The XX Factor: What women really think.

Obama's Accepts Blame ... for What, Exactly?

Does anyone else feel played by Obama telling Anderson Cooper and just about every news outlet that he "screwed up" on the Daschle situation? George Packer and morning news anchors are framing his mea culpa as a stark contrast to Bush's inability in 2004 to come up with any mistakes he'd made since 9/11. Their point: Isn't it so refreshing to finally have a president who can admit when he's done wrong?

Yes, a willingness to own up to mistakes is a great trait. But what exactly is Obama admitting to having done wrong here? He says the vetting process is not to blame. So what, then? Cooper's push for an explanation came up fairly empty handed:

AC: What was your mistake, letting it get this far? You should have pulled it earlier?

BO: I think my mistake is not in selecting Tom originally because I think nobody was better equipped to deal both with the substance and policy of health care—he understands it as well as anybody—but also the politics that's going to be required to actually get it done. But ultimately, I campaigned on changing Washington and bottom-up politics and I don't want to send a message to the American people that there are two sets of standards, one for powerful people and one for ordinary folks who are working every day and paying their taxes. 

I can see how Obama could say he inappropriately created a double standard if he had actually appointed Daschle despite the tax scandal, but he didn't have the chance to do that. So if he was right to select Daschle originally, if the vetting process was solid, and if the appointment wasn't actually carried out, then where exactly was the screw up? 

Are We All Tom Daschle?

Thinking a little more, Emily, about Nancy Killefer's tax-woes-related withdrawal from her post as Obama's "performance czar," it's not fair. There's no sex-based discrimination here. But aren't we condemning Killefer, Tom Daschle, and Tim Geithner for expressing an amplified version of an attitude we all share?

This morning, in my day job at the New Republic, I posted a rather righteous denunciation of Daschle, proclaiming that he shares characteristics with the villainous CEOs now dominating our national imagination. His tax error was just like the bumbling, thoughtless mistake the big-auto execs made when they flew to their bailout hearings on private jets, I fumed. It was "carelessness. It was about growing too cozy in one's Master of the Universe status to think very hard about whether you need a private jet or a private limo, or how to keep things above-board if you use one. ... We just can't afford to excuse this kind of careless attitude among our Big Machers anymore." Stone him!

I still think Daschle had to go, for PR reasons. But after reading Emily's post below, I also thought of the phone call I made yesterday afternoon—to an accountant, the first one I've ever used. I used to take pride in going all hairshirt with TurboTax, but TurboTax is not known for its wizardry at finessing your freelance income, and last year I started to have the uncomfortable, resentful sensation that I was paying the IRS more than my savvier journalist colleagues were. Now, the accountant I called is utterly on the level, scrupulous about receipts, beloved by friends of mine, a very pillar of the tax-preparation community. But when I got him on the horn, the first thing he asked me was, "You're looking at a bill of about X thousand dollars, right? Would you like me to ... get rid of that?" I felt like I was in an alley, looking inside somebody's trench coat.

Obviously, we'd all like to get rid of our tax bill, using whatever little tricks, loopholes, or gray-area fixes possible. Obama himself ratified this attitude when he told John McCain in a debate, "Nobody likes taxes. I would prefer that none of us had to pay taxes, including myself." Amazon.com sells endless titles to get us out of paying taxes: Loopholes of the Rich: How the Rich Legally Make More Money and Pay Less Tax, Legal Offshore Tax Havens, Tax Loopholes for eBay Sellers, Doing Business Tax Free: Perfectly Legal Techniques. (Note the books' cheery emphasis on "legality," suggesting our natural instinct tells us this whole business is a bit dirty.) One friend suggested I build evidence to claim a home office for the tax write-off by carting a fax machine and staplers home from my real office, arranging them on my dining room table, and snapping a photo. Most of us don't go so far as to actually just not pay our taxes, but our cynical attitude vis-a-vis our tax obligation begets the assumption that bilking the U.S. Treasury isn't morally wrong. Just leave that little envelope from the IRS sitting in the mail pile for a few more days, now. Everybody does it.

People who actively love to pay their taxes are, of course, elastic-waistband-jean-wearing, fanny-pack-sporting, good-government dorks. A Huffington Post writer recently revealed her membership in this unnatural club in an article called "Why I Love Taxes," which featured the following treacly, after-school-video exchange: WRITER: "Actually, I love paying taxes." HELPLESS STORE CLERK: "Really?" WRITER:  "Yeah. How else do you think we have libraries and street lights and clean water and the Internet?"

But there should be ways to diminish the mass philosophy of tax cynicism that made Nancy Killefer and Tom Daschle possible. Forcing everybody to pay their taxes quarterly might be one. Over the course of an entire year, I become so attached to my growing savings-account balance that I refuse to accept, come April, that the money was never mine in the first place. How about it?

The Nanny-Tax Follies Know No Gender

Emily, sorry, but I gotta say that the idea that a sex-based double-standard constitutes a theme of the endlessly entertaining Obama Administration Tax Follies is ridiculous. This was all timing, timing, timing. Three officially makes a trend, and Nancy Killefer had the misfortune of being the third Obama-ite to turn up with an outstanding bill to the IRS. (And Killefer did doom Tom Daschle—not, I assume, in order to make the punishment evenly distributed by sex, but because her prompt withdrawal made it OK to contend that no, not everybody has tax problems, and yes, they can be considered a disqualifier for Cabinet service in the new Obama era.)

Is the Nanny Tax Different for the Goose Than for the Gander?

When Nancy Killefer withdrew her nomination for chief White House performance officer this morning over unpaid nanny taxes, I got outraged e-mails screaming double-standard. Tim Geithner gets away with his tax mess-ups, which included a nanny-related screw-up, but Killefer doesn't? And what about Tom Daschle and his chauffered car?

But now Daschle's nomination is sunk, too. Is that evenhanded enough for us? Does it matter that Geithner's nanny tax troubles were of a pretty minor and technical variety (his kids' baby-sitter overstayed her visa for a short period)? And did Geithner just get lucky because his confirmation came first? Or is Kilefer's fate proof that unpaid nanny taxes trip up women seeking higher office more than men?