DASCHLE - Disses Dubya

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Daschle Disses Dubya Why the majority leader told the president to get lost.

October 26, 2001 11:40 a.m. In a White House meeting this week, George W. Bush asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to help speed up the Senate's slow-motion confirmations of Bush's judicial nominees. It was the perfect opportunity for Daschle to offer a few reassuring words. "Mr. President, we've been terribly busy working on terrorism measures," the majority leader might have said, "but we want to assure you we will do all we can to help." Perhaps Daschle might even have made a token effort to confirm a few nominees — a district judge or two — so he could appear to make good on his word.

Instead, Daschle told the president to get lost. We Democrats don't need judges — you do, Daschle said. We don't need appropriations bills — you do. So forget about it. It was an almost breathtakingly dismissive response, especially at a time when leaders of both parties claim to be working in a newly bipartisan spirit.

What accounts for Daschle's brazenness? Republicans have always known the majority leader to be a hardball partisan fighter beneath his mild-mannered exterior. But there was something new in his response at the White House Tuesday. When he told the president to forget about judges, Daschle was announcing his new status as a Big Bad Dude in post-September 11 Washington.

Of the four leaders of Congress, Daschle's profile has risen the most in the weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In contrast, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, while widely visible, has not achieved the status of a national leader. "[Hastert's] strength is being a consensus builder, and his constituency is the House of Representatives," says one congressional aide. "He has not shown a tremendous inclination to go out and speak, and when he does, he doesn't always look so good." Nor have congressional minority leaders Trent Lott and Richard Gephardt achieved new levels of authority during the crisis.

But Daschle has. Not only was he a more visible and effective leader in the days after September 11, but now, with his office having been the target of bio-terrorists, Daschle is more than just a Democratic leader. He's a tough, courageous veteran of the war on terrorism — a made man in Washington. "The anthrax attack on Daschle means that he can look Bush in the eye," says one Republican. "It's taken away that look of softness around Democrats and Daschle."

Daschle's new status is undergirded by a new national prominence and popularity. One example was the recent nationally televised "Concert for New York City." Overlooked in all the discussion of the crowd booing Hillary Rodham Clinton was the fact that Daschle also appeared on the program, and was wildly popular. The Majority Leader from South Dakota received a very, very friendly reception in New York — a vivid indicator of his new standing.

So that might well be the reason Daschle felt he could tell George W. Bush to forget about getting any judges confirmed. And it appears that at least so far, Bush has chosen not to fight back. It's a telling illustration of the ways in which political Washington has changed since September 11. Consider this: In the spring, when George W. Bush's job-approval rating hovered in the low 50 percent range, he passed the largest tax cut in a generation and made significant progress on fulfilling several other campaign promises. Now, when Bush's job-approval rating is hovering in the low 90 percent range and he is widely respected as a wartime president, he finds himself dissed by the Senate's newly pumped-up majority leader.

-- Anonymous, October 26, 2001

Answers

Daschle still has the work of the people to do, terrorists or not. His reply to President Bush should've at least earned him an hour in the corner and no desserts for a month.

-- Anonymous, October 27, 2001

What a jerk. He should be taken to the woodshed.

-- Anonymous, October 27, 2001

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