An unseemly campaign for Federal Reserve chairman

We express no preference between Ms. Yellen and Mr. Summers, both of whom are amply qualified. What we are sure about, however, is that this mini-circus has been not only unseemly, and unsettling to financial markets, but also potentially destructive to the Federal Reserve’s most valuable institutional asset: political independence.

Obviously no presidential nomination can be completely divorced from considerations of partisanship or policy. But the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve is a unique position, both in terms of its tremendous power and of the importance that the chairman exercises that power — in perception and in fact — strictly according to objective economic criteria. …

By turning the Fed succession into a proxy battle over bank regulation, or between monetary policy “hawks” and “doves” — or even by casting it as a choice between a potential first woman chair and a famously mercurial male — the Summers and Yellen camps are dragging the Fed itself into Washington’s toxic political fray.