By Mark Felsenthal
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lawrence Summers, a former top aide to President Barack Obama and Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, withdrew on Sunday from consideration to succeed Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, after liberal pressure soured his confirmation prospects.
"Earlier today, I spoke with Larry Summers and accepted his decision to withdraw his name from consideration for chairman of the Federal Reserve," Obama said in a statement.
Summers, widely regarded as a brilliant economist and a shrewd and decisive policy-maker, was considered to be the front-runner for the position to replace Bernanke, whose second term expires in January. However, Summers was dogged by controversies including his support for deregulation in the 1990s and comments he made about women's aptitude while president of Harvard.
Word that the president was leaning toward nominating Summers over Fed Vice Chair Janet Yellen elicited an unprecedented amount of controversy for a potential nominee to run the U.S. central bank.
Summers said that the storm pointed to a difficult confirmation process that could hurt the president's economic agenda and the institution, and decided to pull back.
"I have reluctantly concluded that any possible confirmation process for me would be acrimonious and would not serve the interests of the Federal Reserve, the administration, or ultimately, the interests of the nation's ongoing economic recovery," Summers said in a letter to Obama.
Liberal lawmakers and progressive groups were outspoken in their opposition to Summers.
"Larry Summers' past decisions to deregulate Wall Street and do the bidding of corporate America has made the lives of millions of Americans more acrimonious. He would have been an awful Fed Chair," said Adam Green co-founder of Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a political advocacy group, upon hearing the news of Summers' withdrawal.
Four Democratic senators on the Senate Banking Committee were expected to vote against him if he was nominated by the president. The most recent statement of opposition came from Montana Senator Jon Tester on Friday.
"The administration realized that the math wasn't there for a Summers nomination," a Democratic aide on the Senate banking committee said. "Withdrawing was the right choice."
Twenty Senate Democrats signed a letter urging Obama to nominate Yellen, who would be the first-ever woman to lead the U.S. central bank, if nominated and confirmed.
OTHER CANDIDATES
Summers is the second high profile potential nominee to withdraw under pressure in Obama's second term. Susan Rice, now Obama's national security advisor, stepped back from consideration to be secretary of state over controversy surrounding her role in explaining the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, that claimed the lives of four U.S. government employees, including the ambassador.