Dean turns the corner

[yesthattom]

This is the first article that I've read that treats Howard Dean as presidential contender, not just "Fighting Howard". Not that he hasn't been acting presidential, but it is the first time the media hasn't hidden that. I think this shows that his campaign has turned the corner.

Dean, from long shot to leader

By Register Editorial Board
12/21/2003

When Howard Dean dropped by to visit with the Register's editorial board about a year ago, only a couple of editorial writers found time to sit in, and they were left wondering why an obscure former governor of Vermont thought he could win the Democratic nomination for president.

A year later, the editorial conference room was packed with Register staffers curious about a guy who could be the nominee and conceivably even the next president.

No longer traveling alone, Dean now is accompanied by aides who had supplied the editorial board with thick briefing books on the governor's positions. He completed a cell-phone conversation in the van outside the building, then strode briskly toward the meeting with all the aura of a front-runner.

What made the long shot into the leader? Dean's opposition to the war in Iraq is generally regarded as the issue that propelled him into the first tier of candidates, but he suggests it's more than that. He's the only major candidate who's not a Washington insider.

"One of the lines I used to use in my stump speech was, "As I've gone around the country, I find Democrats are almost as angry with the Democrats in Washington as they are at the Republicans," " he said. "That would get a huge cheer."

In the recent meeting, Dean came across in the same direct, seemingly unaffected manner as when he was explaining Vermont's health-care system a year ago. He occasionally stroked his chin as if he were a doctor talking to a patient. Other times, leaning forward at the conference table, he slipped off his loafers and carried on the conversation in his stockings. This physician whose family has a Wall Street background comes across like plain folks.

Dean said he never had an "ah-ha moment" when he decided to run for president, but recalls one day that came close. "I was reading the newspaper one time after I announced I wasn't running for a sixth term, and some story made me furious with the president, which is not unusual. And I thought to myself, "Well, are you going to do something about this, or are you going to sit around and complain for the next 20 years?"

"That's sort of the theme of the campaign: Are you going to do something about this, or are you going to sit around and complain some more?"

The Democratic Party wasn't doing anything, he said. "We won by 500,000 votes, although we didn't win the presidency," he said. "But the party acted in Congress like [President] Bush had a landslide. [Republicans] proposed $1.2 trillion worth of tax cuts, and our guys said, "Oh, no, it should only be $900 billion." They vote for the war, they vote for No Child Left Behind, which is a travesty. They sort of lay down in front of the president's agenda and pretend that he had won by 10 million votes. I just didn't think there was any leadership left in the Democratic Party."

Dean said the "big message" of his campaign is about restoring trust in the two major institutions - the government and corporations. Both, he said, no longer care much about ordinary people.

Describing his first trip to Iowa nearly two years ago, he said, "We went to a small cafe in a small town, maybe 20 people at the most showed up, and what the Iowans were telling me was they they didn't feel valued by their employers anymore." The same applies to the government under President Bush. Corporations, he said, "move their headquarters to Bermuda and their jobs to China," while government under President Bush seems to be "government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations."

He also said of Bush, "Anyone who cuts Pell grants with one hand and then gives tax cuts to Ken Lay with the other has got something the matter with him, and this president's got something the matter with him."

What's the matter is Dean's view is that neither Bush nor the big corporations care about the struggles of ordinary people. Restoring concern for ordinary Americans, he said, is what the Dean campaign means when it urges voters "to take our country back."

But Dean said he's no revolutionary. "We don't need to upend the system that we have," he said, "We just need to make the system work properly. The system doesn't work if the leadership doesn't care."

Among other steps, Dean said he would redirect tax breaks away from big corporations and toward small businesses that create most of the new jobs and tend to stay in America. Instead of tax cuts, he said he would invest in infrastructure such as roads, schools, broadband communications and renewable energy, which would create jobs immediately and strengthen the economy in the long run.

"We haven't had a major federal infrastructure investment in this country since the Interstates," he said.

While much of the focus is on national security, Dean said, "The most important issue in this campaign is economic security. It's jobs, it's health insurance and health care, it's education."

Despite the focus on domestic issues, Dean had quick answers for foreign-policy questions, and the intensity rose when he talked of the "incredibly stupid mistake" of going to war in Iraq.

Dean said what really stirs his anger is that, having made the mistake of getting into Iraq, there is now no easy way out. He said Iraq posed no imminent security threat to the United States before the war, but it could now if radicals take over the country when U.S. troops leave.

He argued the invasion of Iraq actually makes the United States weaker, not stronger.

The conversation at the Register took place before news of the capture of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein last weekend, but Dean has since made it clear his views have not changed. "The administration launched the war in the wrong way, at the wrong time, with inadequate planning, insufficient help and at unbelievable cost," he said in a speech Dec. 15.

"The capture of Saddam is a good thing, which I hope very much will help keep our soldiers safer. But the capture of Saddam has not made America safer."

When Dean affirmed his views on Iraq, it brought to mind what he said at the Register about the need for leaders to be tough, and he was asked what it means to be tough. "It means to be single-minded about what your objective is," he said. "It's not enough just to swagger, as this president sometimes does. You have to be tough enough to bring the whole people with you. . . . and to be willing to withstand the slings and arrows of the critics as long as you're convinced you're doing the right thing. If you give in every time the wind blows in a different direction, you're done."

Comments

[emmett-the-sane.livejournal.com]

I've met a few die-hard Bush supporters that have told me they thing Dean is "going to be the next President."

One can hope, for sure.

[beowabbit]

Out of curiosity, did they say what their reasoning was?

(I think Dean does share with Bush — and Clinton and Reagan — the ability to get people to support him even if they don't agree with all or even most of his positions.)

[emmett-the-sane.livejournal.com]

These people weren't actually supporting Dean... it was simply their impression that he was going to win the primary AND beat Bush, whom they supported. The main reasons included the economy, Iraq, and general doofusness on the part of Bush.