Daschle's Predicament
PODHORETZ, JOHN
Daschle’s Predicament Criticizing Bush is like hitting your head against a wall. BY JOHN PODHORETZ TOM DASCHLE, Washington’s most important Democrat, just can’t catch a break. The Senate...
...By doing this, Daschle was trying to play to his party’s strength with the American people as the fairer and more caring of the two parties...
...A dispute between Daschle and Johnson would have been very useful to GOP senatorial candidate John Thune...
...For the first time, at his weekly press conference on February 28, Daschle went out of his way to criticize the president’s handling of the war and Bush’s war goals in the future...
...Second was a simple matter of policy...
...How could the Bush tax cuts be responsible for a recession when they had yet to take effect—and when the recession had officially begun soon after the president had taken office...
...He knows, then, that the Democrats have to do something to get their own voting base as passionate about working for candidates and turning out at the polls as the Republican base is...
...The battle against a force of al Qaeda and Taliban fighters far larger than originally anticipated meant that Daschle had decided to separate himself from the president just as Americans were coming under fierce enemy attack...
...Only days after trying to find his own Democratic voice separate from Bush’s, Daschle was back to singing with the chorus...
...Daschle’s cavils got press coverage and drew partisan fire, which is what they were intended to do...
...The rout was complete...
...Worse yet for Daschle’s partisan assault was the actual assault—by American ground troops in Afghanistan in the mountains around Gardez—that immediately followed...
...When Thurmond was replaced as president pro tem by Robert Byrd, Byrd was offered a briefing on the matter and turned it down...
...There’s no end in sight to our mission in Afghanistan...
...BY JOHN PODHORETZ TOM DASCHLE, Washington’s most important Democrat, just can’t catch a break...
...The GOP considers Johnson the most vulnerable Democrat up for reelection, and Johnson had voted for the tax cut along with 11 other Democrats...
...Daschle evidently decided at the beginning of the year that it was his duty—and partisan opportunity—to see whether he could give voice to any possible swell of sentiment against the president...
...Such a portrait dovetails nicely with the Democratic accusation that the administration is illegally denying Congress access to information about the formulation of its energy plan...
...Daschle is certainly no fool...
...He praised his colleague, Sen...
...The Senate majority leader has been trying to figure out how to open up an effective partisan front against a wartime president for months now...
...Robert Byrd, for raising “tough questions” about the conduct of the war...
...If these Republican numbers hold through Election Day, Daschle will once again become Senate minority leader...
...So Daschle did not address the issue of repeal, and had his hat handed to him...
...Three times, Daschle has bravely taken on the president in a direct assault...
...Daschle’s criticisms were thematically consistent...
...And he knows Democrats must deliver a message that will connect with independent voters, who are in Bush’s pocket these days...
...We’ve got to make a better analysis of what’s been done,” he said, and warned that the “jury is still out about future success...
...What Byrd had said was this: “The Pentagon seems to be looking for opportunities to stay longer and expand our presence in the region...
...It turned out that in March 2001, House and Senate officers with actual roles to play during a succession crisis—Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and then-president pro tempore of the Senate Strom Thurmond—had indeed been briefed on the emergency plan...
...The answer: A call for repeal might do significant damage to the reelection bid of Daschle’s fellow South Dakota senator, Tim Johnson...
...But Daschle’s defeat in that January battle was nothing compared to what happened at the end of February...
...George W. Bush is riding an approval rating around 80 percent, and Republicans in the House and Senate are polling more strongly than they ever have...
...He is surely more aware than ever of the desperate fix he and his party are in, but so far he has been unable to see a way out of it...
...But then, once again, simple fact and hard reality intervened...
...The administration, he hinted, was behaving secretively, arrogantly, and quite possibly unconstitutionally...
...It would seem a fool’s errand to confront George W. Bush with the country at war, since that would seem to undermine the national unity that has given Americans such comfort since Sept...
...While stipulating that “I don’t think it would do anybody any good to second-guess what has been done to date,” Daschle proceeded to do exactly that...
...He worried that “there is expansion without at least a clear direction to date...
...The speech’s failure was twofold...
...It was supposedly expanding the war without consultation, and setting up government operations while keeping Congress in the dark...
...I think that on occasion it is important for us to speak with one voice in support of our troop efforts, and we’re looking for an opportunity to do that,” Daschle said...
...And three times now, he has sustained heavy losses...
...First was a simple matter of fact...
...Daschle quickly retrenched by drafting a resolution of support in the Senate...
...But he has responsibilities as his party’s leader, not to mention White House ambitions of his own...
...Trying a different tack, the Senate majority leader the next day publicly complained that he had not been properly informed of the existence of the so-called “shadow government” convened in secret locations since September 11 to ensure continuity of the executive branch in the event of a cataclysmic attack on Washington...
...He launched the first frontal assault in January, giving a highly touted speech blaming the recession on the tax-cut package advocated by George W. Bush...
...Republicans gleefully joined the New York Times editorial board in wondering why, if Daschle was convinced of the economic danger posed by the tax cuts, he wasn’t calling for their repeal...
...And talk of the energy plan, of course, segues nicely into the Enron bankruptcy, since the once-mighty oil company was consulted when Vice President Cheney was helping to draw up the energy plan...
Vol. 7 • March 2002 • No. 26
