Howard Dean defies labels

Great article on Howard Dean in the Times. Can anyone read this and still say he's too liberal to be elected?

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/30/politics/campaigns/30DEAN.html?pagewanted=1

Defying Labels Left or Right, Dean's '04 Run Makes Gains
By JODI WILGOREN with DAVID ROSENBAUM


TTUMWA, Iowa, July 25 — During a special live broadcast of the Vermont Public Radio program "Switchboard" before an audience of Iowa Democrats here, the host played two audio clips of his guest, Howard Dean.

The first, from Dr. Dean's 1999 State of the State address, delivered when he was governor of Vermont, was a staid, nonpartisan call to view all Vermont as one community. In the second, which came from the official kickoff of Dr. Dean's presidential campaign last month, you could practically hear fists flying as he shouted over and over, "You have the power!" and "We're going to take our country back!"

Back home, said the radio host, folks have been wondering, "What has gotten into Howard Dean?"

Vermonters are not the only ones pondering that question. After more than a year of nonstop visits to Iowa and New Hampshire on a threadbare budget, supported mainly by volunteers who had connected over the Internet, Dr. Dean, who began as an antiwar gadfly, has in the past month burst from his obscurity to rank among the top contenders in a crowded field of Democrats for the party's presidential nomination.

Thanks to his stunning surge as the top fund-raiser among the potential Democratic candidates in the second quarter, Dr. Dean now has a campaign budget to match those of more-established candidates like Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri.

The $7.6 million Dr. Dean raised in the quarter — mostly in small contributions from 59,000 people — has led to increased attention, greater scrutiny and dogged determination from his rivals to halt his momentum.

With his early and intense opposition to the American-led attack on Iraq, his call for universal health insurance and his signing a bill that created civil unions for gay couples in Vermont, Dr. Dean, 54, is seen as the most liberal of the major Democratic candidates. Many of the people donning his "Give 'em hell, Howard" buttons hail from the left wing of the party and beyond.

But in Vermont, whose political center of gravity lands left of the nation's, one of the secrets to Dr. Dean's success was keeping the most liberal politicians in check.

Over 11 years, he restrained spending growth to turn a large budget deficit into a surplus, cut taxes, forced many on welfare to go to work, abandoned a sweeping approach to health-care reform in favor of more incremental measures, antagonized environmentalists, won the top rating from the National Rifle Association and consistently embraced business interests.

After winning the first of his five elections for governor by more than 50 points, he barely got a majority in 2000, in part because of third-party challenges from the left that, in the 2002 election absent Dr. Dean, helped hand the governor's chair to a Republican.

A Pragmatic Politician
In the green, hilly quiet of Vermont, Dr. Dean, a stockbroker's son who grew up on Park Avenue in Manhattan and in Sag Harbor, N.Y., is viewed not as an idealistic maverick, but as a shrewd politician who always kept one ambitious eye on the next step. Even the civil unions bill, sure to cost him among conservatives nationally, was considered a cop-out by some gays and liberals at home who say he did only what was demanded by state courts and signed the bill "in the closet," without a public ceremony.

"In the Vermont political spectrum, he was a moderate or a centrist," said Eric L. Davis, a professor of political science at Middlebury College in Vermont. "In the spectrum of Vermont, he was not someone who was a strong supporter of left or progressive causes."

The difference may be as much a matter of style as substance. In fact, much of Dr. Dean's presidential platform, particularly his plan for universal health insurance, is a outgrowth of his accomplishments in Vermont. He remains a fiscal conservative, he believes gun control should be left to the states and he favors the death penalty for some crimes.

But in building an insurgent campaign as a Washington outsider, Dr. Dean has gained fluency in the populist language of political revolution, constantly repeating the fact that half his contributors have never before donated to a candidate.

"The way to beat George Bush is not to be like him," he told a rally of 600 people overlooking the harbor in Portsmouth, N.H., on July 22. "The way to beat George Bush is to give the 50 percent of Americans who don't vote a reason to vote again."

Many of Dr. Dean's issue papers do run counter to the centrist positions of the Democratic Leadership Council that have dominated the national party since Bill Clinton's emergence in 1992. [On Monday, in fact, in a critique clearly aimed at Dr. Dean, the group warned that the party was in danger of embracing "far left" policies that would ensure its defeat next year.]

Dr. Dean vows to repeal Mr. Bush's tax cuts to pay for health care and other social programs; he insists that all abortion decisions be left to women and their doctors, and advocates alternative energy sources like wind ("I can see Karl Rove chortling about that Birkenstock governor," he says at every stop, referring to Mr. Bush's senior adviser).

And while he sees marriage as a religious issue, Dr. Dean said during the radio show here at the Hotel Ottumwa that all states should find a way to ensure that gay couples have the same rights as straight ones, something that sent several people away shaking their heads.

"I don't think it's their prerogative not to treat Americans equally," Dr. Dean said of the states, adding later that he remained unsure how, as president, he might force individual states to adopt plans for providing benefits. "This is not a country that was built on discriminating against other people."

