Vetting

When the news came out that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner had a tax problem, I didn't pay too much attention to it. It seemed evident that he'd disclosed the problem to Obama during the vetting process, and he'd decided that Geithner had dealt with it appropriately, or would deal with it appropriately, and that there was no need to withdraw Geithner's nomination. Then, it became clear that Tom Daschle, the Health and Human Services Secretary-designate, also had not paid taxes properly on a company car and driver he'd had use of. And today, Nancy Killefer, Obama's nominee to be the government's first Chief Performance Officer and Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director for Management, withdrew her nomination over concerns that she had not appropriately paid taxes for her household help.

Two thoughts on all of this. First, pay your taxes. It's really not hard, particularly not if you're in an income bracket where you can afford to hire a competent accountant. Even if you're not, the forms are complicated, but if you sit with them for a bit, they're fairly easy to figure out. So pay your taxes.

Second, there are two options here. Either the Obama team, despite its lengthy ethics questionnaire, just did an incredibly sloppy vetting jobs. Or his team knew about all of these problems, and they just didn't care. Either way, Obama's ethics pledges seem to be something he didn't care about enough to try to stick to, or that he doesn't care about enough to try to defend. We were talking about this in the office, and Tom Shoop, my editor, said he thinks no candidate for President should ever be allowed to claim that they'll change the culture of Washington ever again. I think I agree with him.