Analyzing Daschle's Withdrawal

In August, I wrote about how Obama's arrogance could become a fatal flaw. The recent problems with the nominations of Tim Geittner, Tom Daschle and Nancy Kellifer expose the first manifestation of the serious problem that his arrogance will cause. President Obama seems to have thought that he could get three different nominees through Congress even though each had a prior tax problem. Even as the tax problems came to light, he continued to back each and every nominee. He dismissed these problems as minor.

What's worse is that he has done all this even though he ran on a platform of somehow being different. It seems that President Obama is either oblivious of how duplicitous this looks or he simply doesn't care. Either way, this is the manifestation of serious arrogance.

Now, in the short term, he will take a political hit. Ultimately, no one is going to vote based on the failure of several nomination. Still, where this will be a problem is in the leverage he will lose in crafting the stimulus bill. Just as the stimulus bill faces its most stiff opposition, President Obama has lost serious short term political capital.

What's really troubling about it all is the pattern forming of hypocrisy and duplicitousness in this decision. These three nominations show a great hypocrisy about a President who claims that he will do things differently. Yet, he also pledged to exclude lobbyists from his administration and yet nearly twenty former lobbyists are already in his cabinet.

He lectured Americans about turning down the thermostat during the campaign, and now we find out that that President Obama is turning up the thermostat in the White House. Such consistent hypocrisy is the manifestation of a large amount of arrogance. It's as though the President believes that he can do and say just about anything and get away with it all. He can nominate three people with prior tax problems and no one will care. He can create a zero tolerance policy for lobbyists and proceed to hire more than one former lobbyist daily. He can tell people to turn down their own thermostat and then turn it up himself.

It appears that President Obama just fell in love with the message he was delivering, but is further evident that he has no intention of delivering on that message. Such is the manifestation of arrogance that ultimately becomes fatal.