Washington - Crazy Place!

Washington is a crazy place these days, what with the swinging door in operation as nominees for various jobs waltz in and then do the Fox Trot out. Take the case of Nancy Killefer, for whom the president invented a brand-new job, that of Chief Performance Officer, whatever in the world that is. Perhaps she was supposed to see that the government did as it was supposed to do. Problem: Did she have an enforcement tool for use against anyone who wasn’t performing...maybe a custodian who didn’t mop the floor every night? If she did, there’s no knowledge of it in this corner. The question is moot, of course, since she backed out account not paying all of her taxes. Sound familiar? So...one waits with bated breath to find out who the next person to keep the custodians in line will be.

Actually, the Senate and House committees are supposed to keep the government in line, so the Anointed One clearly meant to give them the runaround. It’s either that or the fact that he spent so little time in the Senate that he never actually discovered what he was supposed to be doing. He knew politics well enough, though, to understand that he could appoint a popular former democrat senator to any post in the land with no fear of a turn-the-rascal-down in the Senate. So...enter Tom Daschle to take over HHS. Daschle was so well thought of by fellow democrats that he was Majority Leader of the Senate in 2001-03.

Problem: Daschle, knowing full well that he hadn’t come clean with the transition vetting gang about his cheating on his taxes, accepted the post with not a doubt that his nomination would zoom through the Senate like a dog dropped in a bucket of turpentine leaves the planet at mach speed. And it would have, even after Daschle allowed as how he actually owed the government a cool $140,000 and paid up. Then, the Senate Finance Committee, adding insult to injury, demanded that he cough up another $6,000 in unpaid taxes, which he did. Armageddon! The Killefer withdrawal (maybe at the “suggestion” of Obamessiah) put the quietus on Daschle, since her turpitude was nowhere near the extent of his. Daschle went under the bus to join the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright and Obama buddy Bill Ayers of domestic-terrorism bombing fame.

Daschle, of course, just withdrew, the honest thing to do. After all, the distraction to be caused even in the august Senate by mean and recalcitrant republicans would simply impede the progress of the Stimulus Package, already in trouble as citizens found out what the government was trying to do to them. Withdrew? What a laugh!

The killer, though, lies in the fact that Daschle could have been better off by $146,000 if he had just either been truthful with the transition guys or – better – turned down the job. He obviously had no intention of settling up honestly with the government, else he would have already done so...or, actually, he wouldn’t have tried to steal the taxes, in the first place. He was making millions. To think that he was so arrogant that he could just “get away with it” brings on the gagging reflex. Having fed at the public trough all those years and profiting greatly by it, he tried to cheat. The IRS should put a horse-head in his bed...or, at the least, Rahm Emanuel should arm-wrestle him to the floor.

So...what to do? The Anointed One figured out the answer, i.e., call in all news anchors from ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and Fox News for an afternoon tete-a-tete at the White House on 03 February, the better to explain how the world was mistreating him. After all, republican malcontents were still loudly proclaiming the unworthiness of Tim Geightner regarding his being Secretary of Treasury. He only had to pay something like $48,000 in back taxes and he eased through the Senate like a greased pig slides through a whole platoon. He had the good fortune of missing the bus oil-pan by being in the vanguard facing those Senate committees. His little peccadillo was not worth noting, seeing as how it was only worse than Killefer’s by about $47,000. Chump change. And, after all, as Obama knew, he was the only democrat in the entire country who was smart enough to save it, assuming that the IRS doesn’t count.

Ah...the anchors (not the usual White House reporters – too dumb)...those multimillionaire readers of the evening news. They can understand Obama’s predicament and at least four of them, already serving as his propaganda machine in the campaign during 2007-08 (at last it’s over!), will come forth with righteous rhetoric to crown him anew, as he was in Berlin, Denver (the Athenian columns), and on inauguration day. The presumptive antagonist/mean-guy from Fox News will be drowned-out, and the newspaper biggies on the coasts will – if there are enough employees left – proclaim this administration to be the best in history, even though its history hasn’t happened yet. One wonders what it must be like to be suckered into the White House. Laughter abounds.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark