The withdrawal of Tom Daschle as the Secretary of Health and Human Services, while unfortunate, makes good sense. Former Senator Daschle seemed like an extremely knowledgable leader of a healthcare transformation and clearly knew how to work with congress since he’d been the Senate majority and minority leader. However, his issues with taxes aside, he has apparently been a lobbyist in everything but name only. The democrats seemed willing to look past this clear fault, but republicans–undoubtedly for political reasons only–shed light on the fact that this candidate really violated Obama’s own standards on ethics and influence. The tax problem really seemed like a separate issue (more on that in a separate post).
In this case, I think the old partisan ways worked. Obama came into office putting forward sweeping ethics changes and challenging the role lobbyists play in Washington. By challenging and ultimately forcing the withdrawal of his nominee, they are holding the new president to his word. More importantly, they are hopefully raising a very necessary discussion on what should be the role of lobbyists and de facto lobbyists alike. A friend of mine raised the very good point that lobbyists, in some form, should be involved in government. They are not only knowledgable on their subject matter, but knowledgable on the desires of important concentrated interests. Eventually we will need some balance on this issue that maintains a certain distance between government and influence but nonetheless absorbs the knowledge that lobbyists have to offer. Any thoughts?
