A Discussion with Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle

With the help of Board of Visitors members Jeff Trammell ’73 and Laura Flippin ’92, Government Department Professor Dan Doherty hosted former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle on Wednesday, April 27, for a discussion on his experiences in the Senate from 1986-2003 and his take on the relationship between the government and the media. Doherty led the dialogue, and then opened the floor to questions from W&M in Washington students and DC-area alumni in attendance. The discussion was preceded by a reception in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Senator Tom Daschle is a Senior Policy Advisor in DLA Piper's Government Affairs practice and serves as a member of DLA Piper's Global Board. He provides clients with strategic public policy advice on a wide range of international and economic issues.

Senator Daschle has participated in the development and debate of almost every major public policy issue of the last three decades. In 1978, he was elected to the US House of Representatives, where he served for eight years. In 1986, he was elected to the US Senate and was chosen as Senate Democratic Leader in 1994. Senator Daschle is one of the longest serving Senate Democratic leaders in history and the only one to serve twice as both Majority and Minority Leader. During his tenure, Senator Daschle navigated the Senate through some of its most historic economic and national security challenges. In 2003, he chronicled some of these experiences in his book, Like No Other Time: The 107th Congress and the Two Years That Changed America Forever.

Since leaving the Senate, Senator Daschle has remained an active and learned voice among policy-makers. He has distinguished his experience in health care through the publication of Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis and, more recently, Getting It Done, a close-up look at the 2009 passage of health care reform legislation. Senator Daschle has also emerged as a leading thinker on climate change and renewable energy policy, provides clients with insightful analysis to financial services reform and telecommunication issues as well as international trade and tax developments.

In 2007, Senator Daschle joined with former Majority Leaders George Mitchell, Bob Dole and Howard Baker to create the Bipartisan Policy Center, an organization dedicated to finding common ground on some of the pressing public policy challenges of our time. Senator Daschle serves on the board of the Center for American Progress and the National Democratic Institute and is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. He also is a member of the Health Policy and Management Executive Council at the Harvard School of Public Health as well as a member of the Global Policy Advisory Council for the Health Worker Migration Initiative. Biography care of DLA Piper.

For more information on the event, read a W&M News article by Spring '11 Scholar Lauren Stephenson '13.