Tom Daschle

Like No Other Time

The 107th Congress and the Two Years That Changed America Forever

by Tom Daschle

TOM DASCHLE may no longer call himself a Catholic. The Senate minority leader and the highest ranking Democrat in Washington has been sent a letter by his home diocese of Sioux Falls, sources in South Dakota have told The Weekly Standard, directing him to remove from his congressional biography and campaign documents all references to his standing as a member of the Catholic Church.

This isn't exactly excommunication--which is unnecessary, in any case, since Daschle made himself ineligible for communion almost 20 years ago with his divorce and remarriage to a Washington lobbyist.

Kuwait City, Kuwait

SENATOR TOM DASCHLE'S attack on President Bush on Monday was unprecedented for the leader of the opposition party in Congress, but high-profile Americans have a long history of getting it wrong on matters of war and peace. Most famous among these is Charles Lindbergh, who help found the America First Committee in September of 1940.

"DEMOCRATS LAMBASTE BUSH ON IRAQ." So declared the front page headline in the Washington Post the morning after the president's press conference.

FINALLY THE DEMOCRATS have found their hot issue: The Confederate heart of George Bush, and of Bill Frist, who by virtue of their membership in the Republican party have indicated their desire to live in a slaveholding past. Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi--to name just three prominent Democrats--have delivered themselves of the judgment that Republicans and those who vote for them are all closet racists. The demise of Trent Lott was only a smokescreen to hide this dark secret.

THE IMPORTANT THING about Al Gore's decision not to run for president in 2004--other than the decision itself--is the debate it will unleash inside the Democratic party, both during next year's run-up to the primaries, and in the 2004 primaries themselves. That debate will be about war: war against Iraq, the war on terrorism, indeed war itself as a tool of national security and a path to democratization. And it will be a lively, emotional, instructive, and perhaps even bitter debate, exactly the sort of debate the Democratic party needs.

With Gore gone, Sen.

WHEN FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON addressed the Democratic Leadership Council the other day, he declared it "unconscionable" what Republicans had done in attacking now ex-Senate majority leader Tom Daschle. And, yes, Clinton was serious. He was repeating what has become a Democratic talking point. But like other staples of the party's rhetoric, the tale of abuse of Daschle is a myth.

It's one of six myths I've spotted--there are probably more I've missed--that Democrats have been repeating since their election losses a month ago.

AFTER AN ELECTORAL LOSS, sour grapes is a normal response. Few politicians are big enough to manage a nobler one. A political candidacy puts forward a set of ideas about how a decent society ought to be run; a political defeat hands power to people who don't share the losing candidate's goals, and may not even understand them. That is why politicians so often react to defeat with outright incomprehension.

THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.

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To me, a 25 year USAF veteran and recent retiree, the most significant aspect of the offensive use of the Predator detailed in Christian Lowe's article (A New Breed of Predator) is that it was initiated not by any of the U.S. armed services, but by the CIA.

Tim Russert: Now, you said in The New York Times last week, "Jeb Bush is gone." You want to take those words back?

DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe: Of course not. I'm very excited about what's going on in Florida.

Russert: He's going to lose, guaranteed?

McAuliffe: Yep. That is why the president was down there yesterday for his 13th visit. People in Florida are energized. They've already started the early voting. And if you look at Broward and Dade counties, there are lines already, huge lines, people--record vote coming out in Florida . . .

FIRST, Democrats in Minnesota used the death of Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone in an attempt to silence the Republican Senate candidate, former St. Paul mayor Norm Coleman. Then, they turned a widely televised memorial honoring Wellstone into a partisan political rally for electing ex-vice president Walter Mondale to Wellstone's Senate seat.