ROTFL.
'Scary' Iowa speech could hurt Dean
For some, battle cry raises fears
By JIM RUTENBERG, New York Times
DES MOINES, Iowa -- Sen. John Kerry's victory in Iowa took the political world by surprise, but it was Howard Dean's guttural, concession-speech battle cry that was as much the talk of the political world Tuesday.
The question that bounced around television, radio, the Internet and even the Des Moines airport -- overstuffed with departing journalists and political operatives Tuesday morning -- was whether the speech would prove a defining political moment for Dean just as voters start paying close attention to the Democratic race.
"He looked hysterical," Howard Wolfson, a Democratic consultant, said on the "NBC Nightly News."
"Howard Dean scared a lot of children last night," Tucker Carlson, a Republican political commentator, declared on CNN. Like the other cable news networks, CNN played the image of the former Vermont governor, shirt sleeves rolled up, neck bulging and arm pointing at the crowd, over and over.
Radio host Howard Stern played a recording of the tape and set it against background noise from a professional wrestling match.
Republican officials could not have been happier, and even some of Dean's supporters wondered how the speech would affect the race.
Dan Goldberg, a marketing executive with an independent film company in New York, said he had been planning to volunteer for Dean in New Hampshire. After watching the Monday night speech, Goldberg said, he changed his mind.
"Any chances I would vote for Dean were completely erased by that speech last night -- scary," he said. "I thought mirrors in my apartment would shatter. Especially in contrast with Edwards, who was fantastic."
Dean and his staff described the focus on his speech as another instance of unfair treatment by the news media, which they accused of turning a surprisingly upbeat address, despite a third-place finish, into a negative.
But political experts and some Democrats said the speech could prove to be for Dean what Dan Quayle's famous misspelling of the word "potato" was for him in 1992: a symbolic reinforcement of a perceived flaw. In Quayle's case, the misspelling went to questions, fair or not, about his intelligence.
In Dean's case, the speech went to questions about his temperament. Even before Monday night, opponents were trying to portray him as the angriest man in politics, prompting "Saturday Night Live" last weekend to caricature him as an offensive, cursing egomaniac.
Darrell West, a professor of political science at Brown University, said of Dean's appearance, "I think many people watching it would have thought he was just losing it, big time."
He added, "It's a moment that provides a window into the soul of the man, and it reinforces many of the fears that people have expressed about Dean: that he's angry and that he doesn't have the proper temperament to be president."
Then again, other presidential candidates have had similarly low televised moments and still gone on to win or retain the White House.
During the 1992 presidential primary campaign, Bill Clinton, after erroneously concluding that the Rev. Jesse Jackson had endorsed Sen. Tom Harkin -- and also wrongly thinking that a camera trained on him had been turned off -- called the move a "dirty, double-crossing, backstabbing thing to do." It was a rare glimpse of one of Clinton's flares of temper. But that was before the age of three cable news networks and heavy Internet use, and it did no apparent damage.
Dean and his aides played down the attention paid to the speech. Answering questions from reporters in New Hampshire, Dean said he was simply trying to rally Iowa volunteers gathered to see him off.
"Last night there were 3,500 people there who had worked for weeks in Iowa," he said. "And I thought I owed them the reason they came to this campaign, which was passion."
In a telephone interview, Dean's campaign manager Joe Trippi vented frustration at the coverage. "I think it's being mischaracterized," he said. "That's another thing that we're used to. I kind of thought that the news of the night was that, when he walked on the stage, the party was more energized than any victory party I have ever been to."
David Doak, a political consultant in Washington, said he did not think the speech would cause any lasting damage. "It would have been worse if he had come out there and looked like a big hang dog," Doak said. |
