Obama on Daschle: 'I Screwed Up'

President Obama made the rounds of TV anchors today in the wake of Tom Daschle's withdrawal with a common message: "I'm here on television saying I screwed up," he said on NBC. In an interview with Fox, he amplified the message, Politico reports: "I consider this a mistake on my part and one I intend to fix and correct and make sure we don’t screw it up again."

Obama told CNN that Daschle would have been a superb Cabinet member because of nuts-and-bolts knowledge of health reform and his political savvy. "But I think that, look, 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." (More President Obama stories.)