Obama's Appointments

Former Harvard president Larry Summers is going to have to work overtime to restore his tarnished reputation of being a blithering, blathering sexist.

As the head of the National Economic Council, he will play two roles: counseling the president and nurturing the proposals of others. Few doubt that Mr. Summers will excel in the first; Democrats and Republicans call him one of the top economic minds in the country, with a résumé that may make him overqualified for the job.

Even Mr. Summers’s allies, though, acknowledge worries about the second part of his role. Mr. Summers, in an interview, said a crucial part of the job was exposing the president “to all possible views, developed as strongly and rigorously as they can be.”

But at Harvard, numerous faculty members and administrators say, Mr. Summers’s downfall resulted chiefly from his tendency to impose rather than persuade, to appear to have little regard for the views of others.