THE WESTERN FRONT
Backsliding Dean
Does he have a firm stand on anything?
BY BRENDAN MINITER
Tuesday, December 30, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST
Democratic front-runner Howard Dean once knew that today's politics called for clear distinctions and moral stands. He surged to the front of the Democratic pack by taking absolute stands against George W. Bush and war in Iraq. But now the man who courageously (if also foolishly) proclaims his wish to bring America back to the 1960s is beginning a series of miniretreats.
All candidates develop a reputation with the media. In 2000 the story line on Al Gore was his wildly exaggerated claims. Mr. Gore may not have said precisely that he "invented the Internet," but his propensity to tell "whoppers" got him tagged with the line nonetheless. Unfortunately for Mr. Dean, that's the kind of story line that's now emerging about him.
After building a campaign on the anger of the Democratic electorate, the former Vermont governor can now be called "Backsliding Dean." He leaps forward with a bold statement aimed at pleasing his core supporters, but ultimately is forced to slide back because of the ludicrousness of his position.
He's already had several high-profile retreats. In August Mr. Dean filled out and returned a questionnaire for the Quad-City Times in Davenport, Iowa. In the part that asked "My closest living relative in the armed services is . . .," Mr. Dean wrote "My brother [Charles] is a POW/MIA in Laos, but is almost certainly dead." In fact, Mr. Dean has told reporters flatly in the past that his brother opposed the Vietnam War and did not serve in the military. Charles Dean was in Laos while on a trip around the world. (His body was found and repatriated to the United States last month.) "Knowing that story tells us something about the candidate," Quad-City editors wrote in an editorial recently. "So does inaccurately implying a direct family connection to the armed services."
Mr. Dean's response was to retreat from the survey with an angry letter to the Quad-City Times. He wrote that he was "deeply offended" that the newspaper misconstrued his written statement. He didn't mislead the newspaper's readers, he wrote, because his brother's story was well known. Memo to campaign manager Joe Trippi: Revising a clearly stated (written out) position is a retreat.
Mr. Dean also recently retreated from his position on Saddam Hussein. Actually, he's been all over the map on this issue, so it's not clear whether he's retreating or returning to a former position. A year ago, Mr. Dean said that--as reported in the Washington Post--"there is no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the United States and our allies." He then spent the balance of 2003 opposing the dictator's ouster. Then after Saddam's capture, Mr. Dean said, "I never said Saddam was a danger to the United States." He also said, "The capture of Saddam is a good thing which I hope very much will keep our soldiers in Iraq and around the world safer. But the capture of Saddam has not made America safer."
The strangest part of Mr. Dean's comment isn't that he believes nabbing Saddam hasn't made America safer, but that he seems to think the well-being of America's soldiers has nothing to do with the nation's safety.
But that's not a theme he is still repeating. Quite a few people fell for the idea that Saddam couldn't run a terror campaign from a spider hole. The reality on the ground, however, proved otherwise. Coalition forces have arrested hundreds of insurgents in Iraq based on information found in Saddam's briefcase and reportedly from information "gleaned" from interrogations with the tyrant himself.
The most outrageous comments from Mr. Dean, however, came Friday. He told the Concord (N.H.) Monitor, "I still have this old-fashioned notion that even with people like Osama, who is very likely to be found guilty, we should do our best not to, in positions of executive power, not to prejudge jury trials." When asked how he felt about most Americans wanting bin Laden tried and executed in America, Mr. Dean added, "I'm sure that is the correct sentiment of most Americans, but I do think if you're running for president, or if you are president, it's best to say that the full range of penalties should be available. But it's not so great to prejudge the judicial system."
Mr. Bush wants bin Laden "dead or alive," leaving clear his preference. But apparently Mr. Dean sees the war on terror not as a military imperative to chase al Qaeda members to remote corners of the world, but as a police action in which infamous terrorists are given all presumptions of innocence even while they're still at large, presumably planning new attacks on American civilians.
That story line didn't play very well, of course. So, shortly after the Concord Monitor interview hit the newsstands, Mr. Dean was backsliding in an interview with the Associated Press. "As a president, I would have to defend the process of the rule of law. But as an American, I want to make sure [bin Laden] gets the death penalty he deserves." Standing up for a fair trial doesn't make him sympathize with the al Qaeda leader, he told the AP. "I'm just like every other American, I think the guy is outrageous."
"Outrageous"? How about evil? Once again, though, there's so much backsliding going on that it's hard to see where Mr. Dean stands. For months Mr. Dean has been pounding President Bush for being distracted from the war on terror by pursuing Saddam Hussein. And not two weeks ago Mr. Dean was complaining about an ad running in New Hampshire that said he was too inexperienced to be trusted on foreign policy, which used a picture of bin Laden to underscore the point. Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi flipped out about the picture, calling it an unfair scare tactic.
Unfair or not, Osama is out there as a campaign issue even if Mr. Dean can't decide exactly where he stands on catching or killing the terror lord. Mr. Dean has made himself out to be a snarling and possibly even rabid junkyard dog with a reputation of wanting to bite everyone. But good old Backsliding Dean appears not to want to bite the one man nearly every American wants to see get bit.
Mr. Miniter is assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com. His column appears Tuesdays. |
