President Bartlett Stumps For Dean ..LOLOL!!
By John Nichols
January 17, 2004
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - President Josiah "Jed" Bartlet's name cannot be found on the list of candidates contending on Monday for votes at Iowa's first-in-the-nation Democratic presidential caucuses. But he is the star of this campaign season.
Everywhere Bartlet goes in Iowa, he draws the biggest crowds. When he steps onto a stage, people start chanting "Bartlet!" Reporters hang on his every word. Children ask for his autograph. Adults want to know his thoughts about the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act and religion in politics.
Bartlet is, in every sense, the man of the moment.
Unfortunately, he is also a fiction.
"President Bartlet is a fantasy," explains actor Martin Sheen, who plays Bartlet on the NBC political drama, "The West Wing." "Howard Dean is a reality."
Sheen is an enthusiastic supporter of the former Vermont governor, who is locked in a tight four-way contest here with former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry and North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.
Indeed, Sheen is so enthusiastic that he left sunny Hollywood for snowy Sioux Falls, and Mason City and Davenport, where he has campaigned in the days leading up to Monday's caucuses almost as vigorously as the candidate himself.
In Iowa, where campaigns that could be made or broken by Monday's voting are pulling out all the stops, celebrity backers are turning up even in the smallest towns. The candidates hope that a little star power will sway wavering Democrats in their direction.
The suddenly surging campaign of John Kerry dispatched songwriter Carole King to make the pitch for him in a Dubuque coffeehouse and an Indianola living room, where she autographed albums, played "You've Got a Friend" on the host family's piano and exclaimed, "The beauty of this, for me, is coming into a real American town meeting."
Dennis Kucinich campaigned across the state last year with country singer Willie Nelson and will close his pre-caucus campaigning by taking the stage Sunday night with a singer half Nelson's age, Ani DiFranco, in Des Moines.
Even Dick Gephardt has been appearing in the closing days of the campaign with a "star" suitable to the labor-backed candidate's union hall rallies, International Brotherhood of Teamsters President James Hoffa Jr., the son of legendary labor boss Jimmy Hoffa.
In New Hampshire, the first primary state, filmmaker Michael Moore is expected to hit the trail for retired Gen. Wesley Clark. And there is talk that Clark might yet get the biggest of his superstar backers, Madonna, stumping on his behalf.
But only one candidate for president has a "president" working the campaign trail as his surrogate. And, even if he is a make-believe commander in chief, Sheen is making the most of his association with the White House.
This veteran star of stage and screen knows exactly how to deliver an applause line.
"As the acting president of the United States, I am here to announce that next Monday, Jan. 19, is Howard Dean Day in America!" Sheen declared in Council Bluffs. He said pretty much the same thing in Cedar Falls. And in Cedar Rapids.
The response was absolutely consistent: thunderous applause.
For Sheen, however, this is not just a theatrical performance.
A passionate progressive, the actor got involved in politics long before writer Aaron Sorkin put him in charge of "The West Wing." Sheen was an outspoken foe of former President Ronald Reagan's funding of military dictators and Contra rebels in Central America in the 1980s. He has been arrested more than once in protests against nuclear weapons and other Pentagon projects. He has marched with farm workers, trade unionists and peace activists.
And he is no stranger to the real world of electioneering. He campaigned across the country for Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore in 2000, appearing not long before the November election on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
Sheen announced his support for Dean a year ago, when the Vermonter barely rated an asterisk in most polls. Like the vast majority of Dean's early backers, he was attracted by the candidate's outspoken opposition to President Bush's preparations for war with Iraq.
Sheen, who appeared in a MoveOn.org-sponsored television commercial encouraging Americans to lobby Congress to block Bush's invasion plans, says, "Dean was against the war when we needed someone. That's why I'm with him now."
The actor delights in Dean's angry denunciations of "Republican-lite" Washington Democrats who have compromised with the Bush administration and the GOP leadership in Congress. Pointing to the fist-pumping, ready-to-rumble crowds at a Dean rally in Des Moines, Sheen declared, "This is the Democratic Party I was born into. The party was taken away from us, and now we're getting it back."
Counting himself in with the army of Dean volunteers that has swarmed over the first caucus state, including a large contingent from Madison that is expected to arrive in Dubuque today, Sheen echoes the almost messianic rhetoric of the former Vermont governor's fervent backers.
"We've awakened a movement," he says. "And we've made this election meaningful - a real referendum on the direction of our country."
Sheen dismisses charges that Dean is too volatile, or too extreme in his style or his stands, to beat Bush next November.
"These guys in the White House are in for a surprise if they think they're going to roll over this guy," says the actor, who has no problem with Dean's much-discussed anger. "Anger moves you to do justice," Sheen says. "It's a great energy, and it allows you to do great good."
So is Dean comparable to President Bartlet?
"There are a lot of similarities," Sheen says, noting that the president he plays on TV is, like Dean, a New Englander with a penchant for making bold, often controversial, statements. But, he repeats, "President Bartlet is a fictional character. Howard Dean is a reality. And that's all the difference in the world."
While one of Dean's opponents, John Kerry, claims to be "the real deal," Sheen says his candidate is "the real Bartlet." |
