In the good old days on Wall Street, it was rare for a banker to be overtly political. People may have known that Felix Rohatyn, at Lazard, was a Big Dem—he helped save New York City from bankruptcy, after all—but other leading Wall Street bankers used to be a tad more discreet about their political affiliations. Robert Rubin ended up being Bill Clinton’s Secretary of the Treasury and Hank Paulson ended up serving in the same position under George W. Bush, but it probably could have gone either way. All of which is to say that not so long ago, Wall Street bankers hoping to make the leap to Washington tended to be more of the statesmen variety and less of the partisan type.