Special Classifieds Feature
Buy Washington Post Inauguration newspapers, books, and more
RSS
Required Reading | RSS
Top Video | RSS
Trench Warfare | RSS
Blunder Box | RSS
Reader Picks | RSS
Staff Picks | RSS
Best of The Post | RSS
Punchlines | RSS
Down-Ballot | RSS
3:15 p.m. ET: Tom Daschle's decision to withdraw as President Obama's nominee for Health and Human Services secretary has generated a ton of media attention and the first full-fledged PR crisis of this administration. But what it hasn't generated is a lot of debate, and that could help explain why Daschle threw in the towel.
Scan the Interwebs in these hours after Daschle's withdrawal, and you'll find few defenders of the former Senate Majority Leader. Even those who praised Daschle as a good man and a worthy nominee are, mostly, not suggesting he should have stayed and fought. Nor are they chastising Obama for accepting (or prompting?) Daschle's withdrawal.
Over at Daily Kos, a preeminent liberal blog, Trapper John writes a scathing "memo" from Obama to potential job-seekers asking them to "please pay your taxes." And, the memo adds, "If you're honestly deluded enough to believe that daily use of a goddamn Town Car and a goddamn chauffeur is a 'gift,' you're probably too divorced from everyday reality to work for the people of the United States."
Ezra Klein of the similarly liberal American Prospect blogs that Daschle's withdrawal is "good for the cause of ethics in government" even if it might set health care reform back a ways. At The New Republic, Noam Scheiber praises Obama for his "completely unsentimental decision" -- realizing that Daschle's growing political baggage outweighed whatever personal loyalty Obama might feel toward him.
And conservatives, not surprisingly, think it was the right call. "A necessary move for Obama: He couldn't have had two high-profile tax scofflaws in his cabinet," writes National Review editor Rich Lowry.
Add it all up, and Daschle had a chorus calling for him to step down and just about no one making the counterargument. Obama's foes wanted Daschle gone, but many administration supporters did too. To survive in any position of power in Washington, you always need a constituency advocating on your behalf. By this morning, Daschle no longer did.
8 a.m. ET: We're now two weeks into the Obama administration, and two major storylines of his first days -- one policy, one political -- have begun to converge.
Story one: President Obama is in the midst of selling his economic stimulus package to reluctant Republicans, and will follow that by unveiling a new financial rescue plan to a public already tired of bailouts. Story two: Obama is building an unprecedented parallel campaign organization with 13 million email addresses and the power to mount a massive external lobbying offensive.
It is David Plouffe, subject of a new Esquire profile, who assembled and controls the email list, which the magazine calls, disturbingly, "a fulsome pulsing beast" that can be unleashed rapidly. But to what end? The back-to-back fights over the stimulus and the bailout provide the perfect opportunity for Obama and Plouffe to deploy the organization for the first time.
The bank rescue plan, in particular, calls out for a strong sales effort. Even Obama's biggest supporters will need some convincing, as the first bailout has turned out to be unpopular for both liberals and conservatives. Obama needs to explain to the public why this isn't a boondoggle, while also reassuring financial markets.
On the stimulus, Obama will do a round of network television interviews today to sell his vision of the measure, making use of his invaluable presidential platform. But while every president -- particularly when still in the honeymoon period -- can command airtime, not every president has the outside political infrastructure Obama has built. Not every president has the ability to pressure members of Congress from both above and below, from across Pennsylvania Avenue and from their own districts. As the Esquire story notes, "No president has ever entered office with this much information."
Obama may now wish he had more information about Tom Daschle. The South Dakotan apologized to his former colleagues yesterday for his tax mistakes, but the trouble for the HHS nominee doesn't seem to be over. Daschle reportedly pushed Leo Hindery -- the friend who generously gave him that car and driver -- for an Obama administration job. And the New York Times editorial board, which probably has a lot more sway with 44's team than it did with 43, is out today calling for Daschle to withdraw his name.
And remember Al Franken? He may be good enough and smart enough, but he's still a ways away from actually becoming a senator. Republicans have vowed to block him from being seated in the chamber, and Harry Reid may also be wary after the way the Roland Burris saga unfolded. If Reid and Franken want to convince Republicans to let the Minnesotan join the Senate, maybe they could borrow Obama's e-mail list.
By
Ben Pershing
|
February 3, 2009; 8:00 AM ET
Go to full archive for The Rundown »
Posted by: cingi | February 3, 2009 9:09 AM
It is always interesting--in a train wreck sort of way--how people who write and talk for mainstream media take absolutely no responsibility for what becomes the common wisdom. Thus, a "storyline emerges" not "Fox, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, the Post, Tribune companies and the NYTimes all led with or devoted substantial, repetitive minutes to."
