Blanchard on Daschle

SDPolitics has had a lot of fun lately with the intemperate language of our sister blog the Northern Valley Beacon.  See the post by my colleague Jon Schaff, below.  Readers might want an example of how we talk about the other side, especially in a forum other than the blog.  Below is a column of mine published in the Aberdeen American News.

When Tom Daschle was chosen leader of the Senate’s Democrats, he probably thought he was bullet proof. I certainly thought so. Incumbent senators are nearly always favored to win reelection. Well established and powerful incumbents usually enjoy more job security than an hereditary monarch.

I did not really believe in the possibility of a Daschle loss until I came to be in Sioux Falls, shortly before this year’s election. At maybe a half dozen intersections, including one across from the Empire Mall, I saw crowds of young Thune supporters cheering and waving their signs at the stream of traffic. I do not mean to slight Daschle’s people. No doubt they too were working their fannies off for their man. But on that day, all the momentum looked to be on the Republican side. And this was in a Democratic stronghold.

I first met Senator Daschle in 1994, when he appeared at a campaign event on behalf of Jim Beddow, the Democratic candidate for governor. One of my students who worked on the Beddow campaign invited me to that event, held in an Aberdeen home. But when she introduced me to Tom, I think she was a bit worried that I was going to cause some kind of trouble.

I did not entirely disappoint her. After we shook hands, I asked the Senator what were his chances of becoming minority leader. I had in effect asked him two things at once. Was he going to lead the Senate Democratic caucus, and were the Democrats going to loose their majority? He feigned a motion as if he had been punched in the stomach, but then proceeded to candidly answer both questions in the affirmative. He was right on both counts.

Since that evening I have had a fondness for the man. In several subsequent encounters he always been thoughtful and honest in answering my questions, at least when the mikes were switched off. I’ve known politicians who wouldn’t give you a straight answer to a question if the two of you were trapped alone in an elevator.

Daschle is also short, and I like that in a man. He might be one of the few members of Congress I would have a chance against in a good round of fisticuffs, and I include Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi. When Daschle addressed that room in Aberdeen he did so from over a banister, half way up a flight of stairs. This was an elegant means of rising above his physical limitations.

Other limitations could not be so easily surmounted. As a party leader, Senator Daschle confronted a problem that has become critical for many congressional Democrats. He was elected from a solidly red, conservative state, but belonged to the blue, and increasingly more liberal party. This can create what social scientists call “cognitive dissonance.” Daschle represented a party that is fond of such things as animal rights and gun control. He was bound to look a bit odd then, when he showed up on the campaign trail carrying a hunting rifle and wearing hip waders.

Daschle lost, I would guess, because his enemies could exploit this dissonance. They managed to make the case that he wasn’t really from South Dakota anymore. His real home is in a cushy beltway suburb. Like those expatriate Arkansans, Bill and Hilary, he is now more akin to a Heinz-Kerry or a Kennedy, than to anyone who really enjoys killing ducks and deer. John Thune, by contrast, gives the impression that he only ran for Senate out of a sense of duty, that he’d much rather be here. This may be unfair to Daschle, but fairness has never been a conspicuous feature of politics.

Daschle’s political career says at least a couple good things about South   Dakota.  It says that we are capable of producing extraordinary persons, one of whom briefly led the upper house of the U.S. Congress. It also says that our senators and representatives belong to us, and not the other way around. When the citizens of this state decide to replace one of them, not all the glitter and power of the nation is enough to save him.

I would like to think that this is an example of moderate political speech.  I advance an explanation of Daschle's defeat that will not, perhaps, be convincing or pleasing to those who voted for him.  But I also try to give him his due.  While this blog has been famously critical of Daschle, I for one genuinely admired him.  That's not to say I voted for him. 

But I do not believe, as does the NVB, that American politics is a war between good and evil, the righteous, and the perfidious.  Rather, it is an argument between distinct conceptions of public justice and public interest.