On Sept. 10, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate Joshua Wright to replace J. Thomas Rosch as a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission.1 Normally, one would not expect the replacement of one Republican commissioner for another to portend any noteworthy change in the commission’s dynamics or attitude toward its antitrust enforcement efforts. But these are unusual times.
How Wright, who is not shy about promoting his Chicago School orthodoxy, found his way onto Obama’s short list to replace Rosch, one of the commission’s most aggressive antitrust enforcers in decades with a record of broad cooperation with his Democrat colleagues, is the subject of a lot of noise inside the Beltway. One explanation is, the president nominated Wright to grease the Senate confirmation hearing of Bill Baer, Obama’s nominee for Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division, which it apparently did. Baer’s nomination was sent to the Senate by a vote of 12-5, after an unusual closed committee hearing requested by Senator Chuck Grassley.
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