But over all, Dr. Dean's presidential pitch is more pragmatic than ideological. He is less George McGovern than John McCain, less Eugene McCarthy than Jimmy Carter (his first job in politics was stuffing envelopes for President Carter in the 1980 presidential campaign, and he has adopted President Carter's habit of staying in voters' homes rather than hotels).

Many who met him over four days in New Hampshire and Iowa said they were inspired not by a checklist of issues but by his straight talk — a phrase the campaign is reluctant to use, since it was practically trademarked by Senator McCain in 2000. Several voters said they loved Dr. Dean's willingness to say "I don't know," as he did, for instance, when asked whether pictures of Saddam Hussein's dead sons should be released to the news media.

"Whether you're right or wrong, if you're honest, it won't matter," said Lee Cassenn, a former chairman of the Keokuk County Democrats who turned up on Thursday to meet Dr. Dean at the Copper Lantern restaurant in Sigourney, Iowa.

Between stops at a hospital in Concord, N.H., and an orchard in Canterbury, N.H., last Wednesday, Dr. Dean said that he was selling his character. Voters "give you wide latitude on the issues if they like the way you make decisions," he explained.

"I have no right to be where I am if you look at this race on paper," he added the next morning on the plane to Iowa. "The reason I am where I am is because I say what I think."

But as Dr. Dean has transformed himself to a valid contender in the race, examinations of what he says and thinks have intensified.

Among the most carefully scrutinized are his evolving critiques of the Iraq war. With other Democrats now criticizing the administration for overstating intelligence concerns about Iraq and uranium, Dr. Dean has been claiming that he was the only major Democratic candidate who had been unconvinced by President Bush's evidence on weapons of mass destruction. But earlier this spring, he said repeatedly that he did believe Iraq had such weapons and just did not think an American-led invasion was the right solution.

"Governor Dean is simply reinventing his own position and that of others, and that's the rankest kind of politics," said Jim Jordan, campaign manager for Senator Kerry, Dr. Dean's leading rival in New Hampshire. "He was an unemployed doctor with no responsibilities, and it was easy to sit there and take political potshots from the outside."

Leaving a Mark in Vermont
Like George W. Bush before him, Dr. Dean often points to his experience as a state's chief executive as qualification for the job. When Mary Hartley, 49, an unemployed woman drowning in $91,000 in student loans, expressed skepticism about false promises after Dr. Dean's recent talk at Taso's restaurant in Oskalossa, Iowa, he urged her, "Go see what I did in Vermont."

With about 600,000 residents, 97 percent of them white, Vermont is hardly a typical state; its largest city, Burlington, has fewer than 40,000 people. The poverty rate is below the national average, but so are wages and per-capita income.

The Democrats who dominate the State Senate sometimes advocate things that have been abandoned as lost causes in Washington, like higher income taxes and government-run health care, while the Republicans who hold a narrow majority in the State House of Representatives rarely espouse the social conservatism that dominates the party elsewhere.

Dr. Dean graduated from Yale University in 1971 — five years after Mr. Kerry, three years after Mr. Bush, and one year after Garry Trudeau, whose "Doonesbury" comic strip has featured the Dean campaign for weeks — and attended Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York before moving to Burlington, where he ran an internal-medicine practice with his wife, Dr. Judith Steinberg.

He first dipped his toes in political water in a 1978 campaign to build a bike trail around Lake Champlain. He spent four years in the Vermont Legislature and five as lieutenant governor, both part-time jobs, before being elevated to the top job in in 1991, when Gov. Richard Snelling, a Republican, died of a heart attack.

He inherited a state budget deficit of about 11 percent, the highest income taxes in the country and the lowest bond rating in New England.

To the dismay of liberals in the Legislature who wanted to expand social and environmental programs, Dr. Dean and his chief economic adviser, Harlan Sylvester, a conservative stockbroker and investment banker, stuck with the Snelling budget-cutting plan. Helped by a booming economy, the state's finances improved sharply. Dr. Dean lowered income tax rates by 30 percent and put away millions in a rainy day fund. Vermont's bond rating became the highest in the Northeast.

In his last term, Dr. Dean won a change in law so that Vermont taxes were not automatically lowered by Mr. Bush's cut in federal income taxes, and Vermont had a comfortable surplus this spring when most other states faced crippling budget shortfalls. On the stump, he blames the federal deficit for the weak economy and derides Mr. Bush for running "a borrow-and-spend credit-card presidency." Mr. Bush's tax cuts, he say, are a gift to "the president's friends like Ken Lay," referring to the former chief executive of Enron.

Standing Up for His Beliefs
Other than the state's finances, the area where Dr. Dean most made his mark as governor was health care.

When he entered office, Dr. Dean was determined to provide health insurance to everyone in the state in one fell swoop. Despite support from liberal lawmakers, his plan failed, along with a similar initiative by the Clinton administration.

So Dr. Dean changed tactics and managed to accomplish much of his goal incrementally. Vermont now offers the nation's most generous health benefits to children, low-income adults and elderly residents of modest means. Almost all children in the state have full medical insurance, and more than a third of Vermont residents on Medicare get state help in paying for prescription drugs.

Under the program, teenage girls can often get counseling about sex and contraception without their parents' knowledge.

