by David Arkush, director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division
It’s big news when a president says something like “I screwed up.” And it’s true that mistakes were made, so to speak, regarding some recent nominations. But President Obama still has a groundbreaking ethics policy, and he can still make it work. Sen. Daschle’s nomination shows how.
We at Public Citizen were concerned about Daschle’s nomination right away because we had heard about his work at Alston & Bird, which has a major healthcare lobbying practice. Even though many people thought Daschle would have done a great job at HHS and as health “czar,” his private-sector work over the past few years didn’t seem to fit with Obama’s promise to change the way Washington works.
