Forget the presidency. The main executive office in which we need an immediate change is not the White House, but the  Fed. Fed Chair Ben Bernanke is smart, but weak. He can’t stand up to Wall Street, to politicians, or even to his own members, who now publicly criticize him. It’s time to get a new Fed head with experience and a more commanding presence. 

That man is Robert Rubin. First at Goldman Sachs, and now as chairman of Citigroup, Mr. Rubin has developed an unparalleled understanding of how the Street works, particularly in currency markets. But after millions of dollars and millions of headaches, he’s probably had his fill of Wall Street by now, particularly since there’s going to be a few more years of mopping up after the sub prime mess before the banking industry can begin to do really exciting things again. 

So what better way to end up your career as the financial sage to whom all financial sages must give deference…the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board? While Mr. Rubin has been mentioned as a potential treasury secretary for Sen. Barack Obama, he’s been there and done that. But it should be remembered that when he was treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, his finest moments were spent with the international fine tuning that must be orchestrated in dealing with monetary policy. 

While I was working on the Wall Street Journal editorial page, we bashed the Clinton presidency pretty regularly. But we never found anything to criticize about Robert Rubin’s support for and defense of the U.S. dollar. This extremely delicate task was handled by Rubin with greater skill than by any treasury secretary in my lifetime. So why not transfer those skills to the Fed? Ben’s a fine academic. But what’s needed right now is a lion tamer, not a professor. Bob Rubin has trained a whole circus of lions, both on Wall Street and in the more brutal world of financial diplomacy. It’s time to get him back into the ring.