President Obama: Defender of the Status Quo?
Then-Sen. Obama talked frequently about cleaning up Washington. He portrayed himself as the ultimate change agent. Thus far, he’s acting more like the ultimate agent of the status quo. Tim Geithner, his first Treasury Secretary, didn’t pay his taxes. That’s a great example to set as head of the IRS. Tom Daschle and Nancy Kellefer both withdrew their names from consideration to be the HHS Secretary and chief performance officer respectively because they, too, had tax difficulties.
Toby Harnden has noticed that President Obama isn’t the change agent he campaigned as:
What a difference an election makes. On the campaign trail, candidate Barack Obama vowed to fix Washington’s “broken politics”, which had become “gummed up by money and influence”. In the age of Obama, he promised, government would no longer be “a tool to enrich friends and high-priced lobbyists”. The stakes were too high to play the “same old Washington games with the same old Washington players”. The slogan was: “Change you can believe in.”
Now that he is in office, however, the new dawn is looking like a false one. His administration is crammed to the gills with alumni of Bill Clinton’s White House; Hillary Clinton, whom Obama mocked as the epitome of what was wrong with politics, is now secretary of state.
There have been attempts to give lobbyists top jobs in the Obama administration. Tom Daschle, a former senator and the personification of the slick operator richly rewarded for his influence-peddling, was nominated as health secretary. As with two other Obama nominees, it subsequently emerged that he had failed to pay all his taxes, and yesterday he was forced to withdraw his name from consideration.
President Obama still sounds a lot like candidate Obama. On day one in the White House, he announced that he was closing “the revolving door that lets lobbyists come into government freely” and making “a clean break from business as usual”. His new ethics and transparency rules were, he ventured, “historic measures”.
But the sheen is already coming off, as realities takes its toll. Two days after he had looked Americans in the eye and told them that this was a new ethical dawn, the President waived his “historic” rule. William Lynn, a lobbyist for the defence giant Raytheon, was nominated as the deputy Pentagon chief. There would always be “reasonable exceptions”, the White House press secretary insisted.
I can’t pretend to be surprised. President Obama learned his politics from the inside of Chicago’s machine. Where would he learn postpartisanship? Where would he have learned about taking on special interests?
People that bought his ‘I’m going to clean up Washington’ schtick ignored everything he’d done prior to getting to Washington. Simply put, they were gullible.
On a sidenote, Robert Gibbs is having a difficult time explaining away his boss’s cabinet picks. He’s been forced to defend the indefensible. It’s a thankless job, one which he deserves for choosing to work for someone who isn’t principled. (I’m not saying President Obama is evil. I’m simply saying that he’s slippery at times.)
The problem is, a pattern is emerging. The new treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, who oversees the Internal Revenue Service, America’s equivalent of the H M Revenue and Customs, apologised profusely for failing to pay $34,000 in taxes and survived. Yesterday, Nancy Killefer, who was to be federal “chief performance officer”, stood down for failing to pay employment taxes for her house cleaner. Now Mr Obama has been forced to jettison Mr Daschle, an early supporter who provided key staff and access to an invaluable political network. The loss of two nominees in a single day will inevitably raise questions over his judgment.
The stench of the privileged playing by different rules than the average Joe will continue to haunt the Obama administration until Mr. Geithner is terminated or resigns. Ben Pershing highlights that in this post:
“Did I screw up in this situation? Absolutely. I’m willing to take my lumps,” Obama told NBC’s Brian Williams, one of five interviews he gave yesterday afternoon. Obama told the network anchors that there are “not two sets of rules” for people, and said that average taxpayers deserve to have public officials who pay their taxes on time.
President Obama appears to be hoping that we won’t notice that there are different, sometimes conflicting rules within his administration. He fought to get Timothy Geithner confirmed as Treasury Secretary. With Tom Daschle, he accepted news of Daschle’s withdrawal “with regret.” They did the same thing, just to differing degrees.
Most notable of those to date is Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who won confirmation last week despite his failure to pay some taxes. In addition, Obama has appointed a handful of former lobbyists to key administrative positions, many of which oversee the industries for which they lobbied.
Technically, or perhaps literally, yes, in making his pledge to replace the “business-as-usual” Capitol culture with sweeping ethics reforms, Obama allowed himself to make exceptions.
However, rank-and-file voters are not dense. To stand by most every nominee on grounds that they are the right person for the job despite mistakes or career ties is to water down, if not fully abandon, any pledge to change Washington.
The thing that’s troubling about Geithner, other than his ethical lapses, is the thought that he’s the only guy who can fix our economy. That’s nonsense. Geithner didn’t descend from Mount Olympus. He’s eminently fallible. It’s time we accepted that.
President Obama’s fighting for Geithner, in my opinion, is proof that he’s a defender of the status quo with no intention of cleaning up Washington. Additionally, President Obama appears to be totally risk averse. That’s why he let Sen. Daschle quickly withdraw.
Sounds like the status quo to me.
Technorati Tags: Taxes, Tim Geithner, Tom Daschle, President Obama, Lobbyists, Culture of Corruption, Ethics, Double Standards, Status Quo, Change
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog