Obama's First Week: GOP Misses Opportunity

Monday night the Senate voted to confirm Timothy Geithner as President Obama’s Treasury Secretary. While not unexpected, one hoped that the road for Geithner would have been a little bumpier. After all, mistakenly or not, Geithner failed to exercise a fundamental duty of citizenship under the voluntary system of paying income taxes that he will oversee and enforce. Lest it be forgotten, Geithner failed to fully pay his self-employment taxes for the years 2001 through 2004, as his employment status with the IMF required him to do. Geithner paid back taxes, penalties and interest for 2003 and 2004 after an IRS audit in 2006 revealed the, ahem, oversight. As Geithner himself said at his hearing before the Senate Finance Committee: "They were avoidable mistakes, but they were unintentional. I should have been more careful. I take full responsibility."

One might be tempted to forgive this "mistake" on Geithner's part. After all, his education and career as an international economics and banking expert in both the private and public sectors likely left him little time and energy to investigate the nuances of basic individual tax preparation. However it turns out that even when he discovered in 2006 that his status with the IMF required him to file as a self-employed individual, he failed to amend his returns for 2001 and 2002 accordingly. That was done, and back taxes and interest finally paid to the tune of almost $45,000, only after this additional lapse was uncovered during the vetting process for his nomination for the Treasury post.

Senate Democrats on the Finance Committee could have made a pretense of subjecting Obama’s nominee to the standards set by Obama himself in the campaign—probity, integrity, ethical purity, competence. Instead they shilled for the man by lobbing questions about the tax lapses as a set up for the apology he pretended to mean. It was pure theatre. A few Democrats did oppose Geithner--on the grounds that he would not be tough enough on capitalism.

For Senate Republicans, Geithner’s confirmation process was a second opportunity to show a pulse when it comes to challenging Obama’s cabinet choices on legitimate character grounds. The first was squandered when the GOP, save Senators Vitter and DeMint, failed to mount a serious challenge to Hillary Clinton’s nomination as Secretary of State based on her husband’s (and ergo her) conflicts of interest vis-a-vis foreign donors to the Clinton foundations and library. This time around, Republicans on the Senate Finance committee split, with 5 voting to send Geithner's nomination to the floor. There, a sufficient number of GOP Senators sided with Democrats to confirm him.

The third Obama nominee worth scrutiny is Attorney General nominee Eric Holder. The Judiciary Committee vote was delayed a week based on concerns that some Republican committee members had about Holder's role in the clemencies granted to FALN (Puerto Rican nationalist) terrorists and the Mark Rich pardon that dominated Bill Clinton’s last day in office (and came to characterize his entire term, ethically speaking). Now it appears that Holder's nomination will be sent today to the full Senate for a confirmation vote with nary a peep from Republican committee members.

What makes the GOP's performance in the Geithner matter so maddening is that in Geithner they had the perfect opportunity to make not just a political statement but to call the President on his own high standards for service in his administration. First, he isn’t a Clinton, and thus could not portray serious Republican scrutiny as a reprise of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” of the 1990s. Second, he isn’t black, and therefore his nomination doesn’t get caught up in the racial politics that frankly benefits Holder, who will become the first black Attorney General.

Third, and most significantly, Geithner's lapses go straight to the heart of the job he has now secured and resonate with millions of Americans. What could be more consequential than the failure of the man who will oversee the Internal Revenue Service, with its near mythic power to make the lives of ordinary Americans miserable, to exercise the minimum standards expected of those over whom he will have immense power.

Forget the obvious fact that any one of these three nominees would have been scuttled had they been appointed by a Republican (and this is so even if the Senate were controlled by Republicans). The double standard as applied to Democrats versus Republicans is an old, tired story. But according to the new way of conducting public business enunciated by the new President himself, indeed upon which he centered his campaign, none of these nominees measure up.

No one expected Congressional Democrats to heed Obama’s clarion call for change. Frankly, not many on my side of the political divide expected Obama himself to live up to his own rhetoric. But it shouldn’t be too much to ask of the loyal opposition, with literally nothing to lose, that they hold the majority party and its president to account in accordance with markers it set for itself.

But perhaps we expect too much from a party getting a little too comfortable in the minority.