Geithner As Obama's Rumsfeld

It's a fairly audacious comparison Markos Moulitsas makes, perhaps unfair, but it's not an uncommon sentiment on the left these days. I know the White House is frustrated by the heat that Geithner is getting; the prevailing instruction to White House staffers is that "we have to build other people's confidence in Tim because he deserves it." The question for the administration is: does it matter that major institutions -- Wall Street, Congress, the New York Times, the liberal blogosphere -- don't have confidence in the Treasury secretary?  If it doesn't matter -- if the fact of a lack of confidence itself doesn't undermine policy, then fine. But if it does matter -- even if it's unfair -- then the administration will find their hand forced, won't they?