Daschle withdraws his nomination

Good. It looks bad for Obama, but so does not telling him about your tax problems when you discussed being in his cabinet with him:

Now we are confronted with an even larger lapse by Mr. Daschle, who failed to pay $128,000 in taxes, primarily for personal use of a car and driver provided to him by a private equity firm for which he consulted. Although the firm — headed by a major Democratic donor — had not issued a form 1099 for the value of the car service, Mr. Daschle said he became concerned last June that he might owe taxes on it and instructed his accountant to investigate. Neither was concerned enough to actually pay the taxes.

Only after the Obama transition team flagged unrelated tax issues that would require filing amended returns did Mr. Daschle and his accountant address the need to report the personal use value of the car service — more than $255,000 over three years — as income. Only after he had been chosen to be the health secretary did Mr. Daschle tell the transition team about the unpaid taxes.

This is bigger than you, asshole. We need Obama and congress to fix about a hundred different things, and hurting their credibility with your bullshit scandals is not helpful. You owe it to your party and your country to pass up cushy White House gigs if you have a time bomb like this attached to your credibility.