Lesson No. 1 from the Tom Daschle affair is that Washington is completely clueless. As early as Monday, it was pretty apparent that Daschle was going to have a hard time holding on due to the string of revelations about his taxes and cushy post-Senate life. It was also pretty apparent that the whole situation was enormously embarrassing and that a good deal of public anger was bubbling upwards about the prospect of yet another administration tax cheat being confirmed in his job.
Yet there was President Obama voicing his full support for Daschle, and a number of Daschle’s friends from the Senate stepping forward to declare that he was a man of enormous integrity (mind you, it was just reported that “for the second year in a row, the Senate Ethics Committee conducted no investigations that resulted in disciplinary actions”). According to The Hill, “Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) had tears in his eyes as he tried to speak to reporters on Tuesday afternoon. He said the former majority leader called him to give him a heads-up about the withdrawal, which Harkin did not believe was necessary. ‘I’m emotionally distraught,’ Harkin said. ‘I’m just too emotionally upset right now to talk about it’.”
Meanwhile, the Washington press corps, living in its own peculiar bubble, was virtually unanimous in predicting that despite the controversy Daschle would still be confirmed by an overwhelming margin.
<http://harpers.org/archive/2009/02/hbc-90004340>