Well, you had to know that on the day Salon posts its Sexiest Man Living, I'd be doing a Tim Geithner post, right? But I come to study Geithner, not to ogle him*. He's having another extremely rough week, as both a Democrat and a Republican have taken to the public forum to demand he loses his job: one on MSNBC Wednesday night, and one to Geithner's face.

First, on Wednesday night, Representative Peter DeFazio (D-Ore., and also my congressman) went on "The Ed Show" on MSNBC and in a nicely staged interview [transcript] said he thinks "Timmy Geithner" should lose his job. The reason? Oh, so many reasons, said Mr. DeFazio: there was this AIG scandal, see, and Tim Geithner wouldn't answer DeFazio's question about some of Goldman's swaps, and also, there's this extra TARP money left, and Geithner won't hand it out to non-financial institutions, and also, there are businesses in his district that can't get a loan. Also, it's so much fun to make the Treasury Secretary sound like a twelve year old. Timmy?  Really, Petey, you wanna go down that road?

DeFazio later did a brief Q&A with the Wall Street Journal, where his concluding point about why Geithner should resign is that Geithner serves Wall Street, will always serve Wall Street, has always served Wall Street, named his children after Wall Street, eats Wall Street Wheaties for breakfast, etc. etc.

OK. No one should really be surprised to hear Peter DeFazio calling for Tim Geithner's head. It's kind of like hearing Dennis Kucinich call for a Department of Peace -- two parties, inevitably at odds, continue to disagree. Still, it made the headlines (including at the WSJ, where it's the fifth-most-popular piece today), in part because DeFazio seemed to imply he had a bunch of colleagues who were with him (something he backed away from in the WSJ piece).

By far the more interesting of these exchanges is the one that happened in yesterday's hearing before the Joint Economic Committee. Ranking Congressman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, had about a 2 minute speech detailing the failures of the the Obama administration's economic policies broadly and Geithner's role as "point man" personally. He quoted DeFazio's call for Geithner to resign and then, at about 2:30, got to his own point: 

BRADY: Conservatives agree that, as point person, you've failed. Liberals are growing in that consensus as well. Poll after poll shows the public has lost confidence in this president's ability to handle the economy. For the sake of our jobs, will you step down from your post?

GEITHNER: Congressman, I, it is a great privilege for me to serve this president, and I am grateful for the chance to address the range of concerns you said -- I agree with almost nothing of what you've said, and I think almost nothing you've said represents a fair and accurate perception of where the economy stands today. Now, I think that, it's important to start -- welcome the advice, that you're providing, after you gave this president an economy falling off the cliff, values of American savings cut almost in half, millions of Americans out of work, again, the worst financial crisis that we've seen in a generation --

BRADY: Remind me, Mr. Secretary, what post you were holding, when President Bush left office?

It devolves from there into a pretty fantastic tussle that went something like this:

BRADY: Isn't it true that everything is all your fault, you ridiculous corrupt Wall Street banker Democrat Treasury Secretary who hates Americans and jobs?

GEITHNER: Isn't it true that everything is actually your fault, you Republican Bush-supporting sneaky snake of a CONGRESSman who hates Americans and jobs?

It's kind of an old argument. What's new? This is not the Inaugural's Geithner. This, my friends, is Fiesty Geithner 2.0, a Geithner who's been through both the wars and the P.R. bootcamp that follows them, a Geithner who knows the party line and is now owning it. Who broke the economy? Give you a hint: it's someone who, according to Geithner, is guilty of "eight years of basic neglect of basic public goods, in health care, in education, in infrastructure, in how we use energy." Rhymes with "W."

When did kitty grow some claws?

Maybe around the time that congressmen started making ridiculous charges, like DeFazio's charge that Geithner and Co. have held onto the TARP money with some outlandish idea that they might use what's leftover to pay back, well, the initial loan. Crazy talk! Return money without spending it? WTF, Geithner? Pandering to your conservative base a little too much?

Except, oh, wait, according to Mssr. Brady, they hate your guts, too. If a man's being attacked from one side for not spending enough and from the other for spending too much, too recklessly -- is he actually getting it right?

David Brooks -- and whoa, do I hate to have him as an ally -- says yes in a column in today's New York Times:

So... why is there a dual attack on Tim Geithner around the same time that some are concluding maybe things have actually worked out? Maybe it's because if Tim Geithner got things right, then some of the folks who were calling for his head from Day 1 have gotten things wrong. What an awkward place to be in, particularly if, like my congressman, you voted against the stimulus bill.

Mr. Brady, who voted for TARP, does have a point when he says, at the end of this clash, that those responsible -- in this case, he means Geithner -- should have to offer their excuses "to the millions of American who no longer have jobs because of your decisions... At some point you have to take some responsibility for your decisions."

Indeed. I know it's a bitter pill to swallow, but I don't think Congressmen are getting anywhere by trying to point their fingers at the Treasury Secretary who wasn't Treasury Secretary during the initial bailout as its great, singular villain. They were there, too. Good on Tim Geithner for pointing a finger back at them.

_{* Nor will I ever.}