At Harvard, Kagan Aimed Sights Higher.

[elleng]

Now Mr. Summers is President Obama’s top economic adviser, and Ms. Kagan is the president’s Supreme Court nominee. Her dealings with Mr. Summers — she persuaded him to abandon an unpopular plan to move the law school, kept her distance when he faltered and made no bones about trying to succeed him when he was forced to resign as Harvard’s president — reveal a woman of intense ambition and deft political skills. Their relationship hints as well at Ms. Kagan’s persuasiveness, and how she might operate on a divided Supreme Court, where persuasion often seems in short supply.

“He is not someone you can cajole in any way,” Martha L. Minow, the current Harvard Law dean, said of Mr. Summers. “It’s the merits, evidence, substance. It’s not about charm, it’s not about small talk, it’s ‘Just the facts ma’am,’ and build your case and be unbelievably fair-minded about the other case, because he is going to ask you about the other side.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/26/us/politics/26kagan.html?hp