Tom Daschle's withdrawal from his nomination as Secretary of Health and Human Services due to his failure to pay taxes on, among other things, the car and driver which a wealthy friend let him use while in Washington, while appropriate, is troubling not only because Daschle may well have been a good HHS Secretary, but also, for those of us who support our new president and his agenda, it is not a helpful development. The details of the circumstances which forced Daschle to withdraw are particularly unfortunate because they simply reek of elite, affluent, Washington insider. For most Americans, failure to pay thousands of dollars of taxes on the limousine lent to you by your friend is even more difficult to understand or relate to than the more common affluent foible of failing to pay taxes on housekeepers, gardeners and the like.
Critics of President Obama will use this incident to claim that Obama is not really about change, and is captive of the same politicians and lobbyists who have always run Washington. More serious is the criticism of Obama on similar charges, which has already begun, from people and places that have been sympathetic to the President. Obama himself has taken responsibility for the Daschle debacle, which in of itself represents a pleasant break from previous administrations. However, more thoughtful observers, including supporters of the president, can use the Daschle affair as an opportunity to explore some of the human side of trying to bring change to Washington.
The notion of the outsider itself is a strange one in presidential politics. It is usually bestowed on politicians who, by any normal measure are consummate insiders, but who have somehow lived in Washington for less than a decade. Ronald Reagan, after serving eight years as governor of California, being a major media figure for several decades and a prominent leader of his party for well over a decade, was viewed as an outsider when he ran for president, not for the first time either, in 1980. Similarly, when he began his campaign Barack Obama had been a national figure for a few years, albeit fewer than most presidential candidates, with a network of relationships due to his education and political service, at the highest levels of his country and his party, but was been viewed as something of an outsider. Having said that, Obama certainly was not a typical presidential candidate. He seemed grounded in reality with a sense of the issues facing real Americans that many of the other candidates obviously did not have. In reality, of course, all major presidential candidates are, almost axiomatically, insiders.
Nonetheless, most presidents promise to change Washington and govern it differently. The difficulty of crafting such a government is two-fold. First, it is impractical. The mechanics of passing laws, effective governance, and getting things done in Washington is difficult and those who have been able to do it successfully over the years can be an important asset to any administration. The second point is less obvious, but more central. Many people with long experience working in government, even at high levels, are decent, smart, hard-working and able people. Precisely the kind of people a president would want in an administration. In my view Tom Daschle, along with other people in Obama's government such as Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder and numerous others fit that description. Moreover, Obama is not alone in being opposed to the Washington insider culture but having respect, and probably broadly warm feelings, for a number of insiders.
Many ordinary Americans have mixed feeling about our leaders as well. While we complain and criticize the culture of Washington, we all can think media figures, elected representatives and other insiders who we like and respect. For years, political scientists have observed a similar phenomenon, that Americans hate congress, but like their congressmember. Individual insiders, therefore, are not the problem. Rather it is the insider approach and even mentality that creates resentment from the rest of America. Daschle may well have honestly forgotten to pay taxes on the limousine because he works in a world where powerful people exchange favors all the time and where most people have a car to take them where they want to go. This is not the world in which most of you, or I, live, but over the time it became the only world in which Daschle, a member in good standing of the Washington insider class, lived.
While failing to pay taxes is a serious issue, the core problem are not the individual mistakes, but that the insider culture and mentality that facilitates those mistakes also contributes to a style of governance that frequently does not look much beyond the beltway. The dangers of this insider culture go beyond unpaid taxes and botched nominations but can lead to larger problems of groupthink and closed policy loops. Already, the Obama administration has sought to combat the miasma of the insider Washington culture in their administration by continuing to mobilize, and seek input from activists and other supporters around the country. Balancing the need to have experienced hands such as Eric Holder, Rahm Emmanuel, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden while avoiding having his administration dominated by insider culture, will only happen with constant vision and leadership from the top. Getting this balance right may very well determine the success or failure of Obama's presidency.
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Daschle Pushed Patron For Obama Job: Dem
Tom Daschle backed the patron who paid him a million-dollar salary and supplied him with a free car and driver for a job inside the...
