No surprise; Obama picks second-best to lead HHS

Barack Obama has tabbed Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as the new director of Health and Human Services. That’s no surprise, of course: It would have been more surprising at this point if he had chosen the best person for the job.

I suspect Sebelius will do a decent job, and she has a credible health care-related background. She also adds a bit more diversity to the Cabinet.

Still, I am sorry that Obama and his advisors weren’t willing to overcome their dislike of the man perhaps most responsible for Obama’s election, and the one probably most qualified to head HHS–Howard Dean.

Next-day update: Dean, who admits that he would have liked to have led HHS, on Sebelius: “I think she will be very good. She is a very nice person and I think she will be fine.”

Uh-oh–if a buddy gave you an endorsement like that about a prospective blind date, you’d run away.

Clift note keeping hope alive: Dr. Dean gaining steam for HHS?

Writing for Newsweek, Eleanor Clift notes that the obvious choice to replace Tom Daschle as the nominee to head Health and Human Services is none other than Howard Dean. Clift, perhaps better known as the token liberal of “The McLaughlin Group” on the supposedly liberal PBS network, joins The Nation and a number of bloggers in recommending Dean, as I did back on Jan. 31 and Feb. 3.

Unfortunately Clift also notes, in more detailed terms than I used previously, that the doctor is unlikely to make a White House call:

Dean’s nomination probably won’t happen because he crossed swords with Rahm Emanuel over the allocation of resources during the lead-up to the congressional elections of ’06. Dean was the Democratic Party chairman and focused on implementing his brainchild, a 50-state strategy for a party that had narrowed its electoral base to 16 states. Emanuel was leading the Democratic effort in the House to regain the majority. He wanted money targeted to districts where Democrats had a real chance to win while Dean, despite being the brunt of several shouting matches, stuck to his script of spreading money and staff around even into states Democrats wouldn’t win in the short term.

The fact that Dean’s 50-state strategy proved to be the best one–and, I argue, is one of the reasons Barack Obama later was elected president–probably won’t matter, especially since Dean has a habit of appealing to the common man while insulting the monied interests that run American politics. Still Clift leaves room for hope: “Obama prides himself on how magnanimous he is, so you can’t rule out that he might reward someone who like him was an early and consistent opponent of the Iraq War, who helped lead the party out of the wilderness and who many Democrats think has been badly treated.”

Speaking of ‘hope,’ you may also have noticed that Obama’s nominees aren’t the only ones having legal problems: Shepard Fairey, the artist who produced perhaps the most popular image of the new president, has been arrested as a vandal. He also will have to cough up some dough to the Associated Press for basing his painting–which appeared as a Time magazine cover–on an AP photo. You can see both versions below:

Daschle and Killefer tax patience with Obama selection process

Citing the age-old excuse that the fight for his confirmation would be “a distraction,” Tom Daschle has “withdrawn” from consideration as secretary of Health and Human Services. Daschle became the second Barack Obama nominee to jump ship in a matter of hours. The first, chief performance officer nominee Nancy Killefer withdrew earlier today, citing unspecified tax issues and, of course, the potential “distraction” issue.

I’m inclined to agree with my Republican friends who see irony in the fact that so many Dems have so many people providing “personal services” for them, and seem to have more trouble paying their own taxes than raising the taxes of others (Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, you’ll remember, was approved despite his own tax problems). I agree with most progressives that the tax rate should be higher than it is, and that a far lower percentage of it should go to military contracts and no-bid contracts, but Barack, in case you’re looking for help in your administration, I pay my taxes and have never had a nanny, driver or gardener.

Of course a better choice, would be Howard Dean, as I wrote a few days ago.

Same day update #1: I had missed this earlier, but Daschle’s withdrawal probably became inevitable after the New York Times editorialized yesterday that he should do so.

Same day update #2: Obama admits he “screwed up” by selecting Daschle. If he doesn’t choose Dean, in my view he’ll probably be screwing up again.

Why Obama should dump Daschle and draft Dean

Tom Daschle’s tax issues are causing problems with his nomination to be Barack Obama’s health czar and secretary of Health and Human Services. Yet while I am constantly amazed that prominent politicians don’t have enough sense to pay (or hire competent  accountants  to pay) taxes on the kinds of “human services” that most of us can only dream about–drivers, maids, nannies, gardeners–frankly I’m more troubled by Daschle’s connections with the industry he would be seeking to reform.

So far, Daschle has mostly said the right things about the problems with health care (unlike Obama, who lately has gone silent on the issue). But as Kenneth P. Vogel reported yesterday for Politico, Daschle has made almost a quarter of a million dollars in just the past two years by giving speeches. “many of them to outfits that stand to gain or lose millions of dollars from the work he would do once confirmed as secretary of Health and Human Services.”

In addition to the speeches, there’s the whole lobbyist issue that Obama promised he’d avoid, and which he is finding to be virtually unavoidable in the search for qualified people. Daschle went to work for a lobbyist (though he managed to avoid the title himself) after leaving the Senate, and as the Washington Post reported back in November, “He serves on the boards of Prime BioSolutions and the Mayo Clinic, among others, and his law firm lobbies for a number of industry clients, including CVS Caremark, the National Association for Home Care and Hospice, Abbott Laboratories and HealthSouth.” In addition, Daschle’s former beauty queen wife still is a lobbyist–who has worked for clients in the health care industry.

I’ve been a fan of Tom Daschle much of the time, and thought he did a good job of balancing his somewhat progressive leanings with the interests of his conservative state. I also still believe (one of my few departures into conspiracy theories) that the anthrax that was mailed to his office in 2001 came from a source interested in scaring Daschle into supporting the hastily-passed USA-PATRIOT Act.  The Bush administration tried to link the anthrax attacks to al Qaeda for the same reason, and, regardless of the reasons, Daschle unfortunately did support the faulty fear-inspired bill.

I also thought (and believe even more strongly today) that the Republican campaign to replace him with John Thune (a male version of Sarah Palin) in 2004 was politically smart (from a power-seeking position) for the party and its corporate benefactors in the short run, and bad for Congress and the country in the long run–pretty much like a lot of other GOP moves in recent years, particularly any involving Bill Frist, who traveled to South Dakota to campaign against Daschle.

Obama hasn’t made many mistakes since starting his run for the presidency, but Daschle was not the best choice for HHS secretary. The best option, as The Nation suggests in the issue that hit my mailbox yesterday, may have been the forgotten man who may be the one most responsible(yes, even more than Oprah) for Obama’s win–Dr. Howard Dean.

As governor of Vermont, Dean oversaw balanced budgets, income tax cutsand expansion of a universal health care system for children and pregnant women. He also happens to be married to another doctor, Judith Steinberg. Perhaps they even pay all their taxes.

Unfortunately Dean apparently made an enemy of Obama buddy Rahm Emanuel–who ironically is now chief of staff for a president who would not have been elected had Obama followed Emanuel’s favored Clintonesque key-state party-building strategy instead of Dean’s 50-state strategy.

Admittedly Dean may not as easy to like as Obama or Daschle (though he is at least as likable as Emanuel). But this administration isn’t supposed to be about who we’d like to have a beer with. It’s supposed to be about competence. The selection of Daschle somewhat calls that competence into question.

Sunday update: Today Glenn Greenwald offers an even more disturbing picture of Daschle.