Yo Mr. Prezdent: It's Time To Get The Hopenchange Express Back On The Road

The biggest lesson from the Tom Daschle fiasco is that Americans elected Barack Obama because he promised to change the culture of Washington and the new president not only didn't deliver in this instance but embarrassed himself. The biggest irony is that Americans need change nowhere more than in health care, which was to have been Daschle's mandate.

Many Americans who pay every cent of their taxes are hurting and resent political insiders like Daschle for not doing so, although it was refreshing to see Obama take responsibility for the failure to suss out that Daschle, who would have sailed to confirmation as Health and Human Services secretary in years past, had issues that would resonate poorly with a public furious with Washington's old ways. Can you imagine George Bush saying "I've got to own up to my mistake"?

Actually, Daschle was highly qualified, and I'd rather have people like him who know something about running the country than people who are clean and clueless. We learned that lesson the hard way with Jimmy Carter and his key advisers, some of them neophytes who dove into the deep end of the White House pool and couldn't swim.

While there presumably are other people of Daschle's experience who can pick up the health-care reform torch, that has to happen quickly.

Health care is growing more unaffordable by the day, the financial pressures on employers and doctors are enormous, and reforming this badly broken system is key to jump starting the economy. Nearly 60 percent of Americans now favor some form of national health insurance, Republicans be damned, or believe it is the government's responsibility to ensure that all Americans have adequate care. As it is, nearly 50 million of us have no insurance and even more have only marginal care.

While we're on the subject of not getting it, Wall Street bigs certainly don't.

Even more insular and tone deaf than Washington bigs, these executives continue to live high off the hog courtesy of hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts at a time when 11 million people are unemployed.

The common denominator is that both Daschle and Wall Street have a sense of entitlement.

Now Obama has to make it clear that Daschle, who beyond his teensy tax problem had corporate relationships that made him wealthy and also bore scrutiny, was an aberration.

At least Obama has made it clear that Wall Street's bubble of hubris needs to be burst, especially when it comes to excessive bonuses for bailout babies, who of course are weeping into their Dom Perignon even though they wouldn't have banks and trading houses to (mis)manage without taxpayer assistance.

Meanwhile, Obama's stimulus package doesn't have the Democratic votes to pass and bipartisan support will be necessary in no small part because the White House has lost control of the debate.

The solution is to strip out provisions that don't provide an immediate boost to the economy. They aren't necessarily pork, mind you, but do read an awful lot like a liberal wish list and include stuff like $1.1 billion for medical research, $650 million for wildlife management, $400 million for HIV screening, $350 million for Ag Department computers, and $75 million to discourage smoking. (Cough, cough.)

The House last week passed an $819 billion version of the bill, nearly triple its original estimate, without a single Republican vote, while moderate Senate Republicans are shooting for $200 billion in cuts. The alternative, of course, is a dread filibuster which the Democrats might not be able to override because of a modest revolt in their own ranks.

A couple of bumps in the road two weeks into a new administration so flush with promise and a pretty big mandate are not a huge cause for concern, although it is galling that the bumps pertain to the sick economy and the sick health-care system.

Republicans, of course, run their own risk by being obstructionist. But it was Obama who so effectively tapped into voters' frustration in making hope and change the central message of his campaign and now appears to have been caught unawares at the extraordinary depth of the public's dissatisfaction, let alone the dangers of bipartisanship when the favor is not returned. (And by the way, the horsetrading for Judd Gregg's Senate seat really sucks, but that's a whing for another day.)

Whatever it takes, it's time to get the Hopenchange Express back on the road, Mr. President. Stat.