Daschle’s Nightmare May Have Just Begun

Last week on Capitol Hill, congressional Democrats were as giddy as they were on Feb. 12, 1999, the afternoon former President Bill Clinton was acquitted of impeachment charges. After six months of bumbling, they finally got a break: Sen. James M. Jeffords, a Vermont Republican newly settled into his third term, bolted his party, thereby handing control of the U.S. Senate to the Democrats. But is this turn of events a stroke of good fortune or a prelude to more disaster?

First the good news: The in-house Democratic opinion is bullish, for one big reason and lots of little ones. First, the new slogan in Dem Land is ‘apparatus ber alles .’ The Senate remains closely divided, and even with a 50-49 advantage, Democrats will lose their share of fights. But Jeffords’ defection gives Democrats control of the body’s machinery. As a result, they will chair committees and set the agenda.

For the first time since 1994, Democrats can go on the legislative offensive and stand for something instead of languishing in opposition. They can introduce measures like universal retirement accounts or universal preschool. They can make President George W. Bush uncomfortable by bringing up legislation that he opposes, such as a patients’ bill of rights.

Another advantage is that Democratic Sen. Tom Daschle is now the franchise. The South Dakotan has long been regarded as a rising star in the party. He’s thoughtful and mild-mannered, and his elevation to majority leader will make him the Democrats’ public face. With one spokesman, instead of a rotating gaggle of politicos vying for camera time, it will be easier for Democrats to project a forceful, coherent message. And while Daschle may not be Jack Kennedy, he surely beats the slippery Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, as party figurehead.

Remember, Daschle is the protege of former Sen. George J. Mitchell of Maine. As majority leader in 1989, Mitchell led the Democrats into battle against President George Bush. Daschle has intimate knowledge of how to use the Senate against a president.

Finally, retaking the Senate was symbolically important to Democrats. ‘It’s a psychological boost to them,’ says Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation. “And they need a psychological boost.’ After spending months in disarray, Democrats now believe they have turned a corner. They can look to the 2002 elections and take comfort in two trends: 1) The party not in the White House almost always picks up seats in the midterms; and 2) Republicans have lost ground in the Senate since 1994.

Now the bad news: Democrats should be careful what they wish for. The new topography in Washington is fraught with instability. There have only been five split Congresses in the past 100 years, and it has been 15 years since the last one. The last time a president’s party controlled the House but not the more powerful Senate was in 1889. Picture conference committees hashing out compromise bills when their leaders come from different parties. George W.’s reaction is equally unpredictable. ‘He may try to triangulate,’ says one Republican strategist, ‘in order to keep the congressional Republicans from being wrapped around his neck.”

For Bush, Daschle and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, the next 18 months will be full of unanticipated conflicts and potential disasters.

Before last week, Democrats had a simple hand to play--sit back and fight hard. Now they are scrambling to figure out what their new game plan will be. Only two weeks ago, Jim Jordan, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, crowed, ‘We need to learn the lessons of the Republicans. We’re better off fighting a guerrilla war and having no territory to defend.’ Democrats who had planned a scorched-earth campaign against Bush have a new world order to contend with, one that forces them to take the responsibilities of leadership.

What Democrats want to avoid is the “O-word”: obstructionism. Had Jeffords stayed a Republican--and Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) stayed alive--Democrats could have fought a holding action until the midterms and then attacked the GOP for inaction. Republicans, they could have argued, held the White House and Congress and still didn’t do the work of the American people. Send us in. Now, with the Senate in their control, Democrats will have to shoulder some of the blame if there’s gridlock.

The burden of keeping the Senate out of do-nothing territory and keeping Democrats from overreaching falls squarely on Daschle’s shoulders. Events, however, seem to be conspiring against him. Although Democrats are uniting in their opposition to Bush’s energy plan, there is still a deep ideological rift within the party between the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and the old-guard left.

Liberals such as Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) and Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), if allowed to follow their instincts, would dig in against Bush and try to obstruct nearly all his initiatives. Normally, Democratic moderates would counterbalance them and pull the party back toward the center. But most of the DLC heavyweights are jockeying for position for the 2004 presidential race. Otherwise moderate senators such as Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) and John Edwards (D-N.C.) are veering left in an attempt to court the party’s liberal base. It will take all of Daschle’s skills to keep the party from backsliding into the anachronistic liberalism that kept it out of the White House for so long.

In such a situation, one spark could cause a political conflagration, and the next Supreme Court appointee could be the person who lights the fire. Democrats eager to prove their liberal credentials might feel compelled to oppose Bush’s nominee. Which brings up the possibility of a contentious, unattractive Bork-a-thon.

Imagine a prolonged showdown over another minority Republican Supreme Court nominee. Republicans, attuned to Bush’s mantra of bipartisan civility, take their case directly to the public, while Democrats try to outdo one another with vicious attacks. Maybe voters decide that the Democrats are right. Maybe they don’t. It’s a very large gamble. If things don’t work out, Democrats might look back on last week and wish that Jeffords had just kept his mouth shut.