JOHN FUND ON THE TRAIL
Unintended Consequence
How Terry McAuliffe and James Carville created Howard Dean.
Monday, January 5, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST
A year ago Democratic leaders were convinced a key to winning the White House was to minimize internal bickering and settle early on a nominee. That candidate could then speak for a united party against President Bush. The party has gotten its wish--a jammed early primary schedule virtually guarantees the Democratic candidate will be known by early March--but party leaders now seem to be having buyer's remorse. The nominee will be either the mercurial and error-prone Howard Dean or someone who may have a hard time exciting fanatic Dean supporters.
James Carville, the razor-tongued Democratic strategist, was among many party leaders who were certain of a cure for the Democrats' blues: "We've really got to get a presidential nominee," he said in February. "And the quicker the better." Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe listened to this siren song and helped engineer a change in the party's 20-year-old rule that no state other than Iowa and New Hampshire could vote for delegates before March.
Iowa and New Hampshire promptly moved their voting dates to Jan. 19 and Jan. 27, respectively. That meant holiday-distracted voters would have only a few weeks to pay attention to the actual race once the New Year's bubbly wore off. That meant that for all of 2003, liberal party activists were in the driver's seat when it came to deciding who would raise the most money and be anointed the front-runner in media coverage. That turned out to be Mr. Dean, who tapped into activist rage over the Bush administration's war in Iraq and lingering anger over the disputed Florida recount in 2000.
But while "Bush loathing" is almost universal among Democratic partisans, it resonates with only about 20% of the electorate. Many of the people who don't approve of Mr. Bush's handling of his job are turned off by bitter attacks against him.
So the problem for Democrats worried about Mr. Dean's electability and tempted to derail him is that only two weeks remain before Iowa Democrats attend their caucuses. The only candidate who has a real chance of defeating Mr. Dean in Iowa is Richard Gephardt, who hails from neighboring Missouri and who won the Iowa caucuses in 1988.
But the money-starved Mr. Gephardt isn't a contender in New Hampshire. He will have to count on either John Kerry or Wesley Clark to slow Mr. Dean down there and therefore allow some Democrat a shot at stopping him in the Southern states that vote on Feb. 3. If Mr. Dean wins both Iowa and New Hampshire it's hard to see how--short of a political gaffe of megaton proportions--he will be stopped from getting the nomination.
Such a gaffe is certainly possible. But what worries Democrats is that if he is the nominee Mr. Dean will make that megagaffe in the long eight months between the selection of a nominee and Election Day. "Reporters tend to put candidates into stereotypical boxes," says political analyst Stuart Rothenberg. "If someone gets a reputation for outrageous statements everything they say is viewed as a potential gaffe. Al Gore had the same problem when he developed an image as a serial exaggerator in 2000."
Mr. Dean's gaffes during just the last two weeks of December prompted party leaders to worry that a public impression of him as an undisciplined candidate was starting to set in. First, Mr. Dean said that America was no safer after the capture of Saddam Hussein. He followed that up by saying he couldn't prejudge Osama bin Laden's guilt before a trial. After he was attacked for such statements he asked Mr. McAuliffe to call on other Democrats to stop criticizing him. He then implied that if he didn't win the nomination his most fervent supporters would take a walk in November since they are "certainly not going to vote for a conventional Washington politician."
All of these led Democrats to worry that Mr. Dean was turning himself into a piñata for Republicans during the fall campaign. "I know Howard Dean is the doctor, but I have a prescription for him: He doesn't need to answer every question," said Donna Brazile, Al Gore's 2000 campaign manager.
It was Mr. Carville who sounded the most worrisome notes. "It seems like he's come down with a case of 'mad mouth' disease," he said of Mr. Dean last week. "He may be candid, but there is the glory of the unspoken thought here." Later on CNN, he elaborated: "I'm scared to death that this guy just says anything. It feels like he's undergone some kind of a political lobotomy here."
Democrats find themselves in this fix--either nominating an unelectable candidate or alienating his core supporters--in large part because they endorsed a quick rush to judgment through an early and hurried primary schedule.
There's no way to be sure that a more leisurely and conventional primary process would have produced a different or more thoughtful result. But it's safe to say that those who thought a lightning-fast selection of a Democratic nominee would leave their party better positioned against President Bush are having to relearn the law of unintended consequences. One has to ask, who's the real political blunderer: Mr. Dean, who has brilliantly used the party's new rules to his advantage, or the party leaders who made it all possible?
URL:http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110004509 |
