||| THE conservatives are running an ad in South Dakota aimed at Tom Daschle
which was launched with a news release in which Richard Lessner of the
Family Research Center asked, "What do Saddam Hussein and Senate Majority
Leader Tom Daschle have in common?" Answer: "Neither man wants America to
drill for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."
||| Paul Glastris, WASHINGTON MONTHLY - A few days after Thanksgiving,
President Bush decided to change the tone in Washington---by directing his
staff to publicly attack Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. It was a
curious order. Relations between Bush and Daschle had been cordial. Like
virtually all Democrats, Daschle had rallied around the president after
September 11, and was himself a target of terrorism, having received an
anthrax-laden letter. But in recent weeks Daschle had also succeeded in
blocking White House-supported airport security and economic stimulus bills
(the latter would have, among other things, given a quarter billion dollar
tax cut to Enron, which paid no federal income taxes in four of the last
five years).
So Bush decided to go personal, and soon everyone from Ari Fleischer to The Washington Times editorial page was parroting the same line: that Tom Daschle was an "obstructionist." Rush Limbaugh stepped up his own petty rhetoric, calling the senate leader "Puff Daschle" and "El Diablo." Newspaper and broadcast ads trashing Daschle appeared in his home state of South Dakota. One, by the Family Research Council, blasted Daschle's opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as a threat to energy security. It featured a picture of Daschle next to Saddam Hussein.
It was a classic Republican smear campaign. And it was met, on the Democratic side, with silence. On the Dec. 9 broadcast of "Meet the Press," Tim Russert confronted Vice President Dick Cheney about the Saddam ad: "That's a little over the line, isn't it?" Cheney not only refused to condemn the ad but repeated the charge that Daschle was an "obstructionist." For more than two months after the Russert broadcast, not one leading Democrat publicly defended Daschle.
Finally, Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) struck back, decrying the administration's "gutter attacks." But the moment had passed. Imagine what might have happened, however, if a group of prominent senators like Lieberman had immediately responded to the attacks . . . Alas, the Democrats' passivity in the face of White House aggression is part of a pattern.
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