Daschle Ends Bid for Post; Obama Concedes Mistake
WASHINGTON — Tom Daschle withdrew his nomination as secretary of health and human services on Tuesday after weathering four days of scrutiny over unpaid taxes, prompting President Obama to concede having “screwed up” in undermining his own ethical standards by pushing the appointment.
Tom Daschle on Monday called his failure to pay taxes "completely inadvertent." He also said, "But that's no excuse."
“I’ve got to own up to my mistake, which is that ultimately it’s important for this administration to send a message that there aren’t two sets of rules,” Mr. Obama said in an interview with NBC News. “You know, one for prominent people and one for ordinary folks who have to pay their taxes.”
Mr. Daschle, a closer confidant to Mr. Obama than any other cabinet nominee, had offered to step down over the weekend, but officials close to both men said Mr. Obama had urged him to fight for confirmation.
Mr. Daschle went to Capitol Hill on Monday to keep his confirmation on track, but by Tuesday morning, with the pressure showing no signs of easing, he told the president that he believed he had become a distraction and too wounded to be effective.
It was the rockiest day yet for the new White House. Two hours before Mr. Daschle withdrew, Mr. Obama’s nominee to be the chief White House performance officer, Nancy Killefer, pulled her name from consideration because of unpaid payroll taxes for a household employee.
Is this the "change you can believe in?" Obama's hypocrisy is blatant here.
Saying it was a "mistake" to send a message that there are two sets of rules, one for those who pay taxes and another for those who don't is beyond shameless. That's exactly the message he sent because it was the conduct he exhibited. The truth is, it didn't matter to President Hussein Obama that Daschle, Killefer and now Treasury Secretary (TREASURY Secretary!) Geithner are tax cheats before he nominated them to cabinet positions.
But then again, what kind of conduct is to be expected from a politician who crawled out of the Chigago primordial cesspool?
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