Barack Obama’s lead econ adviser, young Chicago b-school prof Austan Goolsbee, apparently picket-fenced an entire extemp season. I’ve never even heard of that before, because individual excellence is easily waylaid by random variations in judging. It requires someone who’s so self-evidently in a different league that even the mythical Bubba the Bus Driver lay judge can see it. It makes him the Roger Federer of the high school speech world, minus the Djokovic defeat. Simply mind-blowing.

(Note that this doesn’t necessarily mean getting ranked first in every round — the usual definition of picket-fencing a tournament — but rather winning every competition in his year.)

In 1987, [he] became the first extemporaneous speaking competitor to go through an entire year of competitions placing only first. This included winning the [National Catholic Forensic League in extemp] for the second time… winning the National Forensics League’s [nationals in foreign extemp, and] placing second in the nation in original oratory.

As a student at Yale he debated on the APDA circuit. In 1990 he and partner Dahlia Lithwick [of Slate] were runners up for National Debate Team of the Year… In 1991, he and partner David Gray were the National Debate Team of the Year… He later served as coach to the M.I.T. debate team and the University of Chicago debate society. [Link]

Goolsbee is against taxing the Net:

He has been Barack Obama’s economic adviser since Obama’s successful U.S. Senate campaign in Illinois. He is the lead economic adviser to the 2008 Obama presidential campaign and is known as a centrist. [Link]

And he apparently taught classes — in his tux — on his wedding day (thanks, AK).

Here’s his bio, and a run-down of Obama’s other economic advisers.