The scandal no one is talking about

By E.J. Dionne Jr.

There’s a scandal in Washington that’s taking a back seat to a much sexier one that you don’t need me to tell you about. The partisan obstruction of President Obama’s appointment of Peter A. Diamond to a seat on the Federal Reserve Board ought to be the cause for real outrage about how broken our government is. It’s hardly making a ripple.

Think about it. Diamond is the winner of a Nobel Prize in economics and a professor at MIT. He is as qualified as anyone who has been appointed to the Fed. In case nobody noticed, we’re in the middle of an economic crisis. The Fed is central to getting us out. Yet the president can’t even get his appointee to the Fed confirmed. Diamond withdrew his name this week after a fight that lasted more than a year.