Entangled Alliances

Tom Daschle’s withdrawal from the nomination for Health and Human Services Secretary following revelations about his unpaid taxes has sent shockwaves throughout Washington.  No one saw it coming – and it’s not often you can say that. With regards to the logic behind his withdrawal, the always excellent Ezra Klein hits the nail on the head. The key point:

There was always something studiedly vague about Obama’s insistence that he would battle a culture in which “our leaders have thrown open the doors of Congress and the White House to an army of Washington lobbyists who have turned our government into a game only they can afford to play.” Obama could not remake Washington anew. His administration would certainly face unwanted scandal and welcome proficient rogues.

But it turns out that Obama’s words, well, mattered. They made it harder to ignore scandal, as the Bush administration had done. The endlessly long vetting forms forcing deep tax and income transparency, which in turn uncovered embarrassments that would never have emerged under past regimes. This has made for a more troubled transition, but will probably also result in a cleaner administration. For all the embarrassments, this, in a concrete sense, is what change looks like. It’s not an administration that decides to be clean so much as one that has little choice in the matter.

In other words: if you raise the bar, you have to be able to jump over it.

The shock felt by those on the left is no doubt accentuated by not knowing how to react.  On the one hand, it’s a massive blow to hopes of U.S. health reform given that Daschle, as former Senate Majority Leader and much-loved Washington insider, was uniquely placed to shepherd health care reform through Congress. Undoubtedly one of the key factors in the failure of Clinton’s health reform efforts back in ‘94 was the failure of the White House and Congress to work together. In this regard, Obama choosing Daschle was a genius move.  On the other hand however, the issue of Daschle’s tax returns also brought to light his unsavoury history of taking money from lobbyists and the pharmaceutical industry; discussed in Ezra’s piece but examined in greater detail in a typically merciless  Glenn Greenwald post. Greenwald’s money quote:

He embodies everything that is sleazy, sickly, and soul-less about Washington.  It’s probably impossible for Obama to fill his cabinet with individuals entirely free of Beltway filth — it’s extremely rare to get anywhere near that system without being infected by it — but Daschle oozes Beltway slime from every pore.

Bad for health reform but good for ethics? Or just plain shocking?

photo credit: haaaley

In Mark Bailey’s post below he pointed out the net loss of Obama’s soon-to-be-confirmed pick of Republican Senator Judd Gregg as Commerce Secretary and asks the question: did Obama get played?

Well, I hope  he got played, because the alternative -that he genuinely thinks Judd Gregg is a good pick – is pretty unsavoury . But I don’t think he did.  I find it hard to believe that Obama and his advisors, when considering whether this was a sneaky chance to get a 60th seat in the Senate,  didn’t take into account the possibility that Judd Gregg would demand his replacement be a Republican and that New Hampshire governor Jon Lynch would in fact appoint a Republican to replace him (which is, as Mark points out,  now the likely outcome). Obama’s team aren’t idiots, nor are they risk takers. There must have been more going on than pure numbers politics, indeed it’s more likely that any positive in terms of an extra senate seat was thought of as merely a possible bonus.

Therefore, I think Obama’s decision was down to one of three reasons, or perhaps a combination of the three:

1) Obama wants to repair the olive branch to Republicans damaged by arguments over the Stimulus Package

2) Obama thinks that Gregg will be a moderate at Commerce and likes the idea of having plenty of moderates around

3) Obama thinks that his administration’s faith in government spending needs to be somewhat balanced out by a fiscal conservative

If any of these three reasons were really an operating factor in the decision, then this means that we are faced yet again with the same flawed bipartisanship logic that I decried in my post “Bipartisanship for Dummies: Stupid Compromise on the Stimulus Package”. As far as this situation goes, it does not make sense to support a stimulus package that has, as its main principle, faith in Government spending … and then appoint a doctrinaire fiscal conservative like Judd Gregg to Commerce.  In short, this does not bode well for those who hoped that Obama’s “post-partisanship” would actually lead to common sense progressive solutions as opposed to the same old Bipartisanship Baloney.

photo credit: megabn

Hello to whomever may be out there! As the only blog member who’s currently languishing in full-time education, I’m gonna keep my posts snippy for the time being, but I hope to provoke debate and provide links to a few interesting things from around the web.

To get us started, here’s a question to which I’d genuinely like an answer. It’s now pretty much a fait accompli that Judd Gregg, senior Republican Senator from New Hampshire (and facing a tough re-elect in 2010) is heading to Obama’s Department of Commerce. More interestingly, despite NH’s Democratic Governor, John Lynch, having the prerogative of appointment, Gregg and Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell seem to have managed to ensure the appointment of a Republican Senate replacement (probably former Gregg-aide Bonnie Newman). So what’s Obama’s logic?

As far as I can read it, there are two possibilities:

1) This idea, which looks like it came from Harry Reid, is basically just an example of the Administration and Senate Democrats getting played by Republicans. Reid naïvely thought he had a path to 60 Senators, Obama latched on, and the GOP proved to be stronger than they’d imagined. If so, this is a worrying precedent. Two weeks in, the Administration loses a Cabinet post in a rookie attempt to seize fillibuster-proof control.  Good luck passing universal health-care.

2) If not an error, we’re left with the possibility that Obama is genuinely a “post-partisan”, and welcomes the presence of Gregg in his Cabinet.  Admittedly, the Commerce Department hasn’t exactly been a repository for major political muscle since Herbert Hoover moved onward and upward, and in a Democratic Administration, the balance of power traditionally shifts from Commerce to Labor, but it still seems awfully generous to welcome a third Republican to the Cabinet (joining Gates at DOD and LaHood at Transportation) with no qui pro quo.  Remember too that this was the Department that Bill Richardson, Democratic presidential candidate, Governor, and Clinton-Administration Energy Secretary and UN Ambassador, was supposed to fill.  It had hardly been ring-fenced for the Republicans during the Transition, so why the change?  The prospect of an open seat in 2010 may have helped matters, but Gregg’s re-elect numbers were already pretty anemic, and I hardly think this merits a place in the Presidential Line of Succession. Nor does a single potential vote on the stimulus package, as some have suggested.

So did Obama get played, or am I missing something?