Don't Mourn for Daschle

Tom Daschle has, under his usual cloud of scandal, withdrawn as
President Obama's nominee to serve in the critical Cabinet position of
Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Republicans think they have dealt the new president a blow.

In fact, by opposing Daschle so strenuously, and appropriately,
Republicans and a handful of principled Democratic senators (who had
quietly let the White House know they were not going to back the
nomination) have done the new president and the nation a favor.

The scandal over Daschle's lavish lifestyle and failure to pay taxes
simply emphasized why the former Senate Majority Leader was exactly the
wrong choice to serve in the administration of a Democratic president
who aspires to make a break with the worst of the compromises that
characterized his party during the Bush-Cheney era.

No top Democrat did more to undermine opposition to the Republican
regime than Daschle, who as the majority leader during the first years
of George Bush's presidency put so much emphasis on the "loyal" part of
the term "loyal opposition" that he failed his party and his country.

In the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Daschle schemed with the White
House to organize a bailout for the domestic airline industry -- for
which Daschle's wife was a lobbyist -- that made last fall's Wall
Street bailout look like a model of fiscal accountability.

Then, Daschle worked with the Bush administration to undermine
opposition to the Patriot Act in 2001 -- preventing Wisconsin Senator
Russ Feingold from introducing amendments that would have addressed
vital civil liberties concerns.

A year later, Daschle worked in lockstep with the administration to
secure congressional authorization in 2002 for an attack on Iraq.

Daschle even blocked Democratic efforts to defend the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty
when Bush moved to withdraw the U.S. from the arms control agreement.
As Feingold explained to this writer during the 2002 wrangling over
Bush's assault on a treaty the Senate had approved by an 88-2 margin in
1972: "I wanted the leadership to take a lead. But when we contacted
Daschle's office, they just weren't interested."

When he ran unsuccessfully for re-election in 2004, the Daschle
campaign appealed to South Dakota voters with television ads that
featured a picture of the Democratic leader hugging the Republican
president and a headline that read: "Daschle: Time to Unite Behind
Troops, Bush."

When Daschle briefly entertained the notion of bidding for the 2008
Democratic presidential nomination, he found that he had no base of
support among grassroots Democrats, who correctly viewed him as an
example of just about everything that was wrong with the party's
congressional leadership during Bush's first term.

Rejected by voters in his homestate and unable to compete
nationally, Daschle pulled a Dick Cheney move. The South Dakotan
attached himself to the campaign of a viable contender in hopes that he
might find a path to power as a member of the next Democratic
administration.

Daschle worked hard for Obama, using all his dubious DC connections
to advance the campaign at points where the freshman senator from
Illinois was battling Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nod.

Obama should have developed doubts about Daschle's value as a
political operative last June when, despite the former senator's
prodding, South Dakota Democratic primary voters backed Clinton.

But Obama was appreciative of Daschle's early support, as became
obvious when the weird pick of the former majority leader to serve at
HHS was made. (Despite the fact that he recently wrote a self-serving
book on the issue, no one remembered Daschle as a particularly serious
player when it came to health care issues. And he certainly was not a supporter of real reform, as has been noted in this space.)

Unfortunately, Daschle's dubious record did not slow his progress.

It took an old-fashioned scandal unpaid taxes to knock the former senator out of contention for the powerful post he coveted.

No one -- or, at least, no one who is invested either in securing real
health care reform or seeing an Obama presidency succeed -- should
mourn Daschle's departure.

Daschle was always a better fit with Bush's administration than Obama's.