[Brett66]

Daschle isn't a leader. He is very clumsy as demonstrated with his tax-cuts-are-bad speech and today he's making statements about how Bush's "axis of evil" speech was wrong. Everything he does backfires, partly because Bush has him outmatched. He would do better to actually go along with Bush and try to take some of the credit for his successes, but he's too partisan and his strings are being pulled by some vicious partisans. (Klinton(s), McCauliffe, etc.)

[xzins]

but he's too partisan and his strings are being pulled

Even his soft manner comes across as clumsy to me. There's this thing in me that says, "if you're gonna be partisan" then you might as well put a little beef behind your disagreement. It worked for Harry Truman. But Daschle plays this creampuff, nicey-nice shtick when he's saying what are supposed to be "hard statements" and NOBODY picks up on it.