Sheryl Sandberg’s encomium to her mentor, Lawrence Summers, could hardly have been more effusive. The economist had always stuck by people, she said, even those facing public scrutiny and even when others would shrink from an association.
“He never worried that he would somehow get dragged into someone else’s mess,” the former Meta chief operating officer, who worked as Summers’ chief of staff at the US Treasury, told an event late last year to mark his 70th birthday. “I know all of us here showed up for this day, because Larry has shown up for us.”
After the events of the past few days, Sandberg’s words have a piquancy she could not have foreseen. Summers has found himself in perhaps the biggest mess of his life — much of it of his own making.