Democratic Rivals Attack Dean Before Iowa Debate
reuters.com
Sun January 04, 2004 12:09 PM ET
By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent
JOHNSTON, Iowa (Reuters) - Three Democratic presidential contenders launched fresh attacks on front-runner Howard Dean on Sunday ahead of the new year's first debate, questioning his temperament and ability to lead the party to a win in November.
Missouri Rep. Richard Gephardt, Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry said recent statements by Dean showed he was not ready for the challenge of a general election campaign for the White House.
"He's shown that he's got a short fuse and quite a temper," Lieberman said of Dean on ABC's "This Week" hours before seven of the nine Democrats vying to challenge President Bush in November meet in a debate in Iowa, which holds the first Democratic nominating contest in two weeks.
"He's presented a different kind of extreme against what we say is the extreme of the Bush administration," Lieberman said. "He's made impulsive and, I think, often irresponsible statements, particularly about foreign policy."
Dean's recent comments that the United States was not safer since the capture of Saddam Hussein, as well as gibes at party centrists and a statement, later reversed, that he would not make a quick judgment on the guilt of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, have drawn persistent attacks from his rivals.
Pressed four times on CNN's "Late Edition" to say whether Dean, the former governor of Vermont, was qualified to be president, Gephardt declined to answer directly.
"I think I'm more qualified than he is," said Gephardt, who is locked in a must-win battle with Dean in Iowa. "I think he's going to have real trouble beating George Bush with the positions he's taken, and the statements that he's made."
Kerry rejected the idea that Democrats were opening up lines of attack for Republicans with their criticism of Dean, who has a big lead in polls in the first key primary state of New Hampshire, which votes one week after Iowa.
PART OF A POLITICAL CAMPAIGN
"If he can't answer those questions adequately now, he's not going to be able to answer them when George Bush and Karl Rove go after him," Kerry said on CBS' "Face the Nation." Rove is Bush's political adviser.
Kerry and Lieberman said the questions were a natural part of a political campaign, in which candidates try to draw contrasts with each other.
"This is what a campaign is about," Lieberman said. "How are the voters going to decide who to vote for if, once there's a front-runner, as Howard Dean is, the rest of us just tied our tongues and say, 'Oh, oh, that's great."'
Dean's fiery denunciations of the Iraq war, Bush and Democratic leaders in Washington have taken him to the top of the Democratic pack but raised questions about whether he can expand his support in a contest against Bush.
Dean has said the criticisms show the growing desperation of his rivals. At a campaign rally on Saturday night in Boone, a town in central Iowa, he dismissed the attacks on his comments about Saddam.
"If you look at what they say carefully, 'Oh, Howard Dean, he can't be elected, after we caught Saddam Hussein he said it hadn't made us any safer.' Well, we're at Code Level Orange, we now have fighter pilots escorting commercial aircraft and we have lost 23 more American troops since Saddam was caught," Dean said. "It seems to me maybe I was right."
The debate on Sunday, to be telecast nationally on three cable networks, kicks off a compressed schedule of campaigning for the Democratic White House nomination.
After the Iowa and New Hampshire contests in January, the nominating process moves on to contests in seven more states on Feb. 3, where each contender hopes to emerge as a clear alternative to Dean and rally the more moderate elements of the party.
Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who has skipped Iowa and will not appear at the debate on Sunday, said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he will unveil a reform package to simplify the tax code on Monday. |
