Too many limos

It's been 16 years since the only inauguration I've ever personally attended, which was Clinton's in 1993.  Most of my recollections of it are positive, but one nagging little observation yet lingers:  too many limos.   

Now Tom Daschle is in hot water for not paying taxes on his chauffered Cadillac supplied by the health care industry.  (Think the health care industry is worried about any changes our health care czar might initiate?  Me neither.)  Glenn Grunwald has the sorry story here. 

I'm a bowling-alley, shot-and-a-beer type of Democrat.  When did the limo-crowd become Democrats?  When did the people with private nannies and housekeepers and gardeners and pool boys become Democrats?

This is a fault line of the Democratic Party--on the one side, the Geithners and Daschles, on the other side, the people who work for a living who are supposed to be the heart and soul of the Democratic Party. 

Comments

[Hypatia]

I was particularly struck by the defense offered by Daschle’s spokesperson to the effect that he’d got used to having a car and driver as a senator and apparently forgot there was any other way to get around. Being out of touch in that way wouldn’t necessarily make you a bad health care czar, but you have to wonder about the divide between the policy makers and the ordinary people they’re supposed to be helping.

For what it’s worth, the lefty argument I read for Daschle went something like this: sure, he’s the pool boy of the healthcare industry, but Obama would need someone with Daschle’s ‘credibility’ with the industry to get anything through. I suppose there’s a certain Nixon-to-China logic about that, although Daschle never struck me as the sort to be found on any barricades.