Driving the Conversation:
A damn shame. A wonderful person, a great public servant, a tremendous advocate for quality affordable healthcare for all, derailed by an innocent mistake for which he apologized, and for which took responsibility, but which was probably not even his fault.
Obama and Daschle's statements:
“This morning Tom Daschle asked me to withdraw his nomination for Secretary of Health and Human Services. I accept his decision with sadness and regret….Tom made a mistake, which he has openly acknowledged. He has not excused it, nor do I. But that mistake, and this decision, cannot diminish the many contributions Tom has made to this country from his years in the military to his decades of public service."
Former Senator Tom Daschle's statement:
“I have just informed the President that I am withdrawing my name from consideration for Secretary of Health and Human Services….If 30 years of exposure to the challenges inherent in our system has taught me anything, it has taught me that this work will require a leader who can operate with the full faith of Congress and the American people, and without distraction. Right now, I am not that leader, and will not be a distraction…”
It is probably human nature to divide the world into those we know and those who are outside our circle. And to divide those we know into those we like and those we either don't like or about whom we have no clear opinions. Those we know and like -- in other words, those who are part of our circle -- clearly need no further vetting: after all, we've been vetting them, in a sense, for years. It is the strangers, the "others", the "outsiders" whom we'd better check out.
It is this mindset, and an unforgivably sloppy vetting process that could not rise above those predispositions in favor of familiarity, that has served Barack Obama poorly.
More...
I wish Tom Daschle had not decided to withdraw his nomination for Secretary of Health and Human Services. While Tom’s decision is a reminder of his loyalty to President Obama and his determination not to be a distraction, this was no ordinary appointment and today is not a good day for the cause of health care reform. Tom brought a unique level of legislative skill and experience to this position in addition to his passion to achieve affordable health care for every American. Tom made it very clear he’d made a mistake and he took responsibility for it. I believe that when the smoke clears and the frenzy has ended, no one will believe that this unwitting mistake should have erased thirty years of selfless public service and remarkable legislative skill and expertise on health care. I know Tom Daschle well. I know his integrity and I respect his heart for this cause, and I know Tom will find other ways to contribute to this central mission.
I think Daschle was ultimately done in by the left, which viewed his close ties to health providers suspiciously, fearing that he was not sufficiently supportive of a single-payer national health insurance plan. The left always wanted Howard Dean and will push hard for him. If Obama picks someone other than Dean who is not totally in the single-payer camp it will tell us a lot about the direction of health care reform, which Obama will characterize not as health care reform but as long-term budget reform. In principle, he is right. But that will require cutting benefits for the elderly to pay for health benefits for the uninsured because Medicare is the single biggest long term budgetary problem we face. That will be a very tricky maneuver. Ironically, Mitt Romney is the guy who might have been able to pull it off. But not only would he not take the job, because he holds out hope for the 2012 Republican nomination, but Obama has exhausted the tolerance of Democrats for Republicans in his cabinet with the Gregg nomination, which made no sense in my opinion.
Daschle has withdrawn his nomination. I am glad he did the right thing.
The President had no choice but to dump Daschle. It should have been done sooner. The President's Beltway Boys and Girls he has nominated have caused him great harm. I am waiting for the Democrats to allege that all his nominees problems are due to a "vast right wing conspiracy." By the President not staying true to his image of "change" and the promise to be different, has now caused himself real damage to his credibility. The American People shook their heads every time a nominee surfaced with serious problems to confirmation and they started to wonder about him. Is he for real? Is he just like the rest? Is he the right person at the right time?
Now he must regroup and save his brand. Mr. President your success or failure will be your ability to stay true to the principles and values that got you elected. It is just that simple. As I have said before, the biggest problems for this President will come and have come from Democrats not Republicans.
Many of us who voted for Barack Obama many of us were not just choosing a man but a mission: we made a promise to ourselves to work with him to make the future better with a 21st Century economy, universal health care, and responsible return of our troops from Iraq in a way that was tranformational, transparent, and trustworthy.
In withdrawing his name for HHS Secretary, Tom Daschle commendably put the mission of universal health care ahead of his own ego - and will likely make a significant assist to the mission in another venue. A sad but honorable day for him, his family and supporters. To the larger issue, can a graduate of the system ever change it? Aspiring leaders take note: the answer in post-TARP America appears to be that each of us can and should be change agents but no amount of experience or goodwill guarantees a seat at the leadership table. Personal mistakes are now public fodder and fairly or unfairly, no one person, company, or industry is too big or indispensable to fail. While many will pick apart the sensationalist details, try to use them against President Obama, or foment cynicism, his supporters have to keep our eyes on the prize: our mission of transformational policies, transparent portfolios, and trustworthy leadership.
