Posted on 11/29/2004 10:20:33 AM PST by presidio9
In many ways, Tom Daschle was the perfect senator for a state like South Dakota. Daschle presented a calm, quiet, serious demeanor, well in keeping with the stoic nature of the northern half of the Great Plains, where geography can make life bleak. Senator Daschle was the principal voice of the one of the two major political parties for the last four years.
When Daschle - along with Reid and others - persuaded Senator Jeffords to become an independent voting with Democrats, it was the only major political victory that Democrats have had in the last six years. The Bush Mandate Election of 2004, the Davis Recall and Govenator Selection Election of 2003, the Republican recapture of the Senate in 2002, the political-military triumphant against the Taliban by President Bush in 2001, the Bush Election in 2000, the Clinton Impeachment at the end of 1998 and his trial in 1999 - all of these were a long bitter retreat.
Tom Daschle seemed immune to this. His protege, Tim Johnson, eked out a narrow victory over John Thune in 2002, despite the support of President Bush for Thune. Democrats picked up the single House seat of South Dakota in a special election earlier this year, following the resignation of Janklow. No serious challengers emerged in neighboring North Dakota, despite its strong conservatism and two liberal Democrat senators and liberal Democrat congressman.
What happened? Tom Daschle, of course, was exposed as a very liberal Democrat in a very conservative Republican state and his attitude seemed less of malice toward his fellow South Dakotans as of condescension. He brought home the bacon. He helped constituents. He represented the interests of his state well. He assumed that was enough. He assumed that South Dakotans were more South Dakotans than Americans.
Probably the most pivotal issue was the confirmation of conservative federal judges. South Dakota is a socially conservative and religiously serious state. The good people of that state take morality seriously, and they overwhelmingly believe that morality is between people and their consciences, not people and federal judges. The sovereignty of the individual conscience - to pray at high school football games, to oppose abortion on demand without being called names, to include “God” in the Pledge of Allegiance - matters.
South Dakotan sons, fathers, husbands and brothers died on the beaches of Normandy, Tarawa, Anzio and Iwo Jima so that their loved ones could publicly worship God without fear that any sort of Christophobic totalitarian would murder or savage them.
Most Americans associate South Dakota with Mount Rushmore, but assume that this most recent monument to patriotism was not the gift of France or the official memorial to those who died at Gettysburg or anything from government at all: Mount Rushmore was a private effort to thank America for being America, the land of the brave and the home of the free. Tom Daschle forgot this, and he paid a dear price for that selective amnesia.
Ten years ago, another Tom from another state in flyover country, the leader of House Democrats, Speaker Tom Foley supported litigation against term limits which had been voted into law by the people of the State of Washington. Tom Foley, like Tom Daschle, had done years of constituent service. He brought home the bacon; he supported the interests of his district. He was the second most powerful person in the federal government, yet he lost reelection to an unknown challenger.
Why? Washington, unlike South Dakota, is not profoundly conservative. It is a swing state leaning Left. But the people of the State of Washington had determined that they wanted to limit the length of elected officials, so that no one would grow so accustomed to power that he felt entitled to power.
Foley could, and did, present an array of arguments against term limits. Voters could always vote out incumbents. Federal courts might determine that term limits were constitutional, and simply raising the issue in litigation did not mean that Speaker Foley would ignore the decision of the federal bench. Seniority meant influence for his constituents. Americans could always amend the Constitution to provide for term limits.
Foley, however, missed the argument. People who hold powerful offices within the Federal Government for too long, however noble their intentions, tend to become surrounded by sycophants, toadies and hacks. The Founding Fathers, who dreaded the factionalism of a two party system, hoped to create a system in which politicians could not perch themselves in places of invulnerable and basically unaccountable power.
Speaker of the House Tom Foley should have instinctively grasped this salient political fact, if he had truly been in touch with his state. Why? Precisely one state of the Union is named after an American patriot, and that state is Washington. George Washington is remarkable for many reasons, but most of all for repeatedly rejecting great political power.
As the commanding general of a victorious army in a revolutionary war, Washington did what was then unprecedented in history: he went home. The greatest gift, however, was when Washington invented term limits in the American Republic by proclaiming that no president should serve more than two terms, and he led by example, compelling by force of character strong men like Jefferson and Jackson to do the same.
This then is a “Tale of Two Toms” - men who rose to the highest position they could within their political party in the congressional chamber in which they served, yet who lost reelection despite the clout they carried - and it is a story of men forgetting that Mount Rushmore is in South Dakota and that Washington State was named for the creator of our term limits and that America exists, and exists solely, to preserve liberty.
Bruce Walker
And this is exactly why we need term limits for the Supreme Court. Let them serve one term, eighteen to twenty two years, then send them on their way. No reappointment. No second term.
He's deeply saddened! Has his wife's lobbying firm offered him a job yet???
This says a lot about FDR, deoesn't it?
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