Capitol Grudge Match

By DOUGLAS WALLER/WASHINGTON

Until a couple of weeks ago, figuring out who was to blame for the intelligence failures before Sept. 11 wasn't on Tom Daschle's must-do list. Since the beginning of the year, the majority leader had been busy corralling balky Democrats in the Senate on the down-home issues that would play best in the November elections: Social Security, health care, education, pension protection and the environment. But with evidence of FBI bungling impossible to ignore and reporters badgering him for a response, Daschle decided to go off message in a politically risky way. He announced on May 21 that he would introduce a bill as early as this week to form an independent commission to probe what went wrong.

President Bush was not happy. Senate minority leader Trent Lott went ballistic and said the Republicans would block the measure. FBI Director Robert Mueller's mea culpa last week gave Daschle some needed cover for his proposal. But the danger for Daschle was closer to home: his action just might jeopardize the Democrats' tenuous hold on the Senate, and his position as majority leader. Polls show that while Republicans are vulnerable on domestic issues, Democrats are ill advised to go after Bush's popular war on terrorism. And no one knows that better than Daschle's rival Lott. "Our message is, Defense first," Lott countered, accusing Daschle of trying to interrupt Bush's war with a political inquisition.

This week marks the one-year anniversary of the Democrats' taking over the Senate after Daschle enticed Vermont Senator James Jeffords to bolt from the Republican Party. For Daschle, the year has been an emotional roller coaster, with an anthrax-laced letter shutting down his Senate office for almost six months and conservative groups, egged on by Lott and the White House, blanketing his home state of South Dakota with TV and newspaper ads demonizing him for blocking Bush's agenda.

The attacks have hardly dented Daschle's popularity back home. In a state with only 530,000 voters, he's used to cultivating his constituents virtually one by one. Last month he passed up commencement addresses at large universities to speak to a graduating class of 12 high school seniors in Hecla, S.D., a tiny town near the North Dakota border--a shrewd political gesture that got him major newspaper play in the state. But Daschle, who has had a beefed-up security detail since Sept. 11, is seething over being targeted by the G.O.P., believing it's partly responsible for threats he continues to receive. Newspaper ads have depicted him side by side with Iraq's dictator. "When they compare me to Saddam Hussein, I don't know how much more negative it can get," he says.

Managing the Senate with a one-vote majority hasn't been a picnic; Daschle likens it to "loading frogs on a wheelbarrow." Senate Democrats are a fractured--and fractious--bunch, including liberals itching to blast Bush, Southern "Dealocrats" who want to compromise with the White House, and presidential wannabes with their eyes on the 2004 prize. Daschle, who keeps an index card in his shirt pocket with favors that the Senators want each day, can sit for hours listening to their complaints. He has cultivated all of them, says majority whip Harry Reid, by "convincing each Senator that he or she is his favorite."

But trying to pass legislation has been a frustrating process. Daschle forged majorities to get a patients' bill of rights and campaign-finance reform through the Senate. But it took him seven weeks to get an energy bill passed, and he still hasn't been able to produce a budget resolution because of disagreements among Democrats. Friends say the strain has worn on him. They also say he truly hasn't decided whether he will remain as majority leader, run for President or step down from the Senate when his term ends in 2004.

Lott is going all out to make sure that remaining as majority leader isn't one of Daschle's options. After Jeffords' defection, "I took some time to lick my wounds," he says. But not for long. He's now aggressively campaigning around the country for G.O.P. candidates. One incumbent he and Bush would dearly love to pick off: South Dakota's other Democratic Senator, Tim Johnson.

The war for control of the Senate has got personal. Lott likes to get under Daschle's skin by announcing to reporters at the beginning of each week the bills he wants the Senate to consider, even though as minority leader he has no control over the schedule. "It puts Daschle on the spot and sets the tone we want for the week," explains a Republican aide.

Lott still hasn't forgiven Daschle for blocking Charles Pickering, a conservative judge from Lott's home state of Mississippi, from taking a seat on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last March. "Tom violated the unspoken rule that leaders don't rain on each other's nominees," he says, miffed that Daschle never even picked up the direct phone line the two men have installed in their offices to apologize. Daschle has no intention of saying he's sorry, and Lott likewise has no regrets about making Daschle the Republicans' villain. "What did he think, we were going to treat him pattycake?" Lott says. "This is politics." The hot line rings less often these days than it used to.

But Lott has a target painted on his back as well. Oklahoma's conservative Senator Don Nickles, the minority whip, has been meeting privately with G.O.P. Senators to sound them out about his replacing Lott if the Republicans don't take back the Senate this fall. "If we lose seats, Lott faces a no-confidence vote," predicts one Republican Senator. To head that off, Lott is raising campaign cash for allies and pressing other Republican Senators to spread the wealth. When Senator Bill Frist, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, handed him a report in March showing that only a quarter of the G.O.P. Senators had dipped into their war chests to help other candidates in trouble, Lott stormed into a meeting of Senate G.O.P. leaders and slapped the paper on the table. "This has got to change!" he demanded.

Daschle, whose soft-spoken manner masks the fact that he's a ruthlessly efficient campaigner, has been crisscrossing the country for Democratic candidates. He was stumping in Maine late last month for Chellie Pingree, who is waging an insurgent battle to unseat Republican incumbent Susan Collins. Daschle confides that his "sweetest dream" is to hold Johnson's seat in South Dakota as payback for the negative ads and pull off upsets in Texas and Maine, which would embarrass the Bush family in its two home states.

But Daschle knows this is a long shot. A former Air Force intelligence officer, he has a contingency plan ready if Republicans gain a seat and the Senate again splits 50-50, with Vice President Dick Cheney poised to break a tie. Daschle claims that Jeffords wasn't the only disaffected G.O.P. Senator he was talking to a year ago and that since then he has had "occasional conversations" with other potential defectors. He won't name names, but says, "It would surprise people if they knew." Most of all, Trent Lott.