Fasten Your Seat Belts

Last week should have been a bad one for Tom Daschle. The Senate minority leader watched his party get flattened by the Republicans on five crucial impeachment votes. According to the partisan handbook that has so often held sway over these proceedings, Daschle's final defeat--when the G.O.P. rammed through its road map for the next week--should have sent him to the microphones. There he should have struck an aggrieved pose and bloviated freely, blaming the vindictive Republicans for shattering Senate comity in their hell-bent effort to destroy the President, or some such transgression. But instead he threw out the handbook. The South Dakotan stood before the cameras, blinking modestly and hunching his slight frame just a bit, and tossed lush, fragrant bouquets at the other side. "I appreciate very much Senator Lott's willingness to consider many of the concerns we had," he said of the majority leader, who had just skunked him in vote after vote. "We simply couldn't bring this matter to a successful bipartisan conclusion."

That's no way to avenge a lost battle--unless, of course, you have already won the war. Daschle and his 43 Democratic colleagues may have failed in their attempt to dismiss the case against Bill Clinton, but in that vote and four others, Democrats held together (well, except for the free-spirited Russ Feingold), making it virtually certain that the G.O.P. will never get the 67 votes needed to convict. Though Monica Lewinsky, Vernon Jordan and White House aide Sidney Blumenthal will be deposed this week, even stalwart Republicans privately admit that the trial is basically dead. It's just that the body won't stop twitching.

If Daschle, 51, is being magnanimous these days, it's only because he wants to help Trent Lott find a dignified way to end the proceedings. He knows that Lott wants it to be over but that he will lose part of his caucus if he tries to end it too fast. "This plane has two co-pilots, and I'm going to try to help him land it safely," Daschle told TIME.

Amid the hubbub of the trial, Daschle's low-key style has made it easy to overlook his skills. And the unity of Senate Democrats last week made it easy to forget that they have not always been pushing toward the same goal. In the wake of the President's Aug. 17 admission that he had been lying to the country for months, Senate Democrats appeared to have both the ability and the inclination to throw him overboard. Senator Joseph Lieberman rebuked Clinton, calling his behavior "immoral" and "disgraceful." Several other Senators followed suit, and some privately considered calling for his resignation. Colleagues say Daschle was one of the Clinton allies most deeply wounded. "This has been a very troubling matter to me," he says. "But we've been able to get through it."