Former IOP Director at G-20

At a gathering of powerful economic leaders this weekend, one individual with Harvard roots stood in the place of another.

Former Institute of Politics Director and Republican congressman Jim Leach represented President-elect Barack Obama at the Group of 20, or G-20, meeting held at the White House this past weekend to discuss the current worldwide financial crisis.

Obama was invited by the White House to attend the summit but declined the opportunity to meet with the world leaders who comprise the international body that focuses on economic issues, opting to send Leach and former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright in his place.

“During a transition, little would be more inappropriate than for a president-elect to, in effect, negotiate at the same time another President is in office,” said Leach, explaining in an e-mailed statement why Obama picked him and Albright to go on his behalf. “The Senator concluded that elections are the appropriate place to compete and transitions are for preparing for the future rather than preempting authority at the moment.”

Leach spent 30 years as a U.S. representative from Iowa before serving as the IOP’s interim director last year. He is currently a visiting professor at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Despite coming from the other side of the political aisle, Leach publicly supported Obama during the presidential election.

Leach declined to discuss the content of the meetings themselves, as they were understood to be off-the-record. He wrote in an e-mailed statement that, while he did not know the reasoning behind Obama’s choice to personally send him to the G-20, he was “exceptionally impressed with the economic team that Sen. Obama has put together which includes Larry Summers.”

Reflecting an opinion that President Bush also expressed in a speech last Thursday, economics professor Kenneth S. Rogoff said in an interview, “Anyone looking to the G-20 this weekend for salvation wasn’t going to find anything in the way of immediate change.”

Though the leaders did not develop a concrete plan to solve the economic crisis, they agreed that they would work to stimulate their countries’ economies and stabilize financial markets.

According to Rogoff, the statement put out by the G-20 after the meeting reflected both the United States’ desire to maintain open markets and Europe’s desire for more heavy-handed regulation.

The G-20, established in 1999 and made up of 19 countries and the European Union, represents 90 percent of the world’s gross national product.

The group will reassemble in London next April.

—Staff writer Lauren D. Kiel can be reached at lkiel@fas.harvard.edu