FURTHER THOUGHTS ON DEANO:
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To clarify: I didn't say I'd support Dean over Bush or that I agreed with everything Dean has said. Far from it. I just think it's healthy for the Dems and the country to have a real debate, especially about how to deal with terrorism. Bush thinks it's a war; Dean doesn't. Therein lies a very important discussion, one that's been bedeviled by the far left's loopiness and the need to rally around the president during a national security crisis. I'm glad that Dean won't wilt under pressure. Even if democracy flourishes in Iraq, he will stick to regretting that we ever deposed Saddam by force of arms. I want to see that argument aired and resolved.
IS HE ON THE LEFT?
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Some of you have argued that one of my premises is wrong, and that Dean is not a lefty. His record in hyper-liberal Vermont - expanding healthcare benefits incrementally, opposing gay marriage, balancing budgets - is indeed realtively moderate. But his mojo in this campaign has been clearly leftward. The way in which he demonizes corporations, wants to raise taxes on everyone who got relief under Bush, viscerally opposed the Iraq war, and taunts the DLC makes him a candidate that Naderites could easily support. Sure, he's going to tilt rightward if he wins the nomination - and maybe beforehand. But a politician's base matters - look at Bush's. More important, <font size=4>the key message of Dean is not really about policy. It's about liberating the Democratic Party's id - an impulse repressed by the moderate Clintonian ego for a very long time. Dean realizes - because it's obvious - that this is why he is the front-runner. The current New Yorker has a very useful profile and it contains the following Dean quote:
"I think the problem with the Democratic Party in general is that they've been so afraid to lose they're willing to say whatever it takes it to win. And once you're willing to say whatever it takes to win, you lose — because the American people are much smarter than folks in Washington think they are. Do I still believe it? I think you have to be ready to move forward and not just try to hold on to what you've got. I truly believe that if you're not moving forward you're moving backwards in life. There's no such thing as neutral."
This is a brilliant analysis of what ails the Democrats. If he's a doctor, he's got the diagnosis dead right. I say: unleash the id. Risk losing. It's what Thatcher did in the 1970s (her previous record was decidedly statist) and what Goldwater did before her. It will do the Democrats good - even if they lose badly.
DEAN ON FOREIGN POLICY:
One anecdote in the New Yorker piece also struck me as worth relaying. It's Dean's account of a foreign policy professor he once had. In Dean's revealing words:
One professor who made a big impression was Wolfgang Leonhard, who taught Russian history. He'd been a Party official in East Germany and had defected. A fantastic lecturer. He once told us, 'Pravda lies in such a way that not even the opposite is so.' That really hit home. I felt he wasn't just referring to the Soviet government but to our own at the time. You knew it from some of the things Nixon talked about — denying the bombing of Cambodia — or from Kissinger’s 'Peace is at hand' statement, when clearly peace wasn't at hand. They said these things just to get reëlected. I think there are some similarities between George Bush’s Administration and Richard Nixon's Administration: a tremendous cynicism about the future of the country; a lack of ability to instill hope in the American people; a war which doesn't have clear principles behind it; and a group of people around the President whose main allegiance is to each other and their ideology rather than to the United States.
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Those are words from the boomer left - especially the easy
equivalence he draws between the United States and the
Soviet Union. Whatever centrism Dean professes in domestic
policy, anyone who can say what he said will be another
Jimmy Carter abroad.
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