Well, here is one "WSJ.com" you will read, John.
POLITICS & PEOPLE
Establishments and Outsiders
Where do people get the idea Howard Dean's a liberal?
BY ALBERT R. HUNT - WSJ.COM
Saturday, August 9, 2003 12:01 a.m.
Are the Democrats about to be taken over by counterculture, neosocialist pacifists? That's the picture painted by Sen. Evan Bayh, who fears the party is "at risk of being taken over by the far left," and Joe Lieberman, who worries about the dominance of an "extremist ideology."
Who's the pied piper of this lefty brigade? Howard Dean, a physician, son of a Wall Street executive, whose chief passion is fiscal moderation; as governor of Vermont, the Washington Post chronicled last weekend, he was "a careful, even cautious steward."
There are several explanations for this conundrum. One is that we're returning to the Vietnam War days when ideology was framed by one's position on the war.
Such a simplistic formation makes no sense today. Howard Dean opposed the Iraqi war; so did such foreign policy heavyweights as Zbigniew Brzezinski and a few leading officials of the first Bush administration. Dr. Dean wants to undo the Bush tax cuts and return to the rates that prevailed during the Clinton administration, hailed then by centrists. On some other issues he is to the right of the center of the Democratic Party.
No, what the Dean complaints really are about is a battle more intrinsic to presidential politics than ideological struggles: outsiders versus insiders, insurrectionists versus the establishment.
This also explains his appeal, ventures Hamilton Jordan, who brilliantly ran the successful Jimmy Carter insurgency in 1976. "When these other guys gang up on Dean and say, 'He's not one of us,' it's not hurting him. When you give voters a chance to vote against the political establishment it's very attractive."
Ideologically, the Iraqi war notwithstanding, it's easy to see why Ted Kennedy has cool feelings towards a Democrat who is squishy on guns, the death penalty and federal support for education. But when Al From, the longtime chief of the centrist Democratic Leadership Conference, blasts the front-running insurgent, it's less about ideology than power. After Bill Clinton and Al Gore, Mr. From fancies himself a kingmaker, and Dr. Dean hasn't supped sufficiently at his table.
Party insiders rarely are comfortable with outsiders. Insurgents are usually from outside Washington but not necessarily. John McCain and George McGovern were outsiders; so was Jimmy Carter and, initially, Ronald Reagan. The Bushes, father and son, were insiders; Bill Clinton was both.
The trick for an outsider presidential candidate is to parlay that appeal--even during good times, shaking up business as usual is popular--into primary success, but then convince voters that you have the sensitivity and skill to govern if you become an insider.
In 1976, Jimmy Carter, with an astute sense of the public revulsion over Watergate--a promise not to lie was a centerpiece of his campaign--steamrolled the Democratic establishment. This produced an ABC contingent--"Anybody but Carter"--that tried simultaneously to embrace California's new age Gov. Jerry Brown; Hubert Humphrey, the party's longtime liberal war-horse; and Frank Church, the Idaho internationalist. It was a farce despite a few successes in the later primaries. The stirrings of an ABD--Anybody but Dean--today are familiar, Hamilton Jordan says.
Mr. Carter, as nominee, then sought to alter that outsider image; Averell Harriman, who once ventured the party couldn't nominate Gov. Carter because he didn't know him, became a fixture on the campaign bus. Still, enough voters still remained shaky about the "Georgia peanut farmer" that his 30-point lead almost vanished by Election Day.
Ronald Reagan, in the days before the conservative movement dominated the GOP, faced a similar situation four years later. He swept the nomination but then moved to reassure the party establishment. He picked George Bush as his running mate over the objections of Reaganites like Sen. Paul Laxalt, and he began consulting the high priests of Republican economists--Arthur Burns and Alan Greenspan--in the general election. He still was running only even until the final debate, shortly before the election.
Predictably, today few Democrats think Howard Dean has the skill to walk that thin line and navigate a careful transition. It won't be easy.
His opposition to the war certainly isn't lethal; no one says that Bob Graham would be doomed by his antiwar position, and by next year this may be an unpopular venture. But unlike the last three presidential elections, a requisite for winning a general election next year will be credibility as commander-in-chief. Gov. Dean has a way to go.
The tax issues, polls and politicians say, isn't the death trap for Democrats it once was. But to reverse the ill-conceived Bush tax cuts now requires a tax increase, and Dr. Dean has to persuade people they are getting something tangible in return.
His support for civil unions has Karl Rove licking his chops; the right-wing hit squads will be vicious on this one. Again, however, if a candidate can frame this as a matter of equality, rather than a moral preference, it can be neutralized; this month's Wall Street Journal/NBC news poll shows the public solidly supports civil unions and attendant benefits but not gay marriages.
Like any outsider, Howard Dean should expect more than the usual share of scrutiny and attacks. And it'll start soon. When John McCain threatened the Republican establishment four years ago, it generated a truly vicious attack on him. "We're out of business," under Mr. McCain, acknowledged one GOP fat cat. With his remarkable early success, Hamilton Jordan notes, Howard Dean faces an added burden: "He'll have to withstand these attacks for a longer period of time."
The odds still are against Howard Dean; he may not be ready for prime time. If he is, however, watch for the day that Al From jumps on the campaign bus.
Mr. Hunt is executive Washington editor of The Wall Street Journal. His column appears in the Journal on Thursdays.
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