A liberal friend of this blog who served in a previous Democratic White House shot me a private email recently: “Am I the only Democrat who pays his taxes?” This half-kidding response came to the news that Tom Daschle remembered only after being nominated to head the Department of Health and Human Services that—oops!—he owed the federal government $146,000 in back taxes. Today, my buddy's joke seems less funny. A little while ago, Nancy Killefer, whom President Obama had named performance expert at the White House budget office, withdrew her nomination when it came to light that in 2005 she had also run afoul of the tax laws. Daschle followed suit hours later.

Both of those cases came on the heels of the news that the man Obama had tapped to be Treasury Secretary at a time of unprecedented turmoil in the world financial markets had failed to pay $43,702 worth of Social Security and Medicare back taxes while he was an employee at the International Monetary Fund. Timothy Geithner asserted that he had been confounded by the vagaries of Turbo Tax, and the Senate confirmed him anyway on a vote of 60-34. The Daschle business came on the heels of Geithner, and even though Daschle was a longtime Democratic member of the Senate, his former colleagues were uncomfortable with the situation--as they should have been. As the pressure started building on Daschle to take one for the team, he did just that.

Two newspapers normally sympathetic to Democrats led the charge. The New York Times questioned Daschle’s “suitability” for the cabinet, and flatly called for him to withdraw his name from consideration. “We believe that Mr. Daschle ought to step aside and let the president choose a less-blemished successor,” the paper proclaimed [Read the entire editorial here.] Political writer Peter S. Canellos of the Boston Globe, referring to both Daschle and Geithner, wondered in print this morning if either man is truly irreplaceable, and said that tolerating ethical lapses in his own aides undermines the “president’s ability to call a halt to irresponsible behavior by powerful people” on Wall Street. [Click here to read that article].

The White House heeded those voices today, but it remains an open question whether those in power fully understand the disconnect between everyday Americans and themselves. Listen carefully to the tone of Nancy Killefer’s letter of resignation today: “I recognize that your agenda and the duties facing your Chief Performance Officer are urgent,” she wrote to Obama. “I have also come to realize in the current environment that my personal tax issue of D.C. unemployment tax could be used to create exactly the kind of distraction and delay those duties must avoid.”