Tom Daschle, the former Democratic senator from South Dakota, remembers the exchange vividly.

The time was September 2002. The place was the White House, at a meeting in which President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney pressed congressional leaders for a quick vote on a resolution authorizing military action against Iraq.

But Daschle, who as Senate majority leader controlled the chamber's schedule, recalled recently that he asked Bush to delay the vote until after the impending midterm election.

"I asked directly if we could delay this so we could depoliticize it. I said: 'Mr. President, I know this is urgent, but why the rush? Why do we have to do this now?' He looked at Cheney and he looked at me, and there was a half-smile on his face. And he said: 'We just have to do this now.' "  -Timing Entwined War Vote, Election , By Ronald Brownstein

 "Brownstein is smart enough to know that Daschle sold him a bill of goods with this story, but he couldn't resist: the anecdote was just too juicy, too suggestive, and too perfect to support Brownstein's predetermined angle that the Bush administration politicized the Iraq vote by ramming it through Congress before the election.."Daschle's Dirty Revisionism"