To the Editor:
Re “The Travails of Tom Daschle” (editorial, Feb. 3):
You were, of course, correct in calling for Tom Daschle to withdraw his name from consideration for the position of health and human services secretary because of his tax problems—which he has now done.
More important, however, is to ponder how it is possible for a new president—especially one who promised change—to be so completely oblivious to the hypocrisy that is emanating from his two-week-old administration.
It seems that once again we are getting a “yes, but” gang in our nation’s capital: “Yes, let’s talk about responsibility, but let’s continue with business as usual even if it flies in the face of what we supposedly stand for.” So much for the renewal of moral authority.
Timothy F. Geithner should have never been approved as Treasury secretary, and Tom Daschle should now return to South Dakota.
Steven Morris
East Hampton, N.Y., Feb. 3, 2009
Note from KBJ: I feel sorry for the people who thought Barack Obama was special. He's not transcendent; he's not post-partisan; he's not the Messiah. Young people in particular are going to be disenchanted by his foibles, follies, and failures, for they have no body of experience on which to draw. My advice to them is to read Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan (1651). Hobbes, more than anyone before or since, understood human beings.
