"We can't send a message to the American people that we've got two sets of rules -- one for prominent people and one for ordinary people," Obama said, defending his administration's standards.While I think that Americans appreciate a president who takes responsibilities for mistakes, I think that Obama is being a bit disingenuous here. His first instinct was to let these nominations go through. He knew about Geithner and Nancy Killefer 's tax problems before he made the nominations and went ahead anyway. He only found out about Daschle's tax negligence after he made the nomination, but he stuck with Daschle up until yesterday. So he didn't mind the dual message on Monday, but then decided it was unacceptable on Tuesday.
Earlier this week he was speaking out in defense of Daschle. And Geithner has been confirmed and now is the head of the Treasury including the IRS. There is no indication that Obama is going to act on his sudden realization that he shouldn't be sending that message to the American people about the two sets of rules by asking Tim Geithner to step down. So he doesn't want to send that message for Daschle, but doesn't mind that it continues to be sent with Geithner.
So halfway props for Obama. Yes, he took responsibility which is always refreshing, but he ignored that it was only public outrage and ridicule that made him decide that Daschle's problems were just a bridge too far. And he's not canceling out that message being sent by Geithner's position in his cabinet.
4 comments:
I'm afraid I consider The One's supposed humility fully as oily with political calculation as his nominees have been oily with corruption for personal gain (and very obviously so -- Richardson and Daschle, for instance, have long records of shady play for personal enrichment).
Obama knows that in the media climate he enjoys, any professions of personal culpability he makes will quickly be turned by his adoring media into one more reason to love and serve him.
Bush, on the other hand, rightly saw that the media mania to elicit some confession from him had the goal of driving a stake into his administration's heart, killing all chances to effect his policies.
Obama certainly needed to be taken down a peg. While he let the nomination go too far, it was nice to hear a president taking responsibility for his mistakes. He could have blamed the whole thing on receiving bad intelligence from his people.
If it is screwing up to nominate a tax cheat for HHS then isn't it doubly so to nominate a tax cheat for Treasury???
mark,
Would you agree that incorrectly judging the public's outcry against tax cheats is somewhat different from getting errant intelligence from the CIA, DIA, NIMA/NGA, NSA, all other American Intelligence Community members and Allied nation's intelligence services?
Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton both had the same view of Saddam Hussein with the former supporting the war and the latter initiating the call for "regime change", all based on the same intelligence as that given to our last President.
Anyway, the point here is that Obama was OK with these tax cheats until the public cried foul. Could be that as an Illinois politician Obama naturally has a high threshold for corruption but in these days of financial worry, mounting taxes, and his own claim to somehow be different than the politicians of the past, the President should start acting more like the way he talked during his campaign and less like a man beholden to his party's line.
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