Matt Yglesias

Daschle

It doesn’t come as a shock to see that Tom Daschle will be tapped as HHS Secretary. The more interesting news is the notion that Daschle “will also reportedly be given a policy portfolio that stretches beyond the department in order to help shepherd health-care reform legislation in 2009.”

Needless to say, it makes a ton of sense to ask a former Senate Majority Leader to lend a hand on doing legislative work rather than thinking of him primarily as someone to run the HHS bureaucracy. I don’t, however, think you normally see roles formally designated in that matter, but it seems smart to do it. Of course the HHS bureaucracy is actually really big and important so this makes it important that the people around Daschle be well-suited to running the shop.