I hope he’s right:
My guess is that official Washington underestimated the public’s pique at what appeared to be the old ways of Washington. Hill staffers tell me that many offices have been inundated with telephone calls, emails, letters and faxes expressing concern (to put it mildly) about Daschle — not only his failure to pay back taxes but his relationships with major players in the health care industry and rich consulting contracts with the private sector since leaving the Senate, and even the fact that he was given a car and driver by one of them.
I have a hard time fathoming that people care that much. But I hope so.
tx2vadem
I think it’s just the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’m not surprised by this reaction. Look at the two party nominees from last year. And the polls all indicated no matter your affiliation you were pretty fed up with the way things were going.
You have this global economic crisis. You have the mismanaged TARP. You have a bunch of bank execs so aloof that they can’t figure out how their “rational” actions will be received by the public. Then you have this string of people nominated to high profile public positions who don’t pay all their taxes. And to put a cherry on top of all of this, you have a large population at or close to retirement. And many of these folks are the victims of the corporate shift from defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans (401ks). You put all of this financial burden on regular folks. And then they are faced with how this works for rich folks either via these public incidents in the news or via MTV’s Super Sweet Sixteen (and the like). And it gets to be too much. You say to yourself where is my fancy yacht? Where is my ice sculpture of David that pees champagne (or vodka)?
At least we aren’t to the bread riots point yet.
MB
I think you’re right, T2V (I’m testing out different abbreviations, see), but I see it in a smaller way. If Daschle had been the first up with these problems, he would have skated. Geithner snaked the pass, though. D’oh.
As for that big picture waterfall of dissatisfaction, I also hope you’re right, there. If people start seeing some actual consequence to the way things have been run, that’ll motivate them to take an actual and sustained interest in the actual governance of the country. The trick, though, will be in using that increased interest/participation for good (e.g., Feingold’s ideas) and not evil (e.g., Lou Dobbs’ blatherings).