Tom Daschle

When you’re up and your opponent’s on his back the last thing you do is give him a hand. But that’s just what Barack Obama has done for Republicans.

After wracking up a historic win over John McCain and leading his party to big, increased majorities in the Senate and House, Obama has squandered some of his political mojo on one of the oldest White House stumbling blocks — nominees.

When it was just Bill Richardson and some ongoing, not particularly noteworthy investigation, it was manageable. Richardson withdrew and the storm passed. But on this Wednesday, just a few weeks into his first term in office, Obama faces choppy waters that are his (or at least his staff’s) own doing.

First, his pick for Health Secretary, Tom Daschle, withdrew his name. Then his choice to oversee the reinvention of government, Nancy Killefer, did the same. Both falling on their swords over unpaid taxes.

Coincidentally (perhaps) Obama was scheduled to do the network rounds, sitting with the five network anchors Tuesday afternoon to talk up the stimulus bill. Instead the big play was on Daschle’s withdrawal. Smartly Obama sucked it up admitting, “I’ve got to own up to my mistake, which is that ultimately it’s important for this administration to send a message that there aren’t two sets of rules. You know, one for prominent people and one for ordinary folks who have to pay their taxes.” There’s something new and refreshing…. For that entirely uncharacteristic (in a modern President) admission we give a Presidential Mea Culpa!

Tom Daschle may have seemed like the perfect choice to lead Obama’s health care reform push — after all Daschle knew Congress inside out and wasn’t the biggest problem with Bill Clinton’s health care plan that he (and Hillary) didn’t really consult Congress in crafting it? But in picking the consummate insider Obama went against the central tenet of his campaign — “changing” Washington.

Sure the Obama team’s vetting process obviously isn’t as Grade A as we’ve been lead to believe. Sure Daschle’s mistake (not paying income tax on the imputed income of the use of a limo) was probably totally understandable. Sure Daschle (the former Senate Majority Leader) seemed well on his way to Senate confirmation despite the tax issue. And sure, as the Boston Globe pointed out, none of this is new. But that’s all beside the point.

Americans may believe Los Angeles is the land of artifice but Washington isn’t far behind. What matters in DC is perception — not fact. And the growing perception now (courtesy of a reinvigorated GOP) is that Obama is maybe not so different from every other politician — that he, like Bush-Clinton-Bush-Reagan-etc before him, is just another politician who will say anything to get elected but in the end will do all the venal, slightly corrupt things that politicians do.

Obama still has an incredible amount of good will built up with the American people and he still has a solid majority of Democrats in Congress working with/for him. Nothing that Richardson, Daschle, Killefer, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, or Attorney General Eric Holder has done or alleged to have done would disqualify them from getting elected to Congress if the past is any guide. But Obama set a higher bar and the Republican pseudo-populist narrative — Obama wants to give away your tax dollars while surrounding himself with people who don’t even bother paying taxes themselves — has taken root as a result.

The biggest question now is whether this distraction is enough to seriously derail the stimulus bill and whether Americans, so desperately worried about their jobs and the economy, really care about the partisan charges and counter-charges that make Washington both familiar to it’s inhabitants and repulsive to the rest of us.