The President's commitment to changing the culture in Washington should have been called into question much earlier; when the President appointed former lobbyists like William Lynn to positions in the Administration after having told anyone and everyone who would listen during the Presidential campaign that lobbyists would have no place in the President's Administration. This was rank opportunism and rank hypocrisy on the President's part and while he has been pilloried for it, the negative attention has not been nearly enough. To be perfectly clear: Barack Obama made himself part of the Good Old Boy Network in Washington by reversing himself on lobbyists. If this is Hope and Change, then I am Marie of Roumania.
Perhaps this 180 degree reversal on lobbyist appointments will be highlighted now that we are aware of Tom Daschle's tax cheating heart and now that Daschle has withdrawn his name for consideration for the post of Secretary of Health and Human Services. The President should ensure that in addition to not being HHS Secretary, Daschle also should not serve as the White House's Director of the Office of Health Policy--the second hat that Daschle was supposed to wear as a member of the Administration.
We should emphasize, of course, that in addition to Daschle's tax delinquency and that of Tim Geithner, the President's chief performance office selection, Nancy Killefer, has had to withdraw her name because of tax problems. To paraphrase Casey Stengel, "Can't anyone in the Obama White House comply with the Internal Revenue Code?"
Tom Daschle has officially withdrawn himself from consideration for Secy. of Health and Human Services. (1:27 p.m.) (Note to readers: All the submissions below this came in before the withdrawal was announced.)
Read the full story here.
I have long favored William F. Buckley's quip that "I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University," but I think we'd all prefer that John Q. Public actually not be in charge 25% of the government's outlays which is what the Secretary of HHS is in charge of.
Over the decades it's made good polemical copy to puncture a presidential candidate's campaign motif of "change" as when some call the Obama administration's top political appointees "Clinton Retreads"
just as others once called the George W. Bush administration's top political appointees "Bush the Elder's Retreads."
More...
Nancy Killefer, who was slated to be the White House’s first chief performance officer, withdrew her nomination Tuesday, saying in a letter to the president that her tax delinquency would cause political hardships. Politico
So the woman appointee, with a small problem, goes gracefully, while the men, with larger problems but endowed with indispensabilty and circles of friends, get to stay?
It was inevitable that President Obama's pledge to change the culture of Washington would run into trouble. The aim is laudable, but like other new administrations, it smacks of ethical one-upsmanship:
"My administration will be the purest of them all."
Of course, there are abuses, some of which result from improper outside influence on public decision makers, but the challenge is to find a system that balances the need for vetting, disclosure, avoidance of conflict of interest with the equally important goal of attracting good and competent (even excellent) people to serve as political appointees. The tendency is to put more and more hurdles in front of political appointees based on the last scandal. When Zoe Baird has troubles with domestic help, then all nominees are scrutinized on their housekeepers, babysitters and lawn care.
More...
Finally, we have an administration with real diversity. All we heard for more than five years was the cry of “no-bid contracts for Halliburton.” The Obama White House will provide a target-rich environment for the fourth estate given the choices he’s made for his cabinet. Speaking of “rich,” who can forget the specter of President Obama’s nominee for top law enforcement official resembling a motherless fawn surrounded by a pack of wolves and claiming to a senate panel that his recommendation for the pardon of Marc Rich was a “mistake” that he would not do again? Given the Attorney General’s performance there, I am sure that the American criminal element that has not contributed significantly to Democrat causes is quaking in its collective boots. Then there is the wunderkind Treasury nominee who has been found to be incapable of both navigating TurboTax software and the New York City phonebook to find a competent CPA to do his taxes. His mea culpa likewise gave us all reason to be encouraged by his take-charge demeanor that will lead us out of the financial wilderness. More...
After watching White House Press Secretary stumble-bumble over this issue and every other queasy-inducing query, tough or easy, the only thing left to be said is, you can’t spell “Gibberish” without Gibbs.
My guess is that President Obama believes, with justification, that Tom Daschle aspires to return to public service to advance the President’s health reform agenda, not to advance the interests of clients he has advised or to enhance his post-government employment potential. Obama also values Daschle’s experience and judgment in navigating the policymaking process and believes that Daschle can make a difference in achieving their shared objectives in health reform. Consequently, he is willing to take the criticism that he is not living up to his strong rhetoric and policies on changing the culture of influence in Washington. The President is betting that if confirmed Daschle will overcome the damage from his failure to fully pay his taxes and avoid potential conflicts of interest with propriety in office and substantive achievements. Governing is infinitely more complicated that campaigning and Obama’s tough rhetoric on lobbyists probably set expectations he could not reasonably meet. Nonetheless, the ethics guidelines he has approved (including the prudential waiver provisions attached to them) are a step forward and not nullified by his sticking with Daschle.
