I was thinking about this earlier today.

Personally, I never much liked Daschle.  And though I was far from supporting Dean for President, I really hoped he would get the nomination.

That being said, I now tend to view the HHS Chief through the prism of the health care bill yet to come.  I worry that Dean may not be our best advocate for the bill because the right and many in the middle have such an irrational distaste for him.  He also has few relationships in Congress that I'm aware of.  Those are the two things Daschle had going for him: he's mostly low-key and has fairly good relations with the players in Congress.

The coming fight for health care reform will be huge.  The right will devote themselves to stopping it with a fervor equaling or surpassing what we threw against social security privatization.  

More than any other legislative goal, I just hope Obama and the guy/girl he running HHS can get this done.

Yes, this worked out for the best. After seeing what has been going on in DC over the last couple weeks, we need a real tough person in there. I will not be satisfied with any health plan that doesn't have a strong public plan. Daschle has seemed too willing to compromise before we have even begun.

I haven't seen anything to suggest that Daschle was going to face any kind of tough confirmation battle.  He was going to get beat up in the press a while longer, and maybe he didn't like that, but that's about it unless there was another shoe waiting to drop.

There is an extent to which this concern provides a rationale for an ever-expanding barrage by overly aggressive reporters and editorialists (think back to the debate over whether the investigative pieces into Caroline Kennedy were fair because they were not dissimilar from the type of scrutiny she would have had to endure as a Senate candidate, or were unfair as a perpetuation of the tear-down journalism that keeps too many otherwise qualified candidates from pursuing public office).

reich says the people took out daschle
Tom Daschle and the Populist Revolt
February 3, 2009, 3:08PM

Tom Daschle's surprise withdrawal today shocked most Washington insiders -- after all, Daschle had been a key figure in the Senate, was Obama's pick for a major role in the new administration, would very likely have done a superb job getting a new health-insurance system enacted, and, probably could have mustered enough votes to be confirmed. So what happened? My guess is that official Washington underestimated the public's pique at what appeared to be the old ways of Washington. Hill staffers tell me that many offices have been inundated with telephone calls, emails, letters and faxes expressing concern (to put it mildly) about Daschle -- not only his failure to pay back taxes but his relationships with major players in the health care industry and rich consulting contracts with the private sector since leaving the Senate, and even the fact that he was given a car and driver by one of them.

What's going on here? Maybe official Washington, much like most of Wall Street, is still not quite getting it.
Typical Americans are hurting very badly right now. They resent people who appear to be living high off a system dominated by insiders with the right connections. They've become increasingly suspicious of the conflicts of interest, cozy relationships, and payoffs that seem to pervade not only official Washington but our biggest banks and corporations. In short, many Americans who have worked hard, saved as much as they can, bought a home, obeyed the law, and paid every cent of taxes that were due are beginning to feel like chumps. Their jobs are disappearing, their savings are disappearing, their homes are worth far less than they thought they were, their tax bills are as high as ever if not higher -- but people at the top seem to be living far different lives in a different universe. They're the executives and traders on Wall Street have lived like kings for years off a bubble of their own making while ripping off small investors, the financial louts who are now taking hundreds of billions of taxpayer bailout money while awarding themselves huge bonuses and throwing lavish parties, the corporate CEOs who are earning seven figures while laying off thousands of workers, the billionaire hedge-fund and private-equity managers who are paying a marginal tax rate of 15 percent on what they say are capital gains while people who earn a fraction of that are paying a higher rate, and, not the least, the Washington insiders who have served on the Hill or in an administration and then gone on to pocket millions as lobbyists for the same companies they once regulated or subsidized. To the American who's outside the power centers -- the places of entitlement and I'll-scratch-your-back-while-you-scratch -mine deal making -- the entire system seems rotten.

I'm sorry Tom Daschle won't be in the Obama administration. He would have served the public well and with distinction. But the public wants change, real change, big change. There's no tolerance any longer for the way things used to be done.

If Baucus was fanning the flames of this, then maybe Obama simply realized that if Baucus had been laying-in-wait to fuck Daschle then the administration could be facing a replay of the Finance Committee problem Clinton had.

As Majority Leader, he was weak. Capitulated to the GOP again and again. Remember, it was under his leadership that the Iraq authorization passed.

I'm not sad to see him go, although you can ask me again if Obama picks someone even worse for the job (cough, Jim Cooper, cough).

For once we have a president who admits mistakes. It must have been since JFK admitted that he messed up on the Bays of Pigs invasion that we have a president who admits mistake. The last president never could admit that we screwed up so he kept up with the screwing up behavior. So I find it refreshing that Obama was able to admit that he screwed up on the Daschle nomination.

In defense of Daschle, not many people would have known that the value of free limousine service would constitute taxable income. Some might have thought that the limousine company might be liable for gift taxes. I know people who worked as poll workers on election days who did not pay social security taxes on their stipend. So, these types of mistakes occur very often.

There has never been a time in Daschle's career that I though he was capable of weathering any kind of fight, either from within the Congress or the Senate. He might make a decent bureaucrat for an agency conducting routine business, but as a leader in the particularly difficult fight for health care reform, he would have been an unmitigated disaster. He would have given us John P. Lucas when we need a Patton.

There is a big difference between a policy fight and personal fight.  I relate to what Daschle was concerned about.  The Rs smelled blood and he and his wife were going to be dragged through the mud, his life was going to be turned upside down, any minor transgression was going to be turned into a major issue.  This thing was going down the road of "did you know Tom Daschle smoked pot at a party when he was 19?" This is an exageration and I have no idea if Daschle smoked pot but this was going to get very nasty.  I think he would have won but I can see why he didn't want to go through it and why he didn't want Obama to spend the political capital necessary to win it.  

I don't have the stomach for this type of personal stuff but I love a good political/policy fight.  I enjoy arguing policy/politics/strategy and have no problem going to toe to toe with the opposing policy people out there regardless of how nasty they are.  I suspect Daschle having lost his Senate seat in a pretty nasty, personal battle might have decided it wasn't worth it.  I can understand why he felt that way but I still think he could have done a good job getting health care enacted.  

We're less than 24 hours into Daschle's withdrawal. More will come out in time. But I think it's a somewhat silly stretch to assume he wasn't tough enough to stand up to the Times. This is a guy who has a reputation for being exceedingly tough.  My guess based on early information is this: (1) Phone were ringing off the hooks at Senate offices with voters who saw Daschle as just like the Wall Street thieves. Not saying they are right about that, but it's clear we have a populist revolt brewing in reaction to all the post-TARP horror stories. (2) Daschle is savvy enough to see what the anti-health coverage ads would now look like this time around, and he didn't want to burden a goal that is much more important than he is. I respect Daschle more for this.