This is Leadership?

Democratic Leader Assures Bush on Ashcroft Nomination Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader in the Senate, told President Bush today that he need not worry about getting confirmation for his cabinet choices, including John Ashcroft, the embattled nominee for attorney general, Mr. Bush's spokesman told reporters. "You will not be denied your choice on nominees," Ari Fleischer quoted Mr. Daschle as telling the president in a White House meeting, an account that Mr. Daschle's office did not dispute. Few people, Democrat or Republican, would quarrel seriously with that assessment of how the Ashcroft nomination will end, probably in little more than a week. But the fight over whether to confirm Mr. Ashcroft has taken on a different political contour in recent days. The discussions are now less over whether he will be confirmed than over such questions as how much of a unified front the Democrats can present in opposition and what that will bode for the level of partisan confrontation in the early months of the Bush administration. href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/25/politics/25ASHC.html?pagewanted=all">http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/25/politics/25ASHC.html?pagewanted=al