Dean's Red-Meat Diet - By Howard Kurtz - Washington Post .
Tuesday, December 2, 2003; 8:14 AM
MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Everyone knows that Howard Dean is the one candidate who has tapped into a deep vein of anti-Bush animus among Democrats. But a day with him on the campaign trail here in New Hampshire makes clear just how vigorously he plays that card.
You've seen his best zingers on TV or read them in the papers. But with little jokes, asides and passing remarks, the man drips disdain for the Bush crowd, blaming them for just about everything except male pattern baldness.
Unlike Dennis Kucinich, Dean is no vegetarian. He feeds the crowd raw hamburger meat.
At one point he said Bush's legacy is that there's too much mercury in some fish to cook them (although that problem has been building for more than three years). "I will reverse everything the president has done," he declared.
Dean talked about "these wacko supply-side economics people in the White House." He says that "the president is "a uniter -- he is sticking it to every one of us." He made a "crummy choice" on Iraq. Not to mention "those people in the White House who never served a day in their lives overseas." (Dean didn't serve either, but flunked the physical with back problems.) The rhetoric seems to toughen as the day wears on. Bush is "a president who smiles but doesn't think very much about the advice he's getting." His education bill is not just a failure, "I think the bill was designed to destroy the public school system." What's more, "we ought to stop being afraid of all the right-wing wackos who are calling us socialists."
Just when you think he might be running out of adjectives, Dean calls Bush "bullheaded," "petulant" and says the prez has "no understanding of defense." He speaks of "an administration that does not value us as people." And: "What is wrong with this country when middle-class people get shafted by the president of the United States?"
Shafted? The crowd loves it.
Does Dean go too far, get too personal? He doesn't think so. "People say, 'Howard Dean's angry.' This campaign is not about anger, it's about hope."
But let's face it, it's about anger too.
This being New Hampshire, Dean knows some folks are seeing him for the second or third time (courtships take awhile here). At a house party in Bow hosted by the executive director of the state teachers association, Dean quotes campaign manager Joe Trippi on the recycling of his greatest hits.
"It's like going to a Grateful Dead concert," he said. "Some new songs are okay, but if you don't do the old favorites."
That's why you keep hearing the same themes, the same riffs. The music is working, at least in New Hampshire, where Dean has gone from asterisk to front-runner. Whether Dean can rock with a broader electorate, much of which doesn't view George Bush as a punchline, remains to be seen.
Dean is taking some GOP fire over the remarks I reported him as making yesterday (I was one of the few reporters there), assailing the president for supporting a reduction in combat pay and limiting veterans' health benefits.
I got an e-mail from Bob Dole's office in which the former senator says: "I thank God F.D.R. was my commander in chief in WWII. Had it been Howard Dean we would have not participated. This would have saved lives and none of us would have been wounded. Just one little problem: we would have lost our liberty and freedom."
John Kerry rips Dean's Vermont record in this statement:
"Before Howard Dean criticizes President Bush for cutting veterans benefits, he should remember what he did to veterans in Vermont. Again and again Governor Dean shortchanged veterans in Vermont -- even those who were most needy. "Dean proposed cutting funding for the Vermont Veterans Homes, even after the home was found to be underfunded, understaffed and did not have the necessary state support required by law. It was so bad the state was fined $700,000 and the federal government threatened to withdraw $6 million in Federal funding. "Under Dean, the program designed to offer assistance to desperate veterans who were struggling with living expenses, the Needy Veterans program, was only funded at $30,000. This was the same amount the program had been funded since 1980. Dean underfunded the program so badly, in 2003, all of the money was used within three months."
I'm happy to run a response from the Dean camp if and when it comes in.
The RNC also blasts Dean over his New Hampshire remarks.
Over at OpinionJournal, James Taranto takes rather sharp exception to Dean's tone:
" 'Mr. President, if you'll pardon me, I'll teach you a little about defense." So said Howard Dean Sunday at a town meeting in Manchester, N.H., the Washington Post reports.
