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.

utterly, totally non-partisan column from David Brooks

This week David Brooks is on the subject of VP picks, and the overall thesis of his column is a good one, specifically that vice presidents seem to have much more effect on a president's administration than they do on his campaign.

But here's where David Brooks the nonpartisan sociologist elides seamlessly into David Brooks the right wing apparatchik. According to Brooks, Barack Obama needs a VP who can overcome all his myriad failures, from his inexperience to his naivety to the lack of substance in his strategy to the fact that he can't really bring people together. John McCain, meanwhile, just needs someone who can help him with problems in "the climate" and with other "forces." Don'tcha just love Republican weather metaphors? "There's a lot of partisanship in the air in Washington, and the climate is not conducive to our party getting elected. Nothing that's our fault, of course, it's not like we did anything to tarnish our brand! It's just the weather, ya know, out there." Unlike Barack Obama, the f**kup of the ages, the Crazy Train has no failures or weaknesses, apparently. Just some climactic issues, that's all!

And, of course, once you've bitten through the nonpartisan observer coating with the subtle "Democrats suck worse" flavor, you get to the creamy, concern troll shell, where Brooks genuinely, seriously, without any duplicity or ulterior motives (honest to God!) suggests that Obama, the "change we can believe in" candidate, pick Democratic brahmin has-been and failure Tom Daschle, while John McCain choose rising star, charismatic Tim Pawlenty. Seriously, Brooks says McCain should pick a successful governor with a lot of appeal (from a swing state, mind you), while Obama should pick a former Senate minority leader and partisan lightning rod from a safe GOP state who not only couldn't keep the Democrats on top in the Senate but who failed to hold onto his own seat while he was Minority Leader. Daschle's wife, by the way, is a federal lobbyist, but I'm sure that had nothing to do with Brooks' choice. I mean, it's not like her presence would nullify one of Barack's biggest advantages over McCain.

And the best part: whether the candidates pick Brooks' choices is a way to measure "who is thinking seriously about how to succeed in the White House." Take that, Democrats!