INDEED: “Obviously, Daschle was trying to hide a lot! . . . I guess Gibbs means that nobody is trying to hide anything now… now that what they were trying to hide has been brought to light and there’s no way to hide it.”

And, from the comments: “Watching Gibbs at work makes me yearn for the smooth self-assurance and commanding presence of Scott McClellan.” Ouch.

UPDATE: Tom Maguire notes an uncanny coincidence:

He became concerned in June? Call it Uncanny Coincidence, but it was early June when Hillary conceded and it became crystal-clear that Obama would be the Democratic nominee. And since Daschle had been an early and important Obama supporter, it also became clear that Daschle himself might need to start thinking about his possible role in a Obama administration.

As to the idea that it took his accountant six months to resolve these questions, please – is this the sort of glacial progress we can expect as Daschle oversees the transformation of the US health care system? For any Democrats out there not familiar with the process by which the rest of us pay our taxes, most returns are filed by April 15; summertime is the slow season and one would hope that as important a person as Tom Daschle could have gotten an answer promptly, if he had so desired. In fact, Daschle only got his answer after he had been tapped for a post requiring Senate confirmation; if Daschle had gotten the nod for a consigliere spot in the White House, I have no doubt his accountant would still be researching this.

Let’s recap for folks who are having trouble keeping up – Geithner, our new Treasury Secretary and overseer of the IRS, learned by way of a 2006 IRS audit that he had a tax problem for 2001 through 2004, but relied on the three year statute of limitations to avoid payment on the 2001 and 2002 liabilities; he resolved these only after his nomination in late 2008.

Daschle “became concerned” last June but dragged his feet on resolving the issue until after he had been nominated to a post requiring Senate confirmation.

Read the whole thing.