If Obama is having trouble explaining the stimulus as "stimulus" could that be because a substantial portion of the media is awash with what should be discredited Republicans and their "lower taxes" talking points?
Ya think?
Posted by: kstack | February 3, 2009 9:31 AM
Sounds good cingi....
But do you honestly believe that ANY liberal in this administration is going to:
1. Make that decision?
2. Actually act on it?
3. Do what is right for the American people?
4. Continue to do so in the future?
I don't think so. The "peace and love", "everybody is part of the brotherhood of man" freaks will NEVER let it happen again. It would go against everything they want. They have preached tolerance for so long they actually believe it and it has destroyed our country from within. You talk about history? Consider the causes of the fall of the Roman empire. We just did it to ourselves and in a much shorter period of time.
Posted by: rmcgee1960 | February 3, 2009 9:34 AM
A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER TO THE OBAMA PRESIDENCY AND TO DEOMCRACY:
THE BUSH-CHENEY EXTRAJUDICIAL PUNISHMENT NETWORK
• RADIATION WEAPONRY IS SILENTLY DESTROYING LIVES, INDUCING ILLNESS, AND MAKING POSSIBLE "STEALTH WAR" ON UNKNOWING INNOCENTS -- INCLUDING THOSE DEEMED POLITICAL 'DISSIDENTS"
Team Obama must immediately work with GOP defenders of the Constitution to dismantle the nationwide extrajudicial punishment network...
...authoritarian bureaucrats and security/intel officers and their nationwide network of citizen vigilantes fronted by federally-funded volunteer programs.
This nationwide, Gestapo-like "multi-agency action" operation has made a mockery of the judicial system for the past eight years and has claimed many victims from all strata of society.
Crimes against humanity are being committed across the nation via the use of so-called "directed energy (radiation) weapons" which the Bush D.O.J. recently confirmed are being widely deployed to police forces nationwide.
These RADIATION weapons emit silent, pulsed bursts of various forms of radiation -- and are degrading and damaging the health of those on the receiving end as well as their operators.
This weaponry has NO PLACE in civilized society -- much less in the hands of security personnel who interact with the public. It should be BANNED -- and NOT deployed to local law enforcement with the aid, approval and funding of D.O.J.
The widespread deployment of this weaponry virtually assures its misuse. Imagine if rogue actors tried to use its silent, deadly force to induce illness or to disable our political leaders.
Perhaps they already have.
Victims of this extrajudicial punishment network also see their finances and livelihoods expropriated and destroyed by coordinated "multi-agency action" "programs of personal destruction" that deny them due process of law while degrading their lives and destroying their families.
Obama administration officials must address these abuses IMMEDIATELY, before these affronts to the Constitution destroy more American families -- and subvert the Obama presidency.
The bureaucrats and officers behind these "programs of personal destruction" remain entrenched. They cannot be co-opted or rehabilitated. They have threatened and harassed those who demand that they take down their unconstitutional programs.
These programs surely have contributed the nation's economy crisis -- and by extension, the world's.
These betrayers of the Constitution MUST be removed from power and brought to justice.
http://my.nowpublic.com/world/domestic-torture-radiation-weaponry-americas-horrific-shame
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/gestapo-usa-govt-funded-vigilante-network-targets-terrorizes-u-s-citizens
OR (if links are corrupted):
http://My.NowPublic.com/scrivener
Posted by: scrivener50 | February 3, 2009 10:29 AM
The comments to this entry are closed.
The people that are in Congress in Washington, tell us they can not deport 12+ million illegal aliens.
We probably need to vote all of them out of office and send them back to school to learn history!
We pay more to illegal's in welfare than it would cost to deport them!
Our career politicians need to work for American citizens and the good of the United States of America, not the lobbyist and big business.
HOOVER, TRUMAN AND EISENHOWER
Here is something that should be of great interest for you to pass around.
I didn't know of this until it was pointed out to me.
Back during The Great Depression, President Herbert Hoover ordered the deportation of ALL illegal aliens in order to make jobs available to American citizens that desperately needed work.
Harry Truman deported over two million Illegal's after WWII to create jobs for returning veterans.
And then again in 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower deported 13 million Mexican nationals!
The program was called 'Operation Wet Back'
so that American WWII and Korean veterans
had a better chance at jobs.
It took 2 Years, but they deported them!
Now, if they could deport the illegal's back then, they can sure do it today!!
If you have doubts about the veracity of this information, enter Operation Wet Back into your favorite search engine and confirm it for yourself.
The enforcing of our existing immigration laws and protecting American citizens from the consequences of this is invasion is long overdue.
Join with fellow American citizens to restore our Constitutional Republic - there's no time to waste:
http://www.givemeliberty.org/revolution/