Dean for President: God Help Us All

By Scott L. Glabe | Monday, June 2, 2003

With the New Hampshire primary now less than a year away, a slew of Presidential hopefuls have passed through Hanover in recent months. On May 6, Democratic candidate Howard Dean campaigned at the College. A few hundred students and Upper Valley residents squeezed into the top of the Hopkins Center to hear the stump speech, which was preceded by a brief discussion with campus Young Democrats.

Governor Dean is a man of many paradoxes, not the least of which is his meteoric rise from obscure long shot to legitimate contender. Throughout the media blitz of recent months, the Dean story has been well told. A 1971 graduate of Yale, he received his medical degree from Albert Einstein College in New York in 1978. After moving to Vermont to practice medicine with his wife, Dean served two terms in the State Legislature before being elected lieutenant governor in 1986. Re-elected four years later, he became the state's chief executive in 1991, after the death of Governor Richard Snelling. Despite his unlikely ascendance to the position, Dean remained governor until earlier this year.

During more than a decade as governor, Dean showed up as a blip on the national political radar only once, when he signed the controversial Act 91, making Vermont the first state in the Union to legalize same-sex civil unions. Dean seemed but a mere curiosity when he declared his candidacy for the Presidency over a year ago. For months, he was only a footnote in articles discussing contenders for the Oval Office, even as he made dozens of trips to New Hampshire and Iowa.

These efforts have yielded mixed results thus far. In a poll conducted by Franklin Pierce College in late April, Dean was tied with Massachusetts Senator John Kerry for first place among prospective voters in the New Hampshire primary. Meanwhile, an early May poll showed the former Vermont governor in fourth place among likely caucus participants in Iowa. Whether Dean has a legitimate shot at winning outside New Hampshire is uncertain, but the other candidates have begun to take him seriously, as a spat with John Kerry over the war in the first debate demonstrated.

If there is anything that will propel Dean into contention, it is his image. Not afraid to speak his mind, the Doctor has gained a reputation as a fiery orator. He is a self-described angry man who wants 'our country back' from evil President George Bush, boldly representing the 'Democratic wing of the Democratic party'—a line lifted from deceased Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone. Not all within his own party have taken kindly to Dean's rhetoric. A recent memo from Democratic Leadership Committee founder Al From lambasted Dean as a left-leaning elitist, inciting a firestorm among Democrats.

At Dartmouth, Dean demonstrated that his image is well-honed. With his stout frame, graying hair, and fiery blue eyes, the former governor cut the figure of a minister behind the podium at the Top of Hop, his speech punctuated with a raised voice and interrupted often by approval from the devout. Just minutes before, Dean had used many of the exact same sentences and anecdotes while engaging in a personable discussion with the Young Democrats, his words measured and thoughtful.

Like many other self-proclaimed visionaries, Dean targets his message toward youth. Though his audience at the College was evenly split between older members of the Upper Valley and students, his stump speech targeted 'people your age'—the students.

On the issues, Dean has no lack of firm positions and no hesitance stating them. Though speaking to an audience consisting largely of partisan supporters in Hanover, Dean answered every question. In many cases, however, details of his positions seemed absent, incomplete, or unimpressive.

Dean tackled some issues with gusto and bravado. Pledging his support for twenty-nine billion dollars of funding appropriated to stop the spread of AIDS in Africa, he noted that 'we must not impose the Western model of medicine.' He explained that public health outreach has reduced the level of infection nearly threefold in Uganda and that focusing on treatment rather than prevention would mark a step backward.

Despite his expertise as a doctor, however, Dean's plan for universal health care seems rather vague and exceedingly risky. In his stump speech, the Doctor enthusiastically rattled off all the industrialized nations that employ programs similar to his. Point well taken, and Dean's record in Vermont—more than ninety percent of residents have health insurance—is impressive. His nation plan is quite simple; it proposes to expand Medicaid to all citizens under twenty-five and all families that earn up to almost twice the poverty level, with optional provisions for others. Critics note that using a nearly bankrupt Medicaid as the central component of his plan is baffling, especially since Dean's plan will first expand the broken program and then reform.

Perhaps attempting to preempt skeptics, Dean spent the majority of both talks at Dartmouth focusing on foreign policy. Citing the need to focus on long term policy goals, Dean claimed he was 'delighted to see Saddam gone' but wondered what would replace him. Claiming that American troops will be seen 'more as occupiers, and less as liberators' in a project that could take years, Dean voiced the well-grounded fear that a fundamentalist theocracy might come to power in Iraq. It is when he attempted to express an alternative course of action that Dean's logic faltered. The Doctor claimed that he would have fully supported war with UN backing and expressed his desire for the international body to play a prominent goal in Iraq. What he omitted was how the U.N. would ameliorate any of his fears, how the UN would be seen as any less of an occupier by the Iraqi people, or how the UN might prevent the feared 'fundamentalist theocracy' more effectively than the United States.

