It's greater than you might imagine. Obama's Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is - appropriately enough for the man who is perhaps the world's most powerful courtier - a big fan of Wolf Hall, Mantel's novel about the life of Thomas Cromwell. We know this because he recently discussed it with Noam Scheiber, who interviewed Geithner for a profile in the New Republic:
I asked if he related to Cromwell, an untitled lawyer who’d ascended to Henry’s inner circle on the strength of his wits. “I don’t see myself in that way. I thought he was a cool character, a really interesting story,” Geithner said. Then he riffed on his favorite moment in the book. The passage depicts one of Cromwell’s earliest conversations with the king-essentially his audition. “You said in the Parliament, some six years ago, that I could not afford a war,” the king submits. Cromwell deliberates for a split second, then decides to take the bait. “No ruler in the history of the world has ever been able to afford a war. They’re not affordable things. No prince ever says, ‘This is my budget, so this is the kind of war I can have.’” “It’s an awesome line about the fundamental responsibility of governing,” Geithner told me. “It’s fundamentally about making people understand that there are limits.”
Seems particularly pertinent right now.
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