Daschle drops out and Obama takes a hit

What happened

Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle this week withdrew his nomination as secretary of health and human services, dealing a major embarrassment to President Barack Obama and complicating administration efforts to enact health-care reform. Daschle said mounting concerns over his failure to pay some $140,000 in federal taxes for a car and driver provided by a client were proving too much of a “distraction,” and that he concluded he could not serve effectively. Daschle, an early and pivotal supporter of Obama’s presidential campaign, was slated not only for the high-profile Cabinet post, but also was to head a White House office leading the health-care reform effort.

Daschle’s surprise move followed an announcement that Nancy Killefer, who had been tapped to be the administration’s efficiency czar, was withdrawing as well. Killefer had failed to pay payroll taxes for a household employee. And Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was confirmed by the Senate last week, despite revelations that he, too, had neglected to pay some taxes. Obama acknowledged that the controversies were undermining his message of change. “I screwed up,” he said. “It’s important to send a message that there aren’t two sets of rules—you know, one for prominent people and one for ordinary folks who have to pay their taxes.”

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What the editorials said

Some “agent of change,” said the Chicago Tribune. Obama promised “a clean break from business as usual.” Instead, he “keeps trotting out questionable candidates and asking us to overlook their transgressions.” Could Obama’s vetting process really be this shoddy? “It leaves us wondering whether he didn’t know about those liabilities—a pathetic defense—or simply didn’t regard them as deal-breakers, which is even worse.”

Daschle’s downfall is a “morality play,” said The Wall Street Journal, but not the one perceived by liberals. They say his “lucrative career as an influence peddler” proves that money always corrupts. In fact, what it shows is that when government keeps expanding its “reach over the economy,” private interests will pay large sums to protect their turf or get a piece of the pie. Now that the private sector is controlled by legislators and bureaucrats, “the major special interest in Washington is Washington itself.’’

What the columnists said

Daschle’s exit could actually help Obama’s cause, said James C. Capretta in National Review Online. “Conservatives never really believed” Daschle would build bipartisan support to reform health care, in part because he has long championed the Left’s view “that only the federal government, not markets, can bring financial discipline to the system.” With Daschle out, Obama can choose a replacement “with a history of working across party lines to pursue practical solutions.”

But by any measure, “the task of enacting health-care reform” this year just got a lot harder, said Jonathan Cohn in The New Republic Online. Obama can find somebody to run the Health and Human Services bureaucracy. But finding someone capable of shepherding health-care reform through a legislative minefield is another matter. Daschle offered “political savvy, connections in Washington, and a thorough knowledge of health-care policy” that few, if any, could replicate.

Daschle screwed up, but I can’t help but feel sorry for him, said Michael Kinsley in TheWashingtonpost.com. His biggest problem may simply have been bad timing. Treasury’s Geithner “broke a well-known” employment-tax rule, while Daschle’s error was in “the murky area” covering when a perk becomes taxable. So why is Daschle gone? It could be that “the malefactor who comes first gets away with it because we’re not entirely sure how angry we’re supposed to be.” The “fourth or fifth” transgressor gets off because we’re “bored with the story line.” But the poor schmo who comes second “feels the full fury of

our wrath.”

What next?

Obama remains committed to overhauling health care, but Daschle’s quick collapse clearly caught the White House unprepared. “There was no Plan B,” senior White House advisor David Axelrod admitted. That leaves the White House scrambling to satisfy two competing demands: finding a quick replacement and ensuring that the next candidate is thoroughly vetted—for tax issues above all. Democrats suggested Obama might look to one of several Democratic governors, who supervise Medicaid disbursements in their states, to fill the void.