washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Will the Real Howard Dean Please Stand Up?
By Terry M. Neal
Washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Thursday, July 31, 2003; 8:57 AM
Howard Dean is not a liberal – or so say the liberals who know him best in his home state of Vermont.
"He governed from the middle," says former state Sen. Jan Backus.
Ironically, some of Vermont's Democratic Party stalwarts say Dean's centrism sent liberals running from their party to the ultra-liberal Progressive Party -- handing some elected offices to Republicans.
But such things as liberalism and conservatism are, just like beauty, in the eye of the beholder. The centrist Democratic Leadership Council has made Dean a target - as a liberal who could hand the presidential election to Republicans if he were to become the party's nominee.
Republicans are not so divided on the subject. To them, he's just an old-time, unreconstructed leftie.
"The question is through whose prism are you looking," says Vermont Republican chairman James Barnett. "Vermont's Democratic party is far to the left of mainstream Democrats nationally. I mean, this is a state whose congressman is Bernie Sanders. One of the senators is Patrick Leahy, who is one of the most liberal senators. In this state, if you're to the right of Bernie Sanders, then you're a moderate. So I imagine if that's the way you view things, maybe [Dean's] not a liberal."
Vermont liberals say Dean's governing history suggests more of a political tactician, a strategic opportunist who will ultimately run a campaign that inspires the middle as well as the left. Dean -- who gained early momentum with his staunch anti-war talk -- has sought recently to broaden his rhetoric and become known for something other than anti-war diatribes.
"Dean a liberal? It's ludicrous. Ludicrous!" says Peter Freyne, a writer for the Burlington, Vt., alternative weekly Seven Days, which has taken Dean to task in recent years for, among other things, opposing the legalization of medical marijuana. "He was always Mr. Law and Order. This is a guy who grew up in Manhattan, the son and grandson of people who worked on Wall Street. He's not from Ben and Jerry's Birkenstock land."
Freyne said people are giving too much credence to Dean's war opposition, as though that alone is enough to qualify him as a flaming liberal.
"It's a bit odd, isn't it, that someone who is against a very questionable military invasion is by definition a liberal?" Freyne says.
Yet the Democratic Leadership Council directly attacked Dean in a memo a couple months ago, saying his candidacy would return the party to the realm of landslide presidential defeats (See The Post's story, Centrists in the Middle of Party Conflict). The DLC's leaders have toned down their direct attacks on Dean -- perhaps an acknowledgement that the publicity generated by their criticism in part fueled his rise. But make no mistake: they are talking about him when they warn about the party veering too far to the left. In a Live Online discussion on washingtonpost.com on Tuesday, DLC founder and CEO Al From said: "I have nothing against Howard Dean. He's a good and decent man. But I believe it is critical that even during the nominating process that the Democratic candidates keep their eyes on the prize -- winning the White House. And, it's very clear to me that to win the White House a Democrat must seize the vital center, as Bill Clinton did…We cannot allow the 30- to 40-point deficit the Democrats now have on national security to persist."
Here's what Buzzflash.com, a liberal Web site, had this to say in an introduction to a link to Tuesday's Washington Post story about the DLC meeting: "The Democratic Leadership Council Once Again Is Out Promoting Its Defeatist Attitudes. These Guys are Losers. They Suffer from a Severe Case of Wimpy-itis. They are the Democratic Wing of the Republican Party."
But angry liberals alone aren't going to elect the next president, as the DLC and presidential candidate Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Conn.) have been yelling from every mountaintop. The debate about the direction of the party is dominating the intra-party discourse right now, with the centrists warning against the return to liberal, anti-war "McGovernism" and the lefties vowing to take the party back from the sell-outs. Dean right now is smack dab in the middle of that debate.
Dean at Home
The folks back home in Vermont are looking on with a combination of bewilderment and amusement at how their very own good Dr. Dean has become the focus of the debate. Absolutely no one alleges that Dean is a conservative or a wanna-be Republican. But Dean was often a lightning rod for both the right and the left during his decade-plus gubernatorial tenure in Vermont.
In interviews this week, several liberal Vermont politicians and political observers said Dean often found himself in an adversarial position with the state's liberals, as he demanded that growth in government services fall within the constraints of a balanced budget.
Even as he was unsuccessfully promoting a state version of universal health care in Vermont in the early 1990s, he was a staunch supporter of welfare reform, particularly requiring recipients to work.
Dean also boasts of his high rating from the National Rifle Association for his anti-gun control stance, which puts him at odds with most Democrats on the issue. Some years back, he reversed his opposition to the death penalty and now supports it in some cases.
While he is known as the governor who signed the nation's first statewide gay civil unions bill, his supporters and detractors alike say he did little to push the idea until the state Supreme Court forced the legislature's hand. When pressed on the subject of gay marriage before he signed the bill (in private, by the way) he was quoted as saying: "I'm uncomfortable, just like anybody else."
Dean's last election in 2000 was his toughest and he faced challenges from the left and the right. His Republican challenger, Ruth Dwyer made much of his signing the civil unions bill. And Progressive Party candidate Anthony Pollina, who garnered 10 percent of the vote, attacked Dean relentlessly for abandoning universal health care and prescription drug price controls and for opting out of state's public campaign financing system.
On the other hand, folks like Barnett, the Vermont GOP chairman, make a compelling case that Dean's support for universal health care, among other things, is proof that Dean is just another tax and spend left-winger. Republicans also say Dean's call for a repeal of all of the Bush tax cuts to pay for health care and special education programs is a sign of his lack of political centrism.
"He certainly understands politics and can be a pragmatist, but he always comes down where his heart is -- on the left," Barnett said.
On the National Stage
Interestingly, Dean's earliest national exposure came in the mid-1990s, when as the chairman of the National Governors' Association he emerged as an eager and vocal critic of then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and the "extremists who have taken over Congress." That fits the perceptions of those who see Dean as a fighting liberal.
But more recently, Dean has come under fire from some liberal activists. Some of Dean's foreign policy statements lead them to argue that anti-war stalwart Rep. Dennis Kucinich (Ohio) is a better choice for president.
Dean, for instance, irked some liberals by suggesting that the U.S. military is understaffed in Iraq. Earlier this year, he angered some by suggesting that his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were closer to the conservative America-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) than the liberal Americans for Peace Now (APN).
Stephen Zunes, writing for the liberal Common Dreams online publication, said "a series of statements by Dean regarding U.S. policy towards Israel and Palestine have raised serious concerns within the peace and human rights community regarding his liberal credentials."
The Bait and Switch?
Some conservative media types, including Rush Limbaugh, predicted a while back that the liberal baddies in the media would begin to rally around Dean with "he's not a liberal" stories once Dean was seen as a legitimate candidate.
Actually such stories go back much further. In 1995, Vermont reporters were writing stories suggesting that Dean actually delighted in the confusion about his ideological leanings. In 1995, after making a round of national news shows, Dean seemed almost to brag: "These guys think they're getting a raving liberal. And then they find out I'm not a raving liberal. I'm kind of in the middle and, for example, I'm in favor of workfare. Then they sort of don't know what to say. All the questions they've carefully written down to fry me go out the window." |
