The type of mistake typified by the estate tax comment was something Summers tried to eliminate. “The new Larry would never make that mistake,” one observer says. “The new Larry would talk about revenue loss, and policy flaw,” in effect making the same point, but in couched terms.

The adjustment also meant learning to see external imperatives as important. “The problem with most academics is that they refuse to think bureaucratically. They say, ‘Why would we ever worry about that?’ It’s beneath their dignity,” Pritchett says.

Summers, though, developed a willingness to think bureaucratically. “He understood his role and carried through with it, for all the right reasons,” Pritchett says. He realized that since each vice president at the World Bank had their own external factors to consider, it was neither effective nor fair to try to blow them away on the basis of pure fact.

The other element of this adjustment has to do with the consultative process.

“You’re in a situation in which being right is only part of it—you also have to work to show people that what you think is right from their perspective as well,” Summers explains.

“A key part of Washington is being inclusive and knowing how to check with those involved,” Gruber says. “That’s not what academics do—we want to write an article, we go and write it.”

But the adjustment was not necessarily automatic. One Treasury official explains, “At the beginning he was pretty bad. He didn’t pay attention to what other people in government were thinking.”

Over time though, Summers got better. Summers learned to slow down, “to check with x, y, and z, first,” Gruber says.