From today’s Page 1 canonization of Henry Paulson by the Washington Post:

As he pored over the books of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, he discovered that they were about to collapse and that the financial markets would experience what he called “a meltdown to end all meltdowns.”

The federal government would have to seize the firms. But the law said their management would have to agree, and his own staff had reservations about whether Paulson had the legal authority to force them to surrender.

“Trust me,” came Paulson’s curt answer. “I’ll get it done.” …

As financial firms tumble and traditional oversight agencies prove impotent, Paulson has filled the void with his 6-foot-1 frame, summoning the rest of Washington and Wall Street to get in line. …

“[I]f you take charge, people will follow,” Paulson said in an interview. “Someone has to pull it all together.”

In the next installment, our green eyeshade-wearing superhero gets tangled up in his own cape when he is suddenly forced to reverse course and abandon his initial bailout plan. And don’t miss the stunning conclusion! In a gripping cliffhanger, the runaway locomotive of financial crisis hurtles toward certain destruction while our superhero is busy polishing his reputation in interviews with the local press.

At the NY Observer, John Koblin has a fun rundown of the press hyperventilation over Obama’s possible but not quite yet offer of State and Hillary’s possible but not quite yet acceptance.

Even some Bush political appointees at EPA are crying foul over the administration’s 11th-hour push to allow major polluters to build near national parks and wilderness areas.

In response to the stories this week about Bush political appointees burrowing in to career positions in the federal government, we’ve gotten some reader emails that suggest people aren’t entirely clear on how this works — or what the point of it is.

The suggestion that Obama can merely fire these people once he takes office misses the point entirely. The whole reason for burrowing in is to take advantage of the protection of the federal civil service system which is intended to prevent career personnel from being subject to retaliation and removal by the party in power. That’s a good thing.

And, yes, these political appointees-turned-career civil servants will be supervised by the new political appointees that Obama names. So they won’t be able to run amok completely unchecked, but don’t underestimate the ability of well-placed bureaucrats to slow down or even undermine new initiatives.

Late Update: TPM Reader SG raises a separate but related point, which I agree is a factor:

From my point of view, most of the “Burrowing” you are seeing is not about people trying to continue the Bush Jr. Administration’s policies into the Obama Administration. It mostly the fact that these political appointees are facing one of the toughest job markets in the past three decades, and on top of that face zero prospects in getting a job lobbying their former agency because the new political appointees really don’t care what they (or their potential clients) think about any issue. I think this is much more of a kitchen table issue for a select group of people who hitched their wagon to the Bush Administration, and now find out that the horses have been shot and they are in Death Valley. There are no jobs in DC for them outside the government.

So much for drowning it in the bathtub.

Reports in the last hour name former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle as Obama’s pick to be the new secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Here’s an interview Steve Clemons did with Daschle earlier this year on the subject of health care reform:

It seems that Clinton at the State Department is close to a done deal. But I think we should consider that during her time on the national stage Sen. Clinton has been at the helm in two big undertakings — had two big executive leadership tasks. One was health care in 1994 and the other was her presidential bid in 2007-08. Each was something of a trainwreck from an executive-level management perspective. And the State Department is a notoriously intractable bureaucracy. I still need some help understanding this decision.

No, don’t fret, we’re not reorganizing as a bank holding company to access TARP funds. And relative to a lot of other companies our finances are holding up well. But we are considering funding our own micro-bailout … well, maybe nano-bailout, of one small sliver of the financial services industry.

What am I talking about? We’re considering hiring a business and finance reporter-blogger. As you’d probably figure, we’re not looking to gin up a TPM version of Squawk Box or have some slicked-back-haired right-winger ranting about zeroing out the capital gains tax or yelling about how undervalued the financial sector stocks are. And business and finance news wasn’t something I’d really imagined TPM getting into. But we’re already making plans to shift a lot of our TPMmuckraker.com resources to muckraking the financial collapse, the resultant bailout and all the shenanigans and self-dealing and new lobbying gambits. One of the things I most prize about TPM is that we’ve been able to stay nimble and light enough to be able to focus our resources on where the story is. And there’s no getting around the fact that this is now where the story is.

We’re not going to try to tell you which stocks to buy and, at least in our news coverage, what policies the government should be following. We’ll focus on our area of core competence: muckraking … finding where the wrong-doing is, the betrayals of public trust, particularly where business and finance intersect with government — as they are now with a mounting frequency. Hopefully we’ll also be pulling together the broader narrative that can be strewn about in a hundred different places and difficult to put together in clear view.

Now, I said above that we’re considering hiring someone. And I put it that way because when we formally advertise a job listing we’re not bluffing. We only list for a job when we’re sure we’re going to be hiring someone. In this case, we’ll still in the planning stages. (I have to think through the finances and how it fits in with the rest of what we’re setting out to do editorially this year.) But if this is an opportunity that interests you we’d like to hear from you. We’re looking for someone in all likelihood with one of two professional backgrounds. Either someone with experience in business/financial journalism or (and here’s where the bailout idea comes in) someone cast off by the rapidly downsizing financial services industry (who knows how things work) and always wanted to get into journalism and finds this a particularly auspicious moment. If you’re interested, drop us a line at talk (at) talkingpointsmemo.com, with a letter and resume and the subject line “finance blogger”.

Bailout duo Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke took to the Hill again yesterday to talk TARP, while the CEOs of the Big Three car companies tried to get in on the action. In today’s episode of TPMtv, we bring you the highlights, the lowlights and Ron Paul’s quest for gold…

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

Former Sen. Tom Daschle’s possible nomination as secretary of HHS is another sign to advocates of heath care reform that Obama means business and will put health care front and center early next year.

Missouri officially goes for McCain.

And our map is finally completed.