The Senate always is a hatchery for presidential contenders. But this time the Great Mentioner is naming an extraordinarily large number of Democrats, from seven to nine in a late count. And for the first time since LBJ in 1960, the list includes the party’s top dog. Asked by NEWSWEEK whether his new status as majority leader would lead him to rule out a presidential run in 2004, Sen. Tom Daschle gave an elliptical reply: “I am not going to rule anything in or out,” he said impassively. “I have absolutely no intention today of making a decision for a long time to come.”
The Democrats’ task was daunting even without such strong presidential undercurrents. With a “majority” of 50, their hold on the chamber is tenuous, and it won’t be easy to unify the party’s liberals and moderates for battle with President Bush. But Daschle now has to soothe the expanding egos of numerous “presidentials”–while trying to reassure them about his neutrality. Always unflappable, Daschle claims to be unworried. “We need more national spokespeople,” he says. Privately, Democrats fret. “Daschle’s fair to a fault,” says a Senate non-wanna-be. “But we may need Solomon by 2002.”
Even if Daschle can engineer visibility for all, visibility isn’t automatically a blessing. Republican strategists think the sheer mass of candidates (among other possibles: Joe Biden, Evan Bayh, Joe Lieberman, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Chris Dodd and Dick Durbin) will pull the party left, as the contenders strive to impress primary voters, who are more liberal than the mainstream.
Committee seats can become hot seats. As the new chair of the Governmental Affairs Committee, Lieberman begins hearings this week on the energy situation in California. He vows “oversight, not overkill.” But he’s caught between not wanting to lose his pro-business image and disappointing rank-and-file Democrats who are eager for blood from utilities and energy suppliers. Edwards faces a similar predicament. A seat on Judiciary would allow him to tap instantly into networks of pro-choice activists, but makes it harder to market himself as a Piedmont populist.
Ironically, being a senator has long since ceased to be a favored route into the White House. The last sitting senator to get elected was JFK. Washington insiderhood no longer has the appeal it once did, as Walter Mondale, Bob Dole and Al Gore found out. That’s why Bayh, elected to the Senate in 1998, seems to pine for his eight years as a stoutly centrist governor of Indiana, and stresses his role as chairman of the like-minded Democratic Leadership Council. Next month in Indianapolis, Bayh and the DLC will host what amounts to the first presidential cattle show of the 2004 cycle.
“Legislative accomplishments” don’t sell on the campaign trail anymore–if they ever did. “When I ran in 1988, I bragged about what I’d done in the Senate,” says Biden. “Nobody cared. I learned that voters–and the media–are looking for something else. They look at your character, and your vision for the country.”
Even so, Biden had calculations to make. Should he give up the chair of Foreign Relations and take Judiciary? No, he decided. He’d rather deepen his mastery of world affairs–and thereby address the gravitas problem he faced in 1988. Also, if he’d switched, seniority formulas would have bumped Tom Harkin from the chairmanship of Agriculture. Harkin faces a tough re-election race next year in Iowa, which also happens to be a crucial “early” state in the nominating race. “If I run, maybe Tom will endorse me,” Biden says with a smile. “Unless he decides to run for president.”
