Perhaps next we'll seek Speaker of the House John Bohner (R., Ohio), and Sen. Harry Reid (D., Nev.), the Senate Majority Leader, jointly teach a college course on the history of Congress.
It might not spur greater bipartisanship on Capitol Hill, but no doubt Americans can use a bit more history.
Such educational fantasies are sparked by witnessing today the first of four lectures by Professor Ben Bernanke, who spends most of his time heading up the Federal Reserve, delivered to a classroom of students at George Washington University in the nation's capital. (Watch the lecture here.)
By swinging through a quick history of the Fed, the central bank's basic responsibilities, and the policy mistakes made by the central bankers during the Great Depression, all of it web cast, Bernanke performed a nice public service.
One presumes this and the coming lectures, which will bring us through the Fed's response to the 2008-09 financial crisis, will be viewed in other classrooms besides the one that gets to see the chairman live.
Other Washingtonians in positions of power should take note. It's a nice idea. Journalists, market types and others, of course, tuned in to Bernanke at midday for any implications of the historical tour for current circumstances, policy and controversies. Certainly you could get some tidbits out of it if you wanted to follow such a course. For instance, Bernanke still doesn't think the gold standard has a place in the contemporary world.
Even history, of course, isn't straightforward. Choices have to be made, analyses offered, points of view presented. So there was that to analyze, if you were of a mind.
The chairman professed to simply be happy to be back in the classroom (likely there are days Bernanke wishes he was back professoring full time at Princeton University).
In the greater scheme of things, it is another communications tool for the Fed in an era when the central bank and Bernanke as its leader are often underappreciated, perhaps particularly among the hopefuls for the Republican nomination to run for president.
So add public lectures to "60 Minutes" appearances, press conferences and other venues Bernanke has pioneered to get the central bank a bigger public profile.
Among the things we learned:
--Sweden had the first central bank, started in 1668.
--The students who got to ask questions at the end of the lecture uniformly asked good ones, almost all tied in some way to the substance of the lecture and to current events and issues for the Fed. They didn't get Bernanke to break any big news, but he did move out of the history only paradigm.
--On the flip side, not many of the students seemed familiar with the film classic "It's A Wonderful Life," part of whose plot line Bernanke used to explain a bank run. Ah well, time marches on.
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