Excellent point Seashell!

how do you give out "all the details" to fix a situation when very little of the "situation" is known to you?

Um, but but, Obama's nominee for Treasury Sec.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_F._Geithner

is the 9th president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In that role he also serves as Vice Chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee....He was Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs (1998–2001) under Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers. Summers was his mentor, but other sources call him a Rubin protégé....

In October 2003, he was named president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York....Once at the New York Fed, he became Vice Chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee component. In 2006, he also became a member of the Washington-based financial advisory body, the Group of Thirty....In March 2008, he arranged the rescue and sale of Bear Stearns, and later, in the same year, he is believed to have played a pivotal role in both the decision to bail out AIG as well as the government decision not to save Lehman Brothers from bankruptcy....

Geithner believes, along with Henry Paulson, that the Treasury Department needs new authority to experiment with responses to the financial crisis of 2008. Paulson has described Geithner as "[a] very unusually talented young man...[who] understands government and understands markets."...

has most definitely been working with the Bush administration on this all. Matter of fact, I heard Keith Olberman last night or the night before call him the only person in DC who really understands TARP.

If Obama's team hasn't been able to understand Geithner enough on what's going on to translate his prescriptions for Congress, were they just planning on letting him handle it all?

I think you're being a bit too harsh a judge of Nelson given what I just read.

Former TPM reporter Paul Kiel published this Monday afternoon at Pro Publica:

Obama Team’s Request for Bailout Money Short on Specifics

by Paul Kiel - January 12, 2009 4:22 pm

Perhaps one of Ben Nelson's staff read it, because among other things, it says

..In a letter to Congress today [2] (PDF), Lawrence Summers, Obama's pick to lead the National Economic Council, made the initial pitch.

Judging from the letter, however, it's hard to gauge just how differently the Obama team would manage the bailout money. The three-page letter is long on general promises but short on specifics....in the end, the Obama administration seems likely to emerge with a good deal of flexibility of how the money will be spent....

And Kiel published this this afternoon:

Specifics Still Lacking, Obama Closer to Getting Bailout Money by Paul Kiel, ProPublica - January 14, 2009 5:02 pm EST

On the strength of vague assurances [1] that the second half of the $700 billion will be managed better than the first half, President-elect Barack Obama seems to be cruising towards having the money in hand for his administration next week.

Until today, the Obama team’s pitch to release the funds had been short on specifics [1]. But this afternoon, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) announced [2] that the Obama team had assured him it would spend between $40 billion and $100 billion of the bailout money on foreclosure relief for homeowners.

Beyond that, it seems Obama won’t spell out just what his administration will do with the money. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), head of the Senate banking committee, said yesterday that he no longer expected a detailed proposal [3] – the details will come via hearings in the Senate....

Kiel links to the 3-page PDF request that Congress got from Summers in the first article. Remember how much outrage from the left, right and center about Paulson's initial proposal and how many pages it was?

Looks to me like they want the money now with as few strings attached as possible and they want to be trusted with it, they are confident they can support what they have done with it later in hearings. Looks to me like Obama is throwing bones to the squeakiest wheels who have the time to and the background to have an idea of what's going on just to get it approved. It is understandable that a congressperson, especially one on a related committee, would raise reservations/objections. They are not supposed to be a rubber stamp to executive power.

My point: this is not a good sales job. It's a rush sales job because they believe in the urgency. But Bush, Paulson and Bernake did the same thing with the first rendition of this story. This is being pieced together, not done with teamwork of both branches of government, not like it's supposed to be done. The point of not giving them all $700 billion at once was so that wouldn't happen. But even though Obama knew that, and knew the names and addresses of the new Congress, they and his team didn't plan much at all. It's still all wing and a prayer, and that wasn't supposed to happen, it's why it was split into two separate payments.

Certainly wing and a prayer under Obama sounds much much better to me than wing and a prayer under lame duck Bush, but it's certainly not what they have been selling, and it is disappointing. It's Congress' fault, too, no doubt about it.

Geithner's confirmation hearing is going to be tough, he better have more specifics then, he better be as well prepared and as on top of things and as practiced as Hillary Clinton was at hers. This spending on the financial sector is very unpopular with lots of Americans, many have not been sold on the value of it, and a lot of things could turn very sour very quickly if conservative GOP detractors can find the right notes to hit.

Keep in mind that Obama was on Bush's side for the first round, against some very loud "small government" conservatives and there are also quite a few "small government" conservatives who have not been fans of big spending Bush for quite some time, and some Dems with very big qualms for which pork was added by the Senate to win them over. Having a dinner for John McCain the night before the inauguration isn't going to help Obama much there if you recall where McCain ended up on the bailout. I don't see any of these political problems as having been addressed by a supposedly clever team.