Presidents always forgive foibles in their allies that they would condemn in their enemies. President Obama is no different. A series of Presidents have promised to change DC's culture of influence, but that would require them to change human nature. And that won't ever happen.
Obama deserves credit for establishing new and tougher ethical & disclosure standards in his few days in office. Unfortunately, he's just sent the opposite signal by his one-word endorsement of a continuing Daschle appointment ("absolutely"). Where was the accompanying sentence of regret that Daschle had avoided his taxes and gamed the system in many ways?
Yes, obviously so. But serious people never really thought anything else would happen. It was a good campaign line for Democrats for the last 4 years, but I hope no contributor to the Arena really thought that Barney Frank, Charles Rangel, Hillary Clinton and Tom Daschle wanted to end influence peddling. Voting for Democrats to control the spending that fuels influence peddling is like voting for Bernie Madoff to get your 401k back in shape. The problem, of course, is that the President's favored policies - more spending, more regulation, bigger government - are the fuel of influence peddling. Big government is, by definition, a game for insiders and influence peddlers. That's why Daschle's appointment will be a good thing - it lays to waste any remaining pretense that things have changed.
If I may move a bit off topic, am I the only one to whom it seems that Obama has been President forever? The extended campaign, the long transition, Bush's disappearance from the public eye starting around January of 2006, President Obama's decision to claim the lead on policy months before his actual inauguration, and the ubiquitous, adulating media coverage are conspiring, I think, to rob him of any honeymoon. We're barely two weeks into the failed Obama administration, and I can hardly remember a time when he wasn't president. This may be a problem for all future presidents.
The second point Brad makes--"a bit off topic"--is especially insightful. We'll have to redefine the "hundred days" concept. In reality, we're already at something like day 90. Consider the media proliferation since, for example, the first days of the Clinton administration, before we even had a decent web browser. I suspect, however, that the pressing sense of economic crisis that began sometime in the Fall, which started the Obama ascendancy and premature honeymoon, may bear at least partial responsibility.
It only feels like a long time because you're calling it "failed" - those of us who support the Obama administration know that it's only been 2 weeks since we shivered on the Mall and danced in the streets. Give the man a chance to unpack!
The Daschle episode pales in comparison to the culture of influence that corrupted the last administration. The Bush administration played loose with its power, failed to own up to mistakes, conveniently had memory losses when called to testify at congressional hearings, and was either too incompetent or obsessed with power to do its job properly.(Alberto Gonzales and Dick Cheney readily come to mind.) Now comes former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who was such an honest and skilled broker in the Senate with his counterpart, Repubican Leader Tretn Lott, that Lott was punished by his GOP colleagues for dealing too much with Daschle. President Obama picked Daschle because he knows how to bring together disparate interests -- health care legislation will require collaboration -- and Daschle is a skilled policy negotiator. Now, he has admitted making a mistake by not paying taxes owed for use of a car -- yes, that was a big mistake. But Daschle is asking that his mistake be considered in the context of his many years of public service, and it should be. More...
Given his campaign emphasis on the issue, Obama is going to find himself in a difficult situation anytime he feels the most competent person for a position calls into question his “commitment to changing Washington’s culture of influence”, whether it involves a waiver to his no-lobbyist policy or the kind of tax issues we’ve seen with Daschle and Geithner. My guess here is that the long term consequences of doing so will depend on the “competence” part of the equation. More...
In the political arena, where managing expectations is so important, President Obama raised the expectations to a point where a failure to meet them with his cabinet appointees has now commenced a steady decomposition of his political brand of bringing about "change." More...
Obviously unethical personal behavior disqualifies you for public office. But I think our political culture overreacts to the private ethics of politicians and underplays the public ethics of their decisons. Let's have a reality check: Which is worse: failing to figure out IRS regulations on in-kind gifts? Or causing the deaths of thousands of our solidiers and hundreds of thousand of Iraqi civilians in an unnecessary and counterproductive war? Gay sex solicitation? Or sending "guilty until proven innocent" detainees into rendition and torture? Choose.
