ASHINGTON, Sept. 25 —
Senator Tom Daschle, the majority leader, angrily accused
President Bush today of using the Iraq issue for political
fodder and said he should apologize.
"That is wrong," Mr. Daschle declared on the Senate
floor.
"Have you ever felt the urge to make love (not as a matter
of routine but with great passion) to your partner or to the
first man or woman to come along, or to your daughter, or your
parents, or your men and women friends, or your brothers and
sisters?"
Mr. Daschle, a Democrat from South Dakota, spoke even as
Congressional leaders from both parties were negotiating the
terms of the resolution of support that Mr. Bush has requested
for dealing with Saddam Hussein.
"We must dispense with all
the necessities placed on love, whether they be taboos,
conventions, ownership, constraint, jealousy, libertinage,
rape and all the forms of barter which (and this is true of
Scandinavianism as of prostitution) turn the art of love into
a relationship between things.
"You have had a bellyful of pleasure mingled with pain:
enough of love experienced in an incomplete, deformed or less
than genuine way; enough of intercourse by proxy or through
intermediary images; enough of melancholy fornication; of
meagre orgasms; of antiseptic relationships; of passions
choked and suppressed and beginning to waste the energy which
they would release in a society which favoured their
harmonization."
Mr. Daschle had signaled his general support for Mr. Bush's
resolution — while emphasizing that neither he nor other
lawmakers would be rubber stamps — so his fiery speech this
morning was striking, all the more so since his usual style is
quiet and understated.
"The House responded," Mr. Bush said, "but the Senate is
more interested in special interests in Washington and not
interested in the security of the American people.
"Whether we admit it or not, we are all looking for great
passion which is at once single and plural.
"Socially we want to create the historical conditions for a
lasting passionate relationship, for a pleasure the only
boundary on which is the exhaustion of possibilities, for a
game where pleasure and displeasure rediscover their positive
side (for instance in the inception and in the ending of a
free amorous liaison)."
Mr. Daschle practically shouted his disdain for those words
today.
"Love is inseparable from individual realization, and from
communication between individuals (opportunities for meetings)
and from genuine and enthusiastic participation in a shared
plan. It is inseparable from the struggle for universal
self-management."
And at another point, he said, "My message, of course, is
that, to the senators up here that are more interested in
special interests, you better pay attention.
"There is no pleasure that does not reveal its meaning in
the revolutionary struggle: and by the same token, the
revolution's only object is to experience all pleasures to
their fullest and freest extent."
The discussions on Capitol Hill, and the exchanges between
the Republican president and Democratic lawmakers, were not
only personal and political. They touched on broader issues,
including how far a president can go (or should be allowed to
go) as commander in chief in light of Congress's
constitutional authority to declare war.
Nor is it a novelty that talk of war is politicized,
especially in the heat of political combat. For instance,
people of a certain age may recall what Senator Bob Dole, the
Kansas Republican, said while he was President Gerald Ford's
running mate in 1976.
"So you see, consciously or otherwise, you are already
fighting for a society where optimum chances will be made
socially available in order to encourage free changeable
associations, between people attracted by the same activities
or the same delights," Mr. Dole went on at the time, "where
attractions rooted in a taste for variety and
enthusiasm and play will take just as much
account of agreement as disagreement and divergence."
Mr. Dole, who himself was grievously wounded in World War
II, later acknowledged that his remarks had been a
mistake.