How can people like Larry Summers, who cannot even effectively shepherd a group of his peers in the Harvard faculty, be expected to run huge government departments? Weisberg seems to think that the chief function of the cabinet is to huddle in a dark room dispensing Dr. Strangelove-style advice to the president, but the reality is that they are primarily concerned with overseeing vast portions of executive branch activities. Appointing people like Summers or John Kerry for whom charm is a completely foreign concept would be totally inane. If you want a brain trust, create a think tank; the cabinet secretaries have to be effective leaders.

I wouldn't say having yis comments taken out of context and used to drive you out of the university makes Larry Summers socially incompetent.

Kerry does lack charm, but more importantly, does he have the organization skills to run a federal department? That I don't know. Cabinet secretaries are more managers than spokesmen. Being able to charm people is less important than being able to manage them.

Treasury secretaries and university presidents have quite different jobs. Treasury secretaries have (or should have) real power. For example, they can fire people who work up to several levels under them. People willingly overlook a cabinet secretary's social inadequacies because they need something from him. University presidents, on the other hand, famously have relatively little power. A university president's biggest responsibility is to coax money out of donors; to do that, s/he must have social graces. He must also win over faculty lest they make him/her look like he can't keep order in his own house and thereby harm his fund-raising ability. Faculty, many of whom (at a place like Harvard) have long-cherished outsized images of their own prowess and importance, sense that dependence and are not shy about asserting their prerogatives. And they can't be fired.

Thus, it's quite possible that Summers' social ineptitude could be a serious liability as president of Harvard and not so much as secretary of the treasury.