Shortly after President-elect Obama named Thomas Daschle as his choice to be Secretary for Health and Human Services, I wrote a piece on this web log detailing some “ethical” problems with the appointment. My focus was on the background of his (and his wife’s) cozy connections with the health care industry between the time in 2004 that he lost his Senate seat and with it his position as Majority Leader—and the time his nomination was announced in early December last year. This line of analysis was expanded upon in a very recent article by Glenn Greenwald. Yet to surface was the information that he, like now-confirmed nominee for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, had a problem remembering taxes he was obligated to pay, the long-term furnishing to him of a car and driver by a wealthy friend.
The fate of Daschle’s nomination still hangs in the balance. Obama says he will “stand by” his choice, not necessarily a good sign for Daschle, since such statements are often precursors to a public official being subtly encouraged (or ordered) to resign. He or she then resigns an office or a nomination “for the good of the country or the county,” and the official who has so ordered the resignation praises the rejected one for the responsibility of his/her action. This seems to be the way the “resignation” game is usually played.
Before Obama and Daschle throw in the towel (if that is to happen), there’s another stage of the game as it often played: a stage in which “pressure” is placed on both the nominee or offending official and the one responsible for keeping or throwing him/her out. One type of “pressure” emanates from sectors of the journalistic fraternity, mainstream news columnists, or “alternative” news people like Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of Nation magazine, who has issued a call for Obama to let Daschle “go.” To her credit, vanden Heuvel resurrects the same points that others and I were making in dealing with the Daschle nomination issue: the tax “forgetting,” damaging as it might be for Daschle’s credibility, is actually less serious than the pattern of what Daschle was doing in the private interval of the revolving door between government service and private business activity with an industry which he would be called upon to “regulate” as a government minister.
What I find disturbing about vanden Heuvel’s article, however, is the way she closed her call for Daschle to “go” with her announcement of a “favorite pick” as a replacement nominee: Howard Dean, the recently-retired chairman of the Democratic National Committee, a professional doctor, later Governor of Vermont and the front-running candidate for the Democratic nomination for President in the 2004 election. A number of the comment posters on the Common Dreams re-posting of her Nation article endorsed her “pick” with varying degrees of enthusiasm. This provoked me to make three separate entries on the comment board. Since they make a point not only about Dean but also the continuity in the unswerving faith that supporters vested first in Dean, then in Obama, I’m reprinting below these three comments. My last “give up” comment has yet to gain a response from any supporter of Howard Dean for the post. This doesn’t surprise me, because I’ve long since learned that it is nearly impossible to engage in any dialogue with a Dean or an Obama supporter, since in either case you’ll be just ignored or else you will be condemned for criticism of their favorite because you are a Republican agent, attempting to promote the electoral interest of a Democratic candidate.
1:47 PM February 2, 2009
Before vanden Heuvel and commenters (and who knows, maybe Obama himself) get too enthused about Howard Dean as a replacement for Daschle as HHW nominee, please reflect on the fact that health care industry lobbyists have invested huge amounts of campaign money for candidates of both major parties. As chair of the DNC, and responsible for that entity’s fund-raising, can anyone believe that he is really “lobby-free” in his ability to, say, promote single-payer health insurance, on which he insisted in the 04 campaign that he was not a supporter? See the analysis, as of June 2007, of this lobby’s contributions:
http://www.calnurses.org/media-center/press-releases/2007/june/p
10:12 PM February 2, 2009
Did anyone of the several people who have commented here who recommended Howard Dean rather than Daschle for the HHS nomination read my post of 1:47 today? I assert there that Dean has at least as much problem of traffic with the health care industry as does Daschle…and that Dean’s views on “universal health care” (by expanding “coverage”) are identical with the inadequate ones of Obama and Daschle. Am I wrong or right on this? If I’m wrong, please tell me where I have erred. If I’m right, why do you persist in putting forward Dean’s name for the HHS post; do you actually prefer the fire to the frying pan?
5:12 AM February 3, 2009
I give up. I can’t deal any more with the intransigence of those from vanden Heuvel to several commenters on this post that tout Howard Dean as an alternative choice for HHS Secretary. I’ve posted two warnings, apparently ignored by all, that Dean has the same level as Daschle of conflict of interest as well as lack of progressivism on health care reform. Apparently that kool-aid of willful blindness to the shortcomings of one’s personal hero comes in two flavor, not just the Obama one of current popularity, but the one marketed by Deaniacs in 04.
UPDATE: Right on cue, literally minutes after I wrote the above, Daschle as prophesied here resigned for consideration for the HHS post, saying that the country needed to “move forward” and that deliberations on his nomination would be a “distraction” for the country and Obama accepted the resignation with “sadness and regret.” We can now wait to see whether Obama does indeed put forward Dean as the nominee.
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Jerry D. Rose – Editor, The Sun State Activist
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