Yes, Linda: what a difference a few years and a change of party make! We all know that the treatment has and will continue to be quite different when a Democrat is under the spotlight. That said, I’m not sure Geithner is home-free or that the public is entirely forgiving, especially when they understand (if they ever do) the particulars of his case.

Geithner’s confirmation hearing has been delayed by a full week, suggesting this may be more than a “hiccup.” John Kerry, with an  ever-so-helpful reminder of the obvious, dubs it an “embarrassment.”  One can imagine both Republicans and the Obama team scrambling to determine whether there any other shoes will be dropping.

Is it a big mess — bigger than Eric Holder? Politico‘s Congressional reporter contends:

The Obama team believed their biggest confirmation battle would involve Attorney General nominee Eric Holder – until the Wall St. Journal dropped some serious oppo on Treasury Secretary-designate Tim Geithner yesterday, revealing he’d failed to pay $34,000 in taxes and briefly employed an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper.

In talking to some people on the Hill this morning, I did not hear a groundswell of concern over Geithner being derailed. Nevertheless, he will need to explain why he didn’t pay his full tax liability when audited in 2006. He took advantage of the statute of limitations (paying just for 2003 and 2004), which he certainly was entitled to do legally. But it was an unseemly bit of chiseling, especially since he was working for the Fed. (The Obama team thought so too, apparently, since they made him cough up the 2001 and 2002 payments when they realized they had never been paid.)

So it may be too much to expect the media and Congress to apply the same standard to Geithner that Republicans receive, but he is in for a painful hearing at the very least. Perhaps even the Democrats will want to know why both the Treasury Secretary and the Chair of  the House Ways and Means Committee have such trouble abiding by the tax laws they craft for everyone else.

UPDATE: And the plot thickens — as it always does in these matters — as we learned Geithner received reimbursement from the IMF for those taxes he didn’t pay. We’ll see if this, or subsequent information, pushes Geithner past the point of unacceptability.