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WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- At last, an economic strategy that can muster truly bipartisan support: House Minority Leader John Boehner's call this week to fire Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White House economic adviser Larry Summers.

Boehner, who was not previously known for his insights into economics, found a surprising resonance in the press with his call to get rid of President Barack Obama's top two economic aides.

The Ohio Republican, who would probably become speaker of the House if Republicans gain the majority in midterm elections, noted that Obama's economic team is "exhausted," and that Budget Director nike airmax 2009 Peter Orszag and Council of Economic Advisers Chairwoman Christina Romer have headed for the exits. Read more about Boehner's speech.

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"President Obama should ask for - and accept - the resignations of the remaining members of his economic team, cheap nike shoes starting with Secretary Geithner and Larry Summers, the head of the National Economic Council," Boehner intoned solemnly in a speech to the City Club of Cleveland.

Not much of a strategy, you might say. But, like most presidents, Obama is not himself an economist and has relied more or less blindly on the guidance of his top two economic advisers, who have not counseled him wisely.scarpe nike Many Democrats as well as presumably all Republicans would be happy to see Geithner and Summers go.

These two men, each in his own way fairly discredited even before they took office in this administration, get much of the blame for the failure of Obama's economic policy.

It is the president himself, of course, who, with the curious lack of leadership that has characterized his time in office so far, ultimately bears the responsibility.air max shoes Changing the economic team is no guarantee that Obama would adopt a more forceful and coherent economic policy, but it is a necessary condition for getting there.

Obama would be wise to follow Boehner's advice immediately and show before the midterm elections that he is ready to embark on a bolder course.

But this is unlikely to happen with a president who took a year to fill two vacancies on the Federal Reserve Board in the midst of our biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression and who is still dithering over a head of the new Consumer Finance Protection Agency, the keystone of his own financial reform Air Max Nike shoes .

But wait, you say, didn't Geithner and Summers manage to avert a financial collapse and a precipitous slide into a new depression? Perhaps. But they essentially implemented policies already decided upon in the previous administration and had a lot of help from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. And we'll see about the depression.

The problem is they did not chart a course out of the crisis that fulfilled Obama's promise of bold new policies. Instead, they pushed a series of half measures - an economic stimulus that was too small, a financial reform nike shoes that was too weak - that have produced only a halfway successful recovery that leaves virtually everyone unhappy.

It was a predictable result from policymakers who were instrumental in creating the conditions that led to the financial crisis in the first place. At Treasury during the Clinton administration, Summers was a guiding force in the financial deregulation that led directly to the crisis. Geithner also worked at Treasury then and later, as head of the New York Fed, sat on his hands as banks built up bloated positions in bogus credit default swaps air max classic .

The financial crisis completely discredited these policies and begged for new people with new ideas to take the helm. Instead, Obama turned to two policymakers who had already exhausted their credibility.

It may not be too late to take drastic action. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz raised the call last week for a change in the economic paradigm.

Citing the failure of reigning economic models to predict the onset or impact of the crisis, Stiglitz concluded in an op-ed in the Financial Times: "Today, not only is our economy in a shambles but so too is the economic paradigm that predominated in the years before the crisis - or at least it should be."

Tweaking these failed models may help temporarily, Stiglitz said, but a long-term cure requires a "paradigm shift."

This is something a president can do. John Kennedy did it when he boldly implemented a Keynesian policy of federal deficits (through tax cuts!) to counter the 1960 recession. nike air classic Lyndon Johnson continued the policies with such success that Time magazine proclaimed in a famous 1965 cover story, "We are all Keynesians now."

Ronald Reagan forcefully championed Milton Friedman's monetarist theories, which, for a time, worked in a different way to support economic growth.

But things change, and the financial crisis demonstrated it is time for a new theory. air max lebron It was, and perhaps still is, Obama's chance to step into Kennedy's and Reagan's shoes and adopt a bold, innovative policy.

What is certain is that this bold initiative won't come from Geithner and Summers. A paradigm shift is probably not what Boehner had in mind, but if Obama wants to salvage his economic policy, he should follow the minority leader's advice and get some new advisers.