Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Explaining Daschle

Says Ezra:
I hope people spin Daschle's withdrawal as a consequence of the revelations that he advised insurance companies and made hundreds of thousands giving speeches to industry groups. That would be a much healthier lesson for future political appointees than "don't forget to pay taxes on your free limo."
That'd certainly be the more beneficial way for the spin to go. I don't really know what the cause is here, but in defense of the beneficial spin, one could point out that Geithner had tax issues too, and wasn't a former colleague of lots and lots of Senators, and hadn't helped Obama out very early on. So you're going to need another variable to explain why Daschle had to pull out.

2 comments:

Blue said...

I would love that to be the prevailing explanation, but I think the key variable is: Daschle wanted to be point man on the biggest legislative push of the past 5 years. He probably realized he just wouldn't be effective as chief negotiator anymore, and other Democrats clearly agreed with that.

Anonymous said...

I started to respond to this, but the response was growing ever longer, so eventually I just posted a blog post responding to yours here: Glad to see Daschle go