Op-ed by David Ignatius @ WashingtonPost.com, Nov. 22

After a rocky few months in which President Biden sometimes seemed captive of the progressive wing of his own party, he took a solid step back toward the center Monday in renominating Jerome H. Powell as Federal Reserve chair.

The decision to retain Powell, a Republican, and appoint Democrat Lael Brainard, Powell’s chief rival for the top job, as vice chair, could refurbish Biden’s basic promise to make orderly government work again — despite the intensely partisan era. It was, as a senior White House official put it to me shortly after the announcement, “a very Joe Biden decision.”

Biden’s tweet announcing his choice had a pragmatic, down-the-middle tone: “America needs steady, independent, and effective leadership at the Federal Reserve.”

The senior White House official explained the Powell choice this way: “At a time of churn and unease about the economy, ‘stable and steady’ seemed like a good way to go — so keep Powell in his seat and keep Lael as the leading Democrat on the Fed.” The Fed decision, this Biden insider continued, offered “a bipartisan set of picks to try to advance the idea that not everything in American should be a partisan throwdown.” [....]