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Tom Daschle Withdraws Nomination For HHS Secretary
Additional reporting by Sam Stein and Rachel Weiner WASHINGTON -- Tom Daschle withdrew Tuesday as President Barack Obama's nominee to be health and human services...
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Obama Spokesman: Daschle Chose To Withdraw
The Obama administration expressed contrition and sadness over the withdrawal of Tom Daschle's nomination to head the Department of Health and Human Services, saying that...
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Daschle Replacement Buzz: Bradley, Dean, Rendell, Sebelius
With Tom Daschle removed from his planned role as chief architect of President Obama's health care policy, the search has already begun for his replacement....
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Danger: Creeping Puritanism
Tom Daschle's resignation should have been accepted, however, that of Nancy Killefer should have been refused. Responses must be tailored to the "sin." Not all imperfections make a person unfit for office.
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Democratic Tax Goof Follies
The Daschle-Geithner-Killefer tax goof is based on an almost-unconscious hope that the system they theoretically want to work ... won't.
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Daschle's Situation, and the Small-Dollar Solution
Like many decent people, Daschle got caught in a bad system that is so corrupted by money it hardly matters whether the money is from good people with good intentions or bad people with bad intentions.
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Tax Avoidance as the New "Sin"
The modern version of: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" has arrived. It is: "Let he (or she) who has not told his accountant to do whatever they can in order to pay the least taxes cast the first stone."
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Why Obama's Well-Oiled Machine Screwed Up on Daschle and Company
The vetters are not supposed to rely on let alone accept the word of the prospective nominee that they paid what they owed.
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Daschle's Premature Dash
The only thing more implausible than believing that a multi-millionaire with national ambitions would willfully try to defraud the IRS of $140,000 is believing that a man like that actually does his own taxes.
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Why Is Daschle Out and Geithner In?
Daschle isn't irreplaceable for health care reformers, but Obama would make a big mistake in appointing a replacement with any lessor convictions on a public heath care option.
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The Untold Daschle Story: The Blacklisting of Progressive Economics
Though Obama won on promises to challenge Wall Street, there has been a calculated effort to stack the administration with the very Wall Street Democrats who created the problems he lamented.
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Are We Doing the Bidding of Conservatives?
Media coverage has been dominated with hysteria over tax mistakes already rectified, and claims of "pork" in the economic recovery bill -- all aiming to paint the new White House as hypocritical old politics.
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Progressive Agenda Tip #1: Pay Your Taxes
When our leaders, or even our potential leaders, fail to contribute to the collective good, it feeds our lack of faith in them as stewards of the incredible coercive power of government.
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Howard Dean for HHS or Health Czar
There's no way that Rahm Emanuel's animosity toward Dean can be explained away if they pass over him again, especially given his tremendous success at the DNC.
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Obama Considers Tax on Cabinet
President Obama is mulling a controversial new tax program that would require members of his Cabinet to pay taxes owed under the Federal tax code, the White House confirmed today.
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I completely agree when you say, "The dangers of this insider culture go beyond unpaid taxes and botched nomination
Tom Daschle is quite likely a very fine man. I do not however subscribe to the view that healthcare reform is doomed because Tom Daschle is not at HHS. I worried that the insider culture you speak of (to which Daschle is a gold star member) coupled with his ties to the health insurance industry and his go along to get along style, would not provide the kind of bold, strong and agressive leadership we will need to tackle healthcare reform. I don't see why Daschle can't still play a role (much like Gore on climate change). Personally I think his withdrawal may well be a good thing in the long run.
Talk about a crisis of trust.
Will every person who reads this post have paid all their taxes? I doubt it. Should Tom Daschle have gotten a pass? He probably deserves it as much as Geithner. Oh, right Geithner got there first; Wall Street and Republican
Insiders exist in every business. Washington is no different. It's not a bad thing to be part of this club, when you are because of the skill you have acquired from decades of not giving up, working diligently
There are plenty of insiders who are not as compromise
In other words, there are insiders and there are insiders. Not all insiders are created equal.
Geithner? There's something about him I don't like. I can't explain it, but it has to do with the way he mumbles and doesn't make eye contact. Perhaps, he's an intellectu
maybe he would have exposed that mutual admiration society (doctors and big pharma).??