On more general foreign policy questions, Dean again expressed strong and desirable goals but failed to explain their specific implementation. Citing America's prickly relationships with a variety of nations, Dean postulated a theory of constructive engagement with Cuba and even North Korea. Again noting his commitment to long-term interest, he advocated 'building middle class democracies that fully empower women,' the latter clause a seeming jab at 'fundamentalist theocracies.'

All these answers Dean articulated with confidence, but accepting his solutions often required incredible logical leaps. Take the conflict in Israel and Palestine, for example. According to the Governor, the key problem is Palestinian terrorism. Well, where do terrorists come from? They're 'taught to hate' in Saudi Arabian-funded schools. Where do Saudi Arabian schools get their money? Oil. How can American prevent this flow of income? Stop Saudi Arabian oil, presumably immediately. What do we use an alternative form of energy? Perhaps wind power. Where do we get wind power? Windmills, of course, hundreds of them in the Midwest. Right.

Dean hardly touched on domestic matters, although he did address the University of Michigan affirmative action case currently pending before the Supreme Court. Asked for his position, the Governor launched into an anecdote about a former chief of staff who complained that she could not find a quality man. Dean claimed that this story illustrated the invisible screens all possess which cause them to positively view people like themselves. Seems like a convincing argument for color-blind college admissions. Inexplicably, however, Dean viewed it as indicative of how the 20-point advantage automatically granted to racial minorities at Michigan—an enormous, built-in 'screen' —represented a system that was 'exactly right.' (Dean noted that, were he an admissions officer, he would 'even' admit conservative students.)

Dean used affirmative action as a base from which to launch into an attack on President Bush. He irately claimed that the President has abandoned his promise to be 'a uniter, not a divider.' As support for this argument, Dean chastised Pres. Bush from malevolently using the 'racially-loaded' term 'quota' when discussing the Michigan case, purposely polarizing the unsuspecting populace. Of course, according to the amicus curiae brief filed by Solicitor General Theodore Olsen, the University of Michigan explicitly reserved a specific number of slots for underrepresented minorities through 1997, covering the period during which all plaintiffs were denied admission.

Dean demonstrated throughout his appearance at Dartmouth that he has no lost love for the President. He called him the 'most conservative and economically destructive President in my lifetime.' Invoking pure demagoguery, Dean claimed that Pres. Bush's tax cut went directly to benefit disgraced Enron executive 'Ken Lay, the President's good friend.' Moreover, 'the President has forgotten about people.'

Indeed, Dean's own appeal relied not on the soundness of his general or specific policy forecasts but on the strength of vague rhetoric. The Doctor's only clearly-articulated prescription was a new approach, a promise to reclaim what he believes are the principles of the true Democratic party. Dean is mad at his party for avoiding confrontations with a popular president. 'We need to stop being cowed by enormous poll ratings, right-wing talk show hosts, and fundamentalist preachers,' he bellowed, evoking nothing if not a fundamentalist preacher. 'We have lost a lot,' he proclaimed; particularly worrisome is the absence of America's 'sense of community.'

After framing these horribly vicious moral problems that seem, unknown to most Americans, to put us in a state of crisis, Dean posited himself as the only solution. He swore that, as President, he would not be influenced by polls. He asserted that his political career was not about being elected. He dutifully claimed that he would not give up principles to be elected. In short, Dean pledged immunity from every maxim about politicians in the course of five minutes.

These claims certainly made for a touching, persuasive, and generally moving speech. Such statements, however, raise what might be the most troubling possibility about candidate Dean. Perhaps, in the ultimate paradox of all, the good Doctor has renounced any concern over his own electability in a daring attempt to get elected. Maybe self-righteousness and demagoguery has tested well in focus groups and Dean is willing to play dumb to get elected.

While some degree of image strategy has assuredly been incorporated into his campaign, let us assume for the sake of argument that every one of Dean's principled claims are true, median voter theorem be damned. When combined with his vague policy plans, such cavalier idealism would make for a disastrous Presidency. Dean asserted that his campaign will 'not be played by Washington rules.' The problem, of course, is that Dean would certainly have to play by Washington rules to enact any effective legislation. But such trivialities like reality matter little to the Dean campaign.

Dean for President: God Help Us All

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