Dodd Fires Up Primary Season

By Weston R. Sager and Michael C. Russell | Thursday, January 25, 2007

Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) spoke at Dartmouth Sunday following his recent declaration that he is running for President. Despite being a five-term senator and one of the leaders of the Democratic Party, Dodd is one of the lesser-known candidates running for the Democratic nomination. Dodd is making many appearances in New Hampshire in the hopes that a grassroots campaign will win him the upcoming primary over current media darlings Senator Barack Hussein Obama (D-IL) and Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY).

After strolling in an hour behind schedule with the obligatory political entourage, Dodd shook hands with the crowd and began to speak. The average height, silver-haired, squinty-eyed senator touched on his personal life, his ambitions as would-be President, and his views on issues ranging from Iraq to Katrina relief to child health care. Unfortunately for Dodd, his speech didn’t come close to placing him as a viable Presidential candidate for 2008.

Dodd began his speech in self-deprecating style. Despite being a lofty sixty-two years of age, he has managed to produce two daughters, aged five years and twenty-two months. He joked about how he receives both “AARP letters and flyers on how to save on diapers” and how he is working on a getting a “walker that is also a stroller.” In typical political fashion, Dodd used his children as a launching point for his speech. Claiming that his five-year-old daughter had asked him “How is my life going to be?”, Dodd began to brief the crowd about how he plans to make the world a better place. Despite the long-winded monologue, Dodd proposed few new ideas that separate him from other Democrats.

While Dodd possesses extraordinary eloquence, the substance of his speech was lacking. Dodd delivered a typical mish-mash of Democratic talking points drivel critiquing the Bush administration’s foreign and domestic policy, while asserting that he did not want to “engage in partisan politics”. Despite this plea for civility, everything the Senator espoused was either a direct or indirect affront on the President and Republicans in general. Make no mistake: Dodd is a hard-line leftist in almost every conceivable way. From Iraq to Katrina to gun control to the economy to healthcare, his points fell in lockstep with almost every elected Democrat in national political office. His main points, though delivered in a palatable manner, left little desirable aftertaste. Dodd delivered his speech as a lone chorus boy removed from his choir of Democrats, attempting to sing the same anti-conservative song that the American public has heard for the past seven years. Only a few of Dodd’s points managed to stand out from the haze of liberal fog, but they alone will not float this obscure candidate in a sea of more impressive Democratic hopefuls.

One of these few points of interest is Dodd’s commitment to children’s rights. Dodd is a self-proclaimed champion of children’s rights legislation, and focused heavily on his crusade to make children’s lives better while in the Senate during his speech. Perhaps as a plot to garner a sappy “children’s first” platform, or maybe to serve his own ends as a recent father, this cause is nonetheless about as engrossing as Senator McCain’s (R-AZ) 2000 platform of campaign finance reform. To make matter worse for Dodd, children are ineligible to vote.

After outlining his unimpressive platform for President, Dodd took questions from the audience. Several Dartmouth students posed inquiries about how Dodd would solve the major problems facing America, and Dodd responded in eloquent, if verbose fashion. His answers rarely strayed from democrat Groupthink: increased disaster relief, gradual withdrawal from Iraq, universal healthcare, and the like. When asked about Iran and Iraq, Dodd laid out his belief that diplomacy is the best means for solving the Middle East crisis, despite years of failed negotiations with the leaders of Middle Eastern countries.

And, it would appear, Dodd has already taken it upon himself to engage in major talks with world leaders despite having not yet ascended to the office of the Presidency. The Senator is notorious for his maverick foreign policy work. As a prideful member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he believes it his responsibility to rid the world of evil and tyranny by reaching out to each of the world’s malevolent dictators one at a time. Arrogantly casting aside suggestions made by the State Department to not talk to certain known enemies of America (a point he boasted in his speech) Dodd has made a concerted effort to seek out and speak to those who despise this country. Perhaps it is his Peace Corps work in the 1960s that leads him to believe he is qualified to engage in direct talks with rogue leaders. More likely it is a boundless arrogance that he, the great Senator Dodd from Connecticut, can change the hearts and minds of Syrian President Assad and Venezuelan President Chavez when others have failed.

Dodd’s loyalty to his comrades is questionable as well. In the most recent elections, he initially supported three-term Senator Joe Lieberman’s (I-CT) reelection campaign. However, after Lieberman lost the democratic primary for the senate seat, Dodd encouraged Lieberman to drop out of the 2006 race under heavy pressure from his fellow Democrats. Although this ploy is commonplace amongst the hard-line left, Dodd’s actions and loyalties can, and should, be called into question.

Dodd’s eloquence alone will not win him the upcoming New Hampshire primary. He has probably reached the pinnacle of his career as a senator and as a talking-head contributor on cable news. At best, Dodd may warrant consideration as a viable vice presidential candidate, given his self-important diplomatic work and child rights advocacy. However, the task of overcoming Hillary Clinton, Barack Hussein Obama, and Bill Richardson in the Democratic nomination process is going to be a nearly impossible task. Eloquence he may have, but substance he hath not.

Dodd Fires Up Primary Season

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