It is increasingly clear that Tom Daschle cannot be both majority leader and presidential candidate.
The latter role forces him to focus on the activists within the Democratic party who are skeptics of force and suspicious of defense spending. The majority leader, one of the country’s half-dozen voices abroad, must care not at all for domestic politics when national security is on the table. Daschle’s political ambitions have twice overwhelmed the country’s interests in the past month. Both times he has backtracked as foreign-policy elites and public opinion combined to slap some sense into him. It is not realistic to expect him to stay on a responsible course.
Daschle’s criticism of the “axis of evil” phrase on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer and then his blast at the war’s direction and the equating of “failure” to the lack of bin Laden’s body have both been analyzed as transparent attempts to find a political handhold as November’s elections approach. There will be more such efforts by Daschle as the elections draw near.
Any would-be nominee knows that he must rally the activists on the far left of the Democratic Party if he is to be a serious contender in 2004. Joe Biden also tries to do this but is so hapless that no one even notices his gaffes. John Kerry went for it in New Hampshire last week as well. They all will – except for Lieberman, who will be banking on a different cadre of voters.
But in Daschle’s case – and in Biden’s as well – their day-jobs conflict with their long-term political goals. The Senate’s majority leader and chairman of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee are not just another couple of voices amid a chorus of Democratic carping. Their words – especially their stupid ones – carry out across the world.
How often has Daschle’s criticism of “axis of evil” already been replayed in the controlled media of our enemies? How often has Biden’s pathetic “mano-a-mano” pratfall from last fall been tossed around by propagandists intent on painting America as a cowardly paper-tiger?
There have always been strong voices of dissent in the Senate and they should be welcomed there. But Daschle and Biden sought jobs that carry a different set of responsibilities. They are presumed to speak for the country on such matters and not just for a faction within their party, and an extreme faction at that.
In times of peace when the issues are small, the Senate’s leaders can play a double game. But not during a war in which American lives are daily on the front line and when America’s interests can be compromised by careless talk in front of would-be delegates.
It is time for Tom Daschle to choose between his leadership of the Senate today and his ambitions three years from now. If he continues to try to have it both ways, we will know for sure that he places his own interests ahead of the country’s.
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