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Lexington
Another two bite the dust
Feb 5th 2009
From The Economist print edition
Barack Obama is paying the price for his high-flown rhetoric
ONLY the other day Tom Daschle looked certain to become one of the most powerful people in the
Obama administration—simultaneously head of the mammoth Department of Health and Human Services
(HHS) and the White House’s health-care tsar. Mr Daschle was to be in charge of delivering what Hillary
Clinton singularly failed to deliver in 1993-94—a comprehensive reform of America’s expensive but
ramshackle health-care system.
Mr Daschle’s career as a health reformer was killed this week by the revelation,cheap coach purses, on January 30th, that he
had failed to pay $128,000 worth of taxes,coach discount, mostly relating to a car and driver he had been given use of.
At first the Washington establishment assumed that he would ride out the storm. Barack Obama declared
his undying support. Mr Daschle pronounced himself “disappointed” by his behaviour. His former
colleagues in the Senate competed to praise his public service (“My breast is clear and my support is
strong”, declared Jay Rockefeller). Then on Tuesday morning Mr Daschle suddenly withdrew his name.
Why the Tuesday surprise? Mr Daschle claims that he read an editorial in that morning’s New York Times
that called for him to step aside,coach on line, and decided that “I can’t pass health care if I’m too much of a
distraction.” Others whispered that he would have been pushed if he had not decided to jump.
Earlier that very morning Nancy Killefer had withdrawn her candidacy to be the government’s first “chief
performance officer” because she had failed to pay taxes on a domestic employee. A third nominee in a
row with tax problems qualified as a “trend” under an unwritten journalistic law. It also raised issues of
gender equality: could Mr Obama allow two men, Tim Geithner (now confirmed as treasury secretary)
and Mr Daschle, to get away with tax evasion while allowing a woman to take th