Maureen Dowd Compares Daschle To 9/11

In her New York Times column Wednesday, Maureen Dowd suggests that Tom Daschle's withdrawal from contention as nominee to run Health and Human Services is somehow analogous to the September 11 terrorist attacks. The point of connection: both President Bush and President Obama were reading to schoolchildren when these disasters unfolded.

On 9/11, President Bush learned of disaster while reading "The Pet Goat" to grade-school kids. On Tuesday, President Obama escaped from disaster by reading "The Moon Over Star" to grade-school kids. "We were just tired of being in the White House," the two-week-old president, with Michelle at his side, explained to students at a public charter school near the White House.

Dowd does give Obama some credit for owning up to his mistake in nominating Daschle, "unlike W. and Dick Cheney." She doesn't, however, give any hint that she considers the deaths of thousands of people a "disaster" of a different magnitude than picking a nominee who failed to pay some taxes. You can read the whole column (titled "Well, That Certainly Didn't Take Long") here.