Howard Dean as HHS Secretary?

With former Democratic Senate leader Tom Daschle having to step aside, President Obama will have to nominate someone else to run the Department of Health and Human Services. There's no obvious choice right now. Eleanor Clift at Newsweek thinks it should be former Vermont Gov. and DNC Chair Howard Dean:

Obama doesn't have a Plan B. Daschle was a shoo-in for the job, and there is no deep bench of runners-up vetted and ready to serve. Still, Obama may surprise us. In order to regain political momentum and convey the impression that while losing Daschle is a blow, it's not a body blow, he might want to have Daschle's successor ready to announce before the crocuses come up. One prominent Democrat has made no secret of the fact that he would love the job and that's Howard Dean. He's a doctor; his wife is a doctor; and he's not beholden to anyone as far as we know. In fact, Dean was running against the entrenched special interests in Washington back when the presidency was still just a gleam in Obama's eye.

I love Howard Dean. Before Barack Obama came along, he inspired me to be impassioned about politics. Like many liberal bloggers, the thought of Dean being named HHS Secretary (especially to replace Daschle, who pretty much represents that kind of Democrat that Dean's '04 campaign railed against) would delight me on some level. Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, whom endorsed Dean in 2004 (not that it did him any good), also has announced his support. And the health care reform plan he got passed in Vermont and pushed during his presidential campaign is similar to Obama's. But he's unlikely to get it. Some of Obama's people, particularly Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, don't like him. But, more than that, I question whether he'd be effective.

Aside from the close personal relationship they developed after Daschle endorsed his presidential almost from the get-go, Obama was counting on his knowledge of Congress to push through comprehensive health care reform. Dean doesn't have any experience dealing with Congress, and let's face it, a lot of moderate and conservative Democrats wouldn't want to deal with him because they wouldn't want him to be seen with "that liberal."

Some of the other names being floated around, such as Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen (who passed a bipartisan plan that covered all Tennessee children), also lack experience dealing with Congress. So my guess is Obama will pull someone from their ranks. Possible nominees include Sens. Ron Wyden (whose own reform plan has the most bipartisan support of any right now) and Max Baucus, a committee chairman who (along with Ted Kennedy) would be a key player in getting health care reform passed.

To be honest, I don't know who would be the best choice. But, as I'm sure he knows, President Obama has to get this right. If he doesn't, it will greatly hinder the effort to institute what could be one of his greatest achievements - universal health care.

UPDATE: Reports are that Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, who was the former insurance commissioner of the state, is at the top of the list.

Daschle Out

And, that's that. 

Also, in case you missed this one. The only trouble some Democrats appear to have with taxes, is paying them.

NY Times: No to Tom Daschle

Wow. The editors at the NY Times come out against Daschle for HHS:

When President Obama nominated former Senator Tom Daschle to be his secretary of health and human services, it seemed to be a good choice. Mr. Daschle, as the co-author of a book on health care reform, knew a lot about one of the president’s signature issues. As a former Senate majority leader, he also knew a lot about guiding controversial bills through Congress, where he remains liked and respected by former colleagues.

Unfortunately, new facts have come to light — involving his failure to pay substantial taxes that were owed and his sizable income from health-related companies while he worked in the private sector — that call into question his suitability for the job. We believe that Mr. Daschle ought to step aside and let the president choose a less-blemished successor.

Glenn Greenwald, with the damning evidence:

Other than his ability to know how to swing doors wide open in Congress, what "expertise and insights" worth that level of compensation does Tom Daschle have? It's pure legalized influenced peddling, and -- upon being booted out of the Congress -- he ran right to it as quickly as he could and engorged himself at the trough as hungrily as possible.

In doing so, he followed perfectly in the footsteps of his second wife, Linda, who served as the Clinton administration's Acting Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, and then, once she left her position running the agency that regulates the airlines industry, returned to her extremely lucrative lobbying practice with her largest clients being American Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Boeing, Lockheed and various airports and airport executive associations -- the very companies that she had been regulating. She began lobbying the Senate on behalf of those clients as soon as Tom left the Senate, where -- needless to say -- he has many "friends" and others who remain loyal to him, and she is continuously successful in defeating measures to impose greater regulations on the airline industry and to obtain other massively beneficial legislation for them.

In 2002, Washington Monthly editor Stephanie Mencimer wrote a thorough exposé detailing how the couple has spent many years in Washington intertwining their political power and private-sector interests, including their joint role -- he as a Senator and she as FAA administrator -- "to reduce safety inspections of an air-charter company owned by a family friend," one which, in 1993, "crashed in a snowstorm in Minot, North Dakota, killing the pilot and three doctors on their way to a reservation clinic" (after numerous accusations of serious wrongdoing, an Inspector General report cleared her of wrongdoing). Time and again, companies with a very substantial stake in legislation before the Daschle-run Senate paid huge fees to his wife.

[...]

Other than his being more extreme than most, and the fact that he and his wife work in tandem as a public-private team, there isn't anything particularly unusual about how Tom Daschle functions. He's quite emblematic of the Beltway syndrome. But that's the point: while it's unreasonable to expect that Obama will be able to avoid all ethically questionable individuals, it seems rather unnecessary to take one of the most ethically compromised Beltway mavens and place him in charge of a massive industry, one that has been lavishing him with undeserved wealth for the past several years.

The argument in favor of Daschle is that, since he's an insider with various connections in the health care industry, he's exactly the sort of person that can bring various health care interests in line for substantive reform of our health care system. Which is akin to hiring a wolf to chase the foxes out of the henhouse I guess.

Tom Daschle to HHS

Ezra Klein, on why the selection of Tom Daschle to be the "health reform czar" signals good things ahead.