2-4-2009 Washing DC:
George W. Bush was reluctant to admit any mistakes in eight years.
It took Barack Obama just 14 days. And once he started Tuesday, he didn’t stop.
“I screwed up,” Obama told CBS in very un-presidential terms about Tom Daschle, whose nomination for Health and Human Services secretary had imploded a few hours earlier.
Tax problems come and go in Washington, just like dinged-up nominees. But Obama seemed to sense Tuesday that Daschle was different, much more serious — a true threat to Brand Obama that opened him up to charges of hypocrisy.
So in a barrage of five back-to-back television interviews, he said he was willing to “take his lumps.” He complained of a “self-induced injury.” He promised to fix the problem.
And he didn’t even try to talk anyone out of the conventional wisdom — that Daschle and his free limo rides were like the living repudiation of everything Obama campaigned on for two years.
Instead, he tried to get one message across with the force of his contrite words — that he really did mean what he said when he ran for president about cleaning up the capital.
“I'm here on television saying I screwed up. And that's part of the era of responsibility, is not never making mistakes, it's owning up to them and trying to make sure you don’t repeat them and that's what we intend to do,” he told NBC.
On CNN, he went a little further: “Look, ultimately, I campaigned on changing Washington and bottom-up politics. And I don't want to send a message to the American people that there are two sets of standards, one for powerful people, and one for ordinary folks who are working every day and paying their taxes.”
A story like Daschle is hard to make go away, and that’s plainly the realization that both Obama and the former Senate Majority Leader came to. Yet if Obama had known about Daschle’s tax problems for a month, did he simply misjudge just how sharp the public backlash would be?
Obama’s team might well be asking the same question of Daschle.
It wasn’t until Tuesday morning that the South Dakotan deduced that the furor was not about to ebb, and if anything was intensifying.
But once Daschle, who has been involved in the highest levels of politics since serving as an aide to former Sen. James Abourezk in the early 1970s, did see the storm, he recognized the threat it posed to his mission.
“He understands politics as well as anyone, and he knew that it was going to be virtually impossible to be the health care champion he wanted to be,” said one source close to Daschle. “The issue is bigger than him, and his withdrawal reflects his fundamental loyalty and integrity.”
For all the mea culpas, Obama did leave himself some wiggle room. While Obama’s tone was plainly contrite, there were ambiguities in his comments.
“We're going to make sure we fix it so it doesn't happen again,” he told CNN, without explaining precisely what problem he was fixing, nor precisely how it would be fixed.
His plans to fight the impression of a “double standard” clearly don’t involve revisiting the tax issues which dogged Timothy Geithner’s nomination as Treasury Secretary.
In fact, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs suggested that Geithner’s underpayment of about $34,000 in taxes was no longer a proper subject for discussion. The reason: he was confirmed last week, slipping over the finish line just before the back-tax controversies arose over Daschle and Nancy Killefer, Obama’s pick for chief performance officer who stepped aside yesterday as well.
“Mr. Geithner has gone through a process,” Gibbs said at a briefing for reporters. “The process has guided Mr. Geithner to be the Secretary of Treasury of the United States of America.”
One “fix” Obama may have been alluding to could require him being less hasty in publicly naming nominees who have yet to complete the vetting process. In the CBS interview, Obama acknowledged being “very eager” to put Daschle to work on health care.
The former senator’s nomination was announced December 11, apparently before Obama people dug into the ex-senator’s financial affairs. Obama reportedly learned of Daschle’s tax underpayment in early January, but the president professed full support for the nomination until Tuesday.
In a similar turn of events, Obama touted his pick for Commerce Secretary, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson at a news conference in Chicago on December 3 – but Richardson was out by January 5, citing an investigation into alleged pay-to-play contracting in his state.
Still, after sustaining the worst public embarrassment of his new presidency, Obama seemed philosophical, exhibiting confidence he would get back on track. “That’s the nature of this thing,” he told CBS. “We were pretty good about being on message for two weeks.
But it also forced him into saying, less than a quarter of the way into his first 100 days, that he was not acceding to the ways of the capital. “Well no,” he said on NBC of Daschle’s departure, “I don't think Washington wins.” ..News Source.. by JOSH GERSTEIN & JONATHAN MARTIN
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