Will Obama Accommodating His "Team of Rivals" Create a Dysfunctional Regulatory System?

Look, if there is anything that Obama needs to get right beyond health care reform, it is setting up an above-reproach banking regulatory system that fires on all cylinders. His poorest performance so far is the slack he cut banks relative to every other failing industry that gets the back of his hand.

Word of internal feuds between two Republican hold-overs whom Obama is reportedly going to co-empower this week does not make me hopeful that we are going to get the swift and decisive banking reform that America needs:

Some of Mr. Obama’s advisers and some senior Democratic lawmakers have suggested creating a single bank regulator. But the administration’s current version, which could be announced as early as this week, would not combine the regulatory agencies. Instead, it would give Mr. Dugan and Ms. Bair significant new powers — and could intensify their turf battles.

The last thing we need on top of all of the guilt-free bailout money banks received from the Obama Administration is a fractious and lumbering regulatory apparatus filled with bureaucratic gears that don't mesh. If Obama encourages these two Republicans by giving them more power, they're going to create a mess with which their party will be able to beat liberals over the head and spank Democrats in general for years to come.

There is a thin line between the idea of a "team of rivals" and a dysfunctional family jockeying with each other every Thanksgiving reunion. The Obama Administration is poised on that line, ready to fall either way this week.