Dr. Dean promised that as president he would spend half of the money he would save by repealing Mr. Bush's recent tax cuts to provide free insurance to people under 25 and those who earn less than 185 percent of the poverty rate, and to let everybody else buy into a national plan for 7.5 percent of their gross income.

"My plan is not reform — if you want to totally change the health-care system, I'm not your guy," Dr. Dean told supporters in Lebanon, N.H. "I'm not interested in having a big argument about what the best system is. I'm interested in getting everybody covered."

Dr. Dean earned the National Rifle Association's highest rating in its ranking of governors by signing two bills that protected gun ranges from commercial development and shifted responsibility for background checks to the federal government from county sheriffs. He says he would enforce federal laws banning assault weapons and requiring background checks, but would leave the rest to the states.

But the two most controversial bills Dr. Dean signed were forced on him by State Supreme Court decisions declaring the state's school financing system unconstitutional and demanding the same legal benefits for gay couples as for married heterosexuals.

In both instances, Dr. Dean mostly stayed in the background and left the heavy lifting to the Legislature. He insisted only that income taxes not be raised; the Legislature then turned to property taxes in wealthier communities to subsidize schools in poorer areas. And he pressed the state not to sanction gay marriages, although he allowed civil unions.

Although Dr. Dean flirted briefly with the idea of running for president in 2000, he says it was the civil union battle that finally convinced him to do so. "I realized you could win by standing up for what you believe in," he said.

A Real National Contender?


The question now is whether Dr. Dean can capitalize on the current momentum to convert what began as a long-shot bid to raise concerns about President Bush into a serious national campaign. The fund-raising windfall has prompted the campaign to speed plans to hire workers in eight states, including the union strongholds of Michigan and Wisconsin.

But Dr. Dean's lack of national experience has already tripped him up, most notably when he flubbed a series of detailed questions about military deployment on "Meet the Press" in June. Aides say they will prepare better next time.

His surge also creates the risk that he could peak too soon. "He's got the hot hand, no doubt about it," said Charlie Cook, the legendary handicapper who edits the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. "At the same time, to be the hot candidate and to have momentum in July, six months before the first people vote, I'm sure they would much rather be in this position four months from now."

Just as critically, his prominence could raise expectations for his performance in the neighboring state of New Hampshire. At his current pace, some analysts say, even a second-place showing in New Hampshire would be damaging.

On the other hand, while many insurgent campaigns like Dr. Dean's rely on results in Iowa and New Hampshire to attract money and attention, Dr. Dean's campaign manager, Joe Trippi, said the early fund-raising success gave him a safety net.

Regardless of the results in those first two states, Dr. Dean will probably still have money in the bank and staff on the ground to compete elsewhere.

But his prominence also makes him a tempting target for the rivals he threatens, particularly Mr. Kerry, whose campaign also expects to do well in New Hampshire.

"These campaigns are in some respects like musical chairs — when the music stops, there's only going to be two candidates sitting," said Chris Lehane, Mr. Kerry's campaign spokesman. "We know we occupy one of those chairs. More and more, it looks like Dean is going to occupy the other."

The only major Democratic contender who doesn't have another job, Dr. Dean has been on the road since February 2002. He has logged 34 days in Iowa and 27 in New Hampshire so far this year.

Dr. Dean typically speaks without notes except for the names of people he wants to thank. Instead of a formal speech, he juggles about 20 distinct paragraphs, each with their signature phrases — the most effective is the disgusted, sardonic "we can do better than that" that often punctuates his indictment of the president's performance.

This keeps him fresher, but despite all that time on the road, it sometimes leads to inelegant stumbling.

"He needs to do more polishing — he's not as brilliant as Clinton — but at least he's real," Sheilah Rechtschafter, a painter and teacher who lives in Garrison, N.Y., said to a friend after hearing Dr. Dean in Portsmouth, where she was visiting.

Dr. Dean travels with just one longtime aide, and his wife has no plans to join him on the campaign trail. His staff recently convinced him to wear newer suits and lose the colorful "Save the Children" ties, but he is hanging on to his odd belt, with its large buckle and silver-rimmed holes, that once belonged to his brother, Charlie, who was killed in Laos in 1974 while traveling with a friend.

Lately, a campaign that was built almost organically by disenfranchised voters who connected online has turned to more mainstream sources. Dr. Dean now spends much of his down time dialing Democratic governors and New Hampshire state legislators.

He also has had conventional fundraisers in Provincetown, Mass., and on Cape Cod. On the West Coast, his supporters include Rob Reiner, Martin Sheen, Mel Brooks, Norman Lear, Nora Ephron and Larry David.

But with that kind of backing, it is not surprising to hear the question that a man posed to Dr. Dean at a house party for 200 on the muggy sea coast of New Hampshire: Isn't he too liberal to get elected?

"If being a liberal means a balanced budget, I'm a liberal," Dr. Dean said, delighted at the opening. "If being a liberal means adding jobs instead of subtracting them, then, please, call me a liberal."

"I don't care what label you put on me," he finished, "as long as you call me Mr. President!"

 

Here's a response to that article (also from Salon) from a couple days ago:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/07/25/dean/index.html