“Look, is this an embarrassment for him? Yes. He said so himself,” Mr. Obama said, referring to Mr. Geithner’s remarks in a private meeting with the Senate Finance Committee the day before. But Mr. Obama said Mr. Geithner had made a common mistake and corrected it.  The committee chairman, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, early Wednesday postponed Mr. Geithner’s confirmation hearing from Friday to the day after the inauguration. Senators said the delay was unrelated to the tax issue, but at least for a time it will leave Mr. Obama without a Treasury secretary.  The panel’s senior Republican, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, declined for a second day to take a position on Mr. Geithner’s nomination. In an interview with Iowa reporters, Mr. Grassley reiterated his concern about having a Treasury secretary, with responsibility for the Internal Revenue Service, who had been delinquent on taxes. But he said Mr. Geithner had been “very sincere” in accounting for his violations.  He added: “I don’t believe there’s any doubt about his qualifications. For a partisan person like Obama, appointing a relative political independent as Geithner is, I think that that’s a plus.”  Mr. Geithner called other senators to discuss the controversy, if they wanted, as well as his views on the big issues that otherwise had been expected to dominate his confirmation hearing: an emerging $800 billion economic recovery blueprint, plans for the remaining half of a $700 billion financial bailout fund, and ideas for rewriting regulations for the nation’s financial system to avoid another collapse.  The controversy over his taxes, as it happens, goes to the one area where Mr. Geithner has the least experience, despite serving 13 years at the Treasury Department: domestic tax policy.  Mr. Geithner, 47, rose from a lower-level civil servant at the department at the end of Ronald Reagan’s presidency to under secretary for international affairs under President Bill Clinton, then was a director of the International Monetary Fund before becoming president of the New York Fed in late 2003.  Mr. Obama chose Mr. Geithner on Nov. 24, despite knowing of the tax issue.  “Life’s about choices” is a favorite saying of Mr. Geithner’s, according to associates. Lately he has said it so often that he gets laughs even from the professorial Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, breaking up the unfunny times that the two men — with current Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. — have had in past months making difficult choices about which institutions to bail out and which to let fail.  Mr. Obama’s hard choice was between Mr. Geithner and Lawrence H. Summers, who had been Mr. Geithner’s mentor and boss at the Treasury Department in the 1990s, served as Mr. Clinton’s final Treasury secretary and wanted another turn. In a first meeting with Mr. Obama three weeks before the election, Mr. Geithner, in characteristic self-effacement, told him, “Larry would be great as Treasury secretary,” according to someone familiar with the meeting.  But Mr. Summers had drawbacks in the Obama camp’s eyes. He had clear Clinton connections when the “change” campaign was trying to limit those ties. Mr. Summers also was known to have a sometimes difficult personality, and his troubled tenure as president of Harvard University had left some women’s and minority groups bitter and posed potential confirmation problems.  On Oct. 17, at a New York hotel, Mr. Obama and Mr. Geithner met for an hour and talked about policy and personal matters, according to accounts of the session. Mr. Obama, who spent four childhood years with his mother in Indonesia, asked Mr. Geithner about his own early years in India and then Thailand as his father oversaw Asia development programs for the Ford Foundation.  What neither man knew at the time, but the foundation has confirmed, is that Mr. Geithner’s father, Peter F. Geithner, oversaw a program that Mr. Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro, had worked on. The two may even have met in Jakarta.  Obama advisers say the candidate “fell in love” with Mr. Geithner, in the words of one, while a Geithner associate said Mr. Geithner reported being “smitten” with Mr. Obama. “They both have that kind of quiet confidence in their demeanor,” the associate said.  When an Obama adviser asked Mr. Geithner if he wanted to be considered for the Treasury job, he said he had to first consult his family — his wife, Carole Sonnenfeld Geithner, a grief counselor for poor New York children whom he had met as an undergraduate at Dartmouth College, and two teenagers, Elise, 17, and Benjamin, 14. The job would also pay less than half of the $411,200 he made last year at the Fed. The family acquiesced, and Mr. Geithner turned over reams of records — including the years of tax returns.  When Mr. Obama announced the nomination, he also named Mr. Summers as director of the National Economic Council, to coordinate policy from the West Wing. Ever since, the biggest question among associates is how well the two men will get along, what with Mr. Geithner, the onetime underling, now “the chief economic spokesman for my administration,” in Mr. Obama’s words, and Mr. Summers, the former Treasury secretary, enjoying proximity to the Oval Office.  The morning of the announcement, Mr. Geithner and Mr. Summers had breakfast together in the Chicago Hilton. Since the Treasury years, they have continued to consult each other, friends say, and play tennis at economic gatherings. Mr. Geithner told others that he regretted that the weeks of media speculation had focused so much on Mr. Summers’ reputed arrogance. He joked at his own expense that the news media’s story line amounted to, “Larry is arrogant and smart; Geithner’s not so smart but he’s very humble.”  In truth, Mr. Geithner is known as exceptionally smart and unafraid to speak up — traits that drew Mr. Summers’s attention at the Treasury Department 16 years ago.  “I might worry if I didn’t know it was Tim on the other end of the phone or across the street from Larry,” said a former Treasury Department colleague of both men who did not want to be quoted because of the sensitivity of the confirmation process. “Because I’ve seen them, I’ve seen them clash, I’ve seen them have real, real serious different perspectives on an issue, and I’ve never seen them damage that relationship. And you can’t say that about many people.”  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: Geithner’s Skill May Trump Tax Issue. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Even though Timothy F. Geithner paid more than $48,000 in delinquent taxes and interest, many still see him as best able to handle the economy.