM WHAT THEY WANTED TO HEAR. OR MAYBE PROVIDED COVER FOR WHAT THEY WANTED TO DO. Why Was Lawrence Summers So In Demand to Begin With?

George Will describes it as “presentism” whereby modern views on morality are imposed on past actions. Will’s crucial point is that if we continue down this path of judging the past through a present-tense lens, eventually those judging and canceling will find themselves being judged and canceled.

It’s just a comment that whatever the underlying truth about economist Lawrence Summers’s present-day expressions of “shame” about the past, the fact that his past actions elicited no outrage from left, right or in between calls into question his present-day cancelation. Isn’t the societal point to constantly learn from the past, and improve on it?

What’s arguably more notable about Summers given their more globalized impact are his views on the economy. We find in his cancelation that the allegedly brilliant Summers was very much in demand on the speaking circuit, by elected officials, hedge funds mining his supposedly deep insights into economic matters, not to mention his newspaper columns in influential newspapers like the Washington Post and the New York Times. Unknown is why.

Is it really unknown?