Dean unleashes attack-dog persona
Former Vermont governor rips into his rivals as feckless careerists
msnbc.com
By Tom Curry
MSNBC
April 25 — While the other Democratic presidential contenders have refrained so far from attacking each other, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean has made himself the Democrat who grabs voters’ attention by slamming his better-known rivals. This week, Dean pounded Rep. Dick Gephardt, deriding his health insurance proposal as “a pie-in-the sky radical revamping of our health care system that has no chance of ever being passed.”
DEAN LEAPED FROM relative obscurity as the ex-governor of one of the nation’s smallest states to genuine contender status by this same strategy of denouncing his opponents, attacking Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and Gephardt for supporting President Bush’s invasion of Iraq.
“What I want to know is what in the world so many Democrats are doing supporting the president’s unilateral intervention in Iraq!” Dean kept asking in speeches to Democratic audiences in the weeks leading up to the invasion — and party activists cheered him on.
‘DISSING’ GEPHARDT RECORD
Now Dean has found a new front on which to press his attack, charging his rivals with being feckless, inside-the-Beltway careerists.
“What has Congressman Gephardt in his 25 years in office — along with the other candidates running for President — ever successfully accomplished in all their time in Washington toward solving this (health insurance) problem?” Dean asked after Gephardt unveiled his plan to repeal the 2001 tax cuts and provide medical insurance to the 41 million Americans currently without it.
Drawing the contrast with career legislators such as Gephardt, Dean is portraying himself at the can-do executive. He has run a state government, raised Vermont’s bond rating and helped insure his state’s uninsured.
“I’m the only physician in this campaign, and I’m the only candidate who has actually provided nearly universal health care to the people of my state,” Dean said.
MISTAKEN TAX CUT CHARGE
But Dean misstepped when he asked “why did Congressman Gephardt and too many in my party support huge tax cuts - tax cuts that make his own health care plan unworkable? For over a year I have called for their repeal and Dick Gephardt refused to join that fight until now.”
In fact Gephardt voted against the 2001 tax cuts. Gephardt spokesman Erik Smith said, “unlike Governor Dean, Rep. Gephardt is calling for their full repeal. Dean would leave a large share of the tax cuts in place.”
If Dean is not genuinely angry at his rivals, he gives a good impersonation of it. He is the candidate of indignant straight talk — a kind of Democratic version of the role John McCain played in the 2000 Republican primaries.
In his stump speeches, Dean always gets appreciative laughs and applause when he recycles the old line from the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, ” “I’m here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.”
The Dean strategy is designed to capture the imagination of rank-and-file Democrats who believe party leaders such as Gephardt have been too timid in opposing Bush since he won the White House.
But at some point the attack dog may become an unwelcome critter at the Democratic Party’s gatherings.
“I think Dean’s strategy does have some downside risks,” said Garry South, a Democratic strategist who has not yet signed on with any of the presidential contenders. “I do think he risks being ganged up on by other contenders tired of being subjected to these attacks. He may not get off so lightly from this point forward.”
In the last few Democratic presidential contests, in 2000, 1992 and 1988, the attack-dog candidate has not ultimately won the party’s nomination, but he has made the contest more fractious and, for Republicans, more entertaining.
UNDERDOG MUST BE ATTACK DOG
To some extent, if a contender is the underdog, he must play the attack dog if he hopes to inflict enough damage on the frontrunner to knock him out of the race.
Faced with Vice President Al Gore’s advantages in fund-raising and party support in 2000, former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley spent the much of the campaign saying he would not stoop to impugning Gore’s character.
Then right before the New Hampshire primary, Bradley unleashed his attack-dog persona, but the bark was half-hearted and the bite was less than ferocious.
“Why should we believe you will tell the truth as president if you don’t tell the truth as a candidate?” Bradley asked Gore during a televised debate five days before New Hampshire voted.
Bradley likened Gore to Richard Nixon, probably the worst comparison one Democrat can make about another Democrat.
“When Al accuses me of negative campaigning, it reminds me of the story about Richard Nixon … [he] was the kind of politician who would chop down a tree and then stand on the stump and give a speech about conservation,” Bradley said.
He also used the word “tricky” to describe Gore’s statements, evoking “Tricky Dick,” the nickname Democrats attached to Nixon.
The attacks didn’t work, partly because they didn’t fit Bradley’s bookish persona and in any event they came too late to alter the perception among Democratic activists that Gore had earned the nomination.
In the 1992 Democratic fray, in a field of six contenders, former Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown was the closest thing to an attack candidate. Brown hammered front-runner Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, accusing Clinton of having a conflict of interest as Arkansas governor by “funneling money to his wife’s law firm.”
But as Gore did in 2000, Clinton had the resilience
to survive Brown’s attacks. They may have even helped Clinton a bit by allowing him to appear chivalrous in defending his wife.
In 1988, it was Gore, then a 40-year-old senator from Tennessee who was the most aggressive of the Democratic presidential contenders. Like Dean in the current contest, Gore was the long-shot candidate with little to lose by attacking better-known candidates.
Gore needled Gephardt for switching his position on abortion and other issues. “Dick has given cynicism a depth it never had before,” Gore slyly told reporters. “It is nearly impossible to say what his real position is on
anything.”
After Gephardt dropped out of the race, Gore turned his sights on front-runner Massachusetts Gov. Mike Dukakis.
In a debate prior to the New York primary, Gore criticized Dukakis for defending a Massachusetts program that provided weekend furloughs for criminals, including those convicted of first-degree murder who were serving life sentences.
Some of those given furloughs never returned to prison.
THE FURLOUGH ISSUE
“If you were elected president, would you advocate a similar program for federal penitentiaries?” Gore asked an irritated Dukakis, who, after repeated jabs from Gore, was forced to admit that he had changed the furlough policy to exclude “lifers.”
The furloughs came back to haunt Dukakis in the fall campaign as Republicans used it to paint him as “soft on crime.”
And that is one of the risks Dean is taking by playing the relentless aggressor in the primaries: that he will give the Republicans fodder for their assault on the eventual Democratic nominee (if it isn’t Dean himself).
In fact, the day after Dean assailed Gephardt’s health insurance proposal, the Republican National Committee issued a gloating press release, quoting every unflattering thing Dean had said about Gephardt.
“Dr. Dean diagnoses Dick Gephardt’s big government-run health care plan” shouted the RNC headline. |
