There are quite a few Wall Street deal makers who, several times a year, make the trek to Washington, where they find ways to inject their ideas into the public policy discourse. Steve Mnuchin is not one of them.

Mr. Mnuchin, Donald J. Trump’s nominee to be Treasury secretary, doesn’t serve on the boards of any policy-oriented institutions, and there is no evidence he has ever appeared on a panel at the Brookings Institution, the American Enterprise Institute or any of the other places in Washington where people debate economic policy.

“I had never heard of him,” said Stan Veuger, an economic policy expert at A.E.I., an often-heard comment from Washington policy people since Mr. Mnuchin emerged as a candidate to run the Treasury Department.

There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, and speaking on panels at the Brookings Institution is neither a prerequisite for high government office nor a guarantee that a person will be any good at it. Mr. Mnuchin is, from the accounts of those who have worked with him, smart, capable and pragmatic.