"'I think he's made us weaker,' Dean said of Bush at another event, in Merrimack. 'He doesn't understand what it takes to defend this country, that you have to have high moral purpose. He doesn't understand that you better keep troop morale high rather than just flying over for Thanksgiving.' Dean also accuses Bush of 'petulance' and of 'bullheadedness' (really).
"You just have to laugh at the condescension: He just doesn't understand! One expects Dean to heave a giant, Al Gore-like sigh. Does Dean realize how this comes across? Agree or disagree with President Bush's foreign policy, he has led the country through two wars, and he has assembled an impressive team to deal with international relations. How much foreign-policy experience did Dean have during his 12 years in Montpelier?
"It's true that Bush came to office with little foreign-policy experience; it is possible to learn on the job. But this time around it is Dean who is green. He sounds like a bright teenager hectoring his elders about how everything they're doing is wrong."
Newsweek's Michael Isikoff wonders about the secrets of Montpelier:
"As investigative reporters and 'oppo' researchers flock to Vermont to dig into Howard Dean's past, they have run into a roadblock. A large chunk of Dean's records as governor are locked in a remote state warehouse -- the result of an aggressive legal strategy designed in part to protect Dean from political attacks.
"Dean -- who has blasted the Bush administration for excessive secrecy -- candidly acknowledged that politics was a major reason for locking up his own files when he left office last January. He told Vermont Public Radio he was putting a 10-year seal on many of his official papers -- four years longer than previous Vermont governors -- because of 'future political considerations... We didn't want anything embarrassing appearing in the papers at a critical time.' "'Most of the records are open,' said Dean spokeswoman Tricia Enright, adding there is 'absolutely not' a 'smoking gun' in those for which Dean has claimed 'executive privilege.' Still, Dean's efforts to keep official papers secret appear unusually extensive. Late last year, NEWSWEEK has learned, Dean's chief counsel sent a directive to all state agencies ordering them to cull their files and remove all correspondence that bore Dean's name -- and ship them to the governor's office to be reviewed for 'privilege' claims. This removed a 'significant number of records' from state files, said Michael McShane, an assistant Vermont attorney general."
The doctor is sticking to his guns:
"Howard Dean yesterday defended a decision he made when he left office as governor of Vermont to keep nearly half of his official papers secret for a decade, saying that doing so was routine," says the New York Times.
"Questioned on the ABC News program 'Good Morning America' about his handling of the papers, Dr. Dean tried to turn the issue back on President Bush, who originally sent his own papers from his years as governor of Texas to his father's presidential library.
"'I'll unseal mine if he will unseal all of his,' said Dr. Dean, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. But Mr. Bush's Texas records were moved back to state custody after a ruling from the attorney general, and an archivist for the state said the Bush records were available for viewing."
The Los Angeles Times has also been sniffing around Vermont, looking at the Dean spending record:
"Soon after he won his first election as Vermont's governor in 1992, Democrat Howard Dean summoned his party's leadership to his Capitol office here and delivered a lecture worthy of any tightfisted Republican. "The financier-turned-physician-turned-politician sternly warned that whatever lofty goals the legislators had in mind -- expanding preschool education, providing universal health care or toughening environmental laws -- none of it would happen if voters did not trust them with their money . . . "Now that he is leading the pack of Democratic presidential contenders, Dean's gubernatorial record is facing intense scrutiny. Opponents, led by Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri and Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, charge that Dean balanced his state's budget by scrimping on key social programs for old, needy and disabled Vermonters. "Dean and his defenders dispute these allegations, insisting that no benefits were taken from anyone while he ran the state for almost 12 years, and that overall, spending on social services increased by a third. Dean and his supporters say the criticism obscures the complex choreography of balancing a state budget and overshadows a record that left Vermont in better fiscal shape than most states in recent years." |