As if that commitment to a new culture wasn't already undermined by the fact of the appointments of Hillary Clinton, Tom Daschle, and all the other old guard Dems on Obama's team, or by the embarrassment of the pork barrel stimulus packages produced by Congress (which "uses the crisis," as Obama's Chief of Staff instructed, rather try to resolve the crisis). Anyone naive enough to have believed that the "old" thinking about government was outdated may have learned something from the revelations about Daschle. Those of us that have paid attention to what these people have been doing for years cannot possibly be surprised, except by the degree of their hubris. The high volume of empty political rhetoric produced by this Administration is remarkable even by Washington standards.
What the Daschle incident really points out is the dishonesty in Obama's campaign pledge. The president can't have it both ways, and he knew it before he ever took office. By definition, a "Washington insider" is a merchant (buyer or seller) of influence, and it is those years of buying and selling that creates an effective policy implementer that can battle inertia and the equally seasoned opposition. I served in a prior administration under both outsiders and insiders, and while the outsiders were loads of fun to work for, they invariably struggled in their job. That's why the second and third rounds of appointees in an administration's life cycle are usually Washington veterans, while the outsiders limp back across the lines to the purer hinterlands from which they came.
If there was some kind of contest through history for how fast a newly elected president could lose all credibility, President Obama would be very competitive.
You have to wonder a bit about the gap between rhetoric and reality with all politicians. After all, Obama seemed to have little trouble navigating the very corrupt environment of Chicago politics. The media simply never pointed this out sufficiently. There's no reason to be surprised. And with Washington more powerful that at any time since the Second World War, the real growth industry will be rent-seeking. Bush defended the old corporate elite, Obama is helping foster a new one. It will be fascinating to watch, if the media ever gets out of its current haze.
Of course it does. The President can't spend the campaign emphasizing the importance of clean hands and integrity and then start asking for exceptions without calling his commitment to change into question. But if he tosses Daschle over, the GOP will smell blood and start looking for more people to target (remember Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood?). So Obama is going to pay a price either way. But he's in this mess because Daschle didn't come clean when he had the chance, and letting him go would send the message that there really is a new Sheriff in town. On balance, that's the right call.
Washington's "culture of influence" has nothing to do with whether Obama forgives Daschle's (accountant's) error. It has everything to do with a world in which a former Senator can sell his influence for millions. Obama has yet to identify how he will bring CHANGE to the way Washington works. (Even the lobbyist proposals so far (important and valuable as they are) don't go far enough. Members of his administration promise not to revolve back to the industries they will regulate during the Obama administration. But a senior official can work for the next 4 or 8 years, and then on the first day of the next administration, go directly to the industry s/he has regulated.) This may not yet be the time, but we've not yet seen a path to real change.
Yes, and it also exposes the broad culture to more scrutiny. There's discomfort with Daschle's ties to the industries he will be regulating. It isn't just the tax error. There is also recognition that Daschle brings a lot to the table because of those ties, so it's a double-edge sword. If we are serious about health reform, we will need to weigh these things carefully.
The Obama vetting process is now easy to understand from hindsight. 1. Identify the Washington Insiders you want; 2. “vet” them with kid gloves; 3. work with them to help justify their failings and potential problems with Senate Confirmation, i.e., Tax Problems, embarrassing prior government service, scandal, investigations; 4. get champions committed to the nominees’ before the bad news can leak out; 5. stick with them through thick and thin with the mantra, “he is the only one who can serve in this capacity and it would hurt the country to be deprived of his abilities and this critical time”; and, 6. we can get whoever we want because we have the votes. More...
There is no way Obama or any other American president is going to change the “culture of influence” in Washington. What he can do is insist on transparency and disclosure so that the rest of us can judge how Daschle, Geithner, and other officials perform. What distinguishes the United States from banana republics or authoritarian regimes is that we know who is seeking to influence whom. If administration officials show favoritism to past clients, that will be a big campaign issue in 2010 and 2012.
The Obama Administration has been publicly silent with regard to the Ice Storms that have ravished the State of Kentucky and neighboring states. Kentucky has faced the largest and most extensive natural disaster in its states history, 40 are dead, millions are without power and people by the tens of thousands are hold up in shelters. Yet, in spite of the suffering of hundreds of thousands of our fellow Americans our President has nary said a word.
Yes, he did quietly sign disaster declarations but as anyone knows these are pro forma and done by staff at the request of the States affected and talked by phone to Governors.
More...
Before getting to today's question, when Daschle was Majority Leader, he was provided with a government-provided car and driver, as are many government executives, federal, state, and local. From his comments, he apparently didn't pay any taxes for any personal use of the car. That seems to be the basis for his contention that it just didn't dawn on him that such use was taxable. I believe him, but that raises a big question: what has he and EVERYONE ELSE in government, past and present, been doing taxwise if/when they've used their government-provided limos and drivers for personal purposes? More...
