A L S O+T O D A Y Lott's losing control By Joshua Micah Marshall Impeachment proceedings in the Senate could get as ugly as in the House (01/06/99)   T A B L E+T A L K Introducing the Euro! Discuss the political and financial impact of Europe's new currency in the International Issues area of Table Talk   R E C E N T L Y My dinner with Jerry By Joan Walsh A reporter reflects that Jerry Brown's idiot-savant approach to race may carry Oakland into a multicultural future without rancor (01/05/99) Letter from Havana By Frank Smyth Gays, Catholics and transvestites find their place in the new Cuba (01/04/99) Oral history By David Friend Sound bites from three scandals (12/24/99) Blood money By Suzi Parker An Arkansas prison-plasma business protected by Clinton cronies led to a scandal that almost toppled the government -- of Canada (12/23/99) Portrait of a political "pit bull" By Russ Baker Rep. Dan Burton has a few questions to answer about his own history of womanizing and alleged campaign finance irregularities (12/22/99) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		The man Clinton could have been   Sen. Tom Daschle, the Democrats' point man on impeachment, is a tough negotiator who could save Clinton from himself. BY JEFF STEIN James Abourezk savors a story about Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., the man who now holds the fate of President Clinton in his hands. It was 1973. Abourezk, a fiery populist, held the seat Daschle now occupies, railing against oil companies, neglect of the Indians in his state and the war in Vietnam. Daschle was his skinny young legislative aide, fresh out of the Air Force. "I had a bunch of hostile American Legionnaires in my office one day," Abourezk recalled over the telephone from Sioux Falls this week. "They were on my ass about the Vietnam War. The vote bell rang and I said, 'Tom, you speak to these folks and answer their questions until I get back.'" He chuckles. "I was so happy the vote bell rang. I came back later and they were almost hugging and kissing. Tom had them eating out of his hand." Abourezk added, "He's been so good at that over the years. He's always been that way. Tom brings people to accommodation." Ironically, it's something Tom Daschle and President Clinton, generational peers, share. In many ways, they are mirror images of each other. Both came from poor, hardscrabble homes. Both were the first college graduates in their families. Daschle's dad was a bookkeeper in a South Dakota auto parts dealership, Clinton's Arkansas father was famously absent. Both barely squeaked into national office on their first tries, Clinton ascending to the presidency with 43 percent of the vote in 1992, Daschle winning his first run for Congress in 1978 by the skin of his teeth. The election-night tally had him the victor by only 14 votes; a recount would later increase the margin to a whopping 139. In 1994, he won the post of Democratic leader in the Senate by a single vote. But looking back, their fates could be said to be defined in a single decision in 1968, in the depths of the Vietnam War. While Clinton was at Oxford trying simultaneously to dodge the draft and maintain his "political viability," as he famously put it in a letter to an Army colonel back home, Daschle was serving a three-year hitch as an enlisted man in the Air Force. Nobody is going to bring up Clinton's draft dodging this week, or the fact that Daschle served. It's an old story about choices made in the fog of a long-ago, and bitterly divisive, war. But the fact that one made the hard choice while the other didn't speaks volumes about where each of them stand today: One in the dock, the other both a member of the jury and a key defender of the accused. N E X T+P A G E+| Even his enemies respect Daschle