Back in 1986, when Tom Daschle was a member of the House, President Reagan nominated a man named Richard Lyng to be Agriculture Secretary. Daschle didn’t like the nomination. Why? Lyng, Daschle said, was “a limousine-lounging corporate executive” who didn’t know anything about agriculture. (Lyng, who had bipartisan support, actually knew quite a bit about agriculture and was confirmed.)
I found Daschle’s quote in a Nexis search and haven’t seen it anywhere else on the Web, so here in an excerpt from an AP story on January 30, 1986:
“He is bringing with him a solid agriculture background and years of front-line action at the Agriculture Department,” Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., said Wednesday. “I don’t foresee any problems with his confirmation.”
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, a perennial foe of Reagan administration farm policy, also praised Lyng, saying, “He will be more of a fighter for farmers and less of a water carrier for the administration”…
While Lyng’s nomination, which had been expected, was receiving a warm welcome on Capitol Hill, the praise was not unanimous.
Rep. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., called Lyng “a limousine-lounging corporate executive that knows about as much about farming and what it’s like on the farm today as a kernel of corn.”