Dean does not understand how much he is at the mercy of the National Media. He can't get away with stonewalling on his records. Fineman nailes him in his "Newsweek" column
Dean Stumbles Over Sealed Records
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Howard Fineman
Is Howard Dean ready for prime time? I'm not so sure after watching him handle--if that is the word--the issue that has taken possession of his campaign this week: the 10-year seal he placed on the records of his 12-year tenure as governor of Vermont.
IN POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS, especially presidential ones, the revealing moments--the defining moments--are the unscripted ones. The candidate doesn't pick them; chance and circumstance do. The key is how the candidate responds. How does he (and the campaign team he's assembled) handle the crisis? What does his behavior say about the kind of president he would be? The media (and, through us, the voters) will make their judgments.
The contretemps over Dean's Vermont records hardly qualifies as a "crisis." Still, Dean is the front-runner, and at this point in the campaign season, every detail of his life, career and actions is fair game, magnified and studied for clues to the kind of leader he might be. So far, the episode shows that Dean is a feisty guy (voters like that) with a tendency to shoot his mouth off (voters don't mind that) who, when backed into a corner, dithers over telling the full story (voters don't like that), doesn't seem to know all of the latest facts (voters don't generally notice that) and then tries to blame the staff (voters hate that). He's managed to turn a one-day story into a week-long story, at least in Campaignland, and managed to generate curiosity and suspicion about exactly what the sealed papers contain.
I've covered Dean, on and off, for a year now, and interviewed him a few times. Watching him joust with Chris Matthews on "Hardball" for an hour at Harvard the other day, I can say (again) that Dean is the real deal--proud, smart, committed. But his tough-guy stance will backfire if he's too arrogant or sloppy to prepare for the big league combat to come.
RECORDS COVER MANY TOPICS
My friend and Newsweek colleague Mike Isikoff ignited the issue. (The Isikoff byline alone is enough to make sure the story got attention.) It wasn't news that Dean had had his records sealed, but Mike added new details: that Dean had sought and won an unusually long stay in the deep freeze for them; that the governor's lawyers had demanded that any item with his name on it be removed from "live" files; and that the records covered a wide swath of topics, including Dean's handling of the explosive issue of civil unions.
Dean is no babe in the woods: Everyone knew what he was up to. He was burying what he could of his papers to keep them from the prying eyes and hands of the "oppo men"--opposition researchers for other Democratic contenders and, of course, the Republican National Committee. The proudly combative Dean admitted as much last January, telling Vermont Public Radio in teasing fashion, "Well, there are political considerations. We didn't want anything embarrassing appearing in the papers at a crucial time in any future endeavor."
A FLIP RESPONSE
Wink, wink.
Timing is everything in politics. Mike's Periscope item in Newsweek hit the wires on Sunday. On Monday morning, Dean was asked about it on ABC's "Good Morning America." He gave a flippant--and, as it turned out, ill-informed--reply, arguing that he was doing nothing more than what George W. Bush had done at the end of his term in Texas. That's hardly a strong argument to begin with, but the point is, it was factually wrong. Bush had tried to seal his records, but had ultimately failed, when the Texas attorney general ruled that they had to be placed in a public repository.
After the TV show, Dean hit the road for Cambridge, Mass., where he was scheduled to do an hour-long interview on MSNBC with Matthews on "Hardball." But rather than prepare for that interview, he was forced to spend a couple of hours in the afternoon behind closed doors on the phone fielding calls from reporters about the records matter. Rival campaigns, eager to slow Dean's momentum, had seized on the issue, demanding he unseal his history.
Dean's public reaction to the mini-furor was revealing. When Matthews asked about the records, Dean--with a straight face--came up with this defiant howler: He had had the records sealed not to protect himself, God forbid, but to protect the privacy of HIV-AIDS patients. I think Chris was too stunned to laugh. As it turns out, the identity of such patients is automatically shielded; and, of course, Dean had long since gone on record with the refreshingly candid admission that the advent of the presidential campaign was the real reason.
SERIOUS OR 'SMARTY REMARK'?
Politicians never seem to get the concept of irony: Here is a guy who is running on the notion that he is a fearless, truth-telling outsider, and he's covering up the reason for covering up. What about the interview last January, in which he talked about "future political considerations?" Said Dean: "That was sort of a smarty remark. I mean I wasn't really being very serious about that." Memo to the governor: When you speak to us from now on, please tell us when you are being serious and when you are merely making another "smarty remark."
Seeing an opening, the GOP jumped on the story, of course--this from an administration that views disclosure of even the most mundane facts as a crime akin to treason. When GOP Party chairman Ed Gillespie announced that he was on his way to Vermont, Dean's entourage let it be known that their man would fire back. But then they changed their mind. Rather than hit back, Dean said, he would try to be "accommodating." Generally speaking, candidates shouldn't discuss the mechanics of what they are going to do, or not do, but Dean couldn't help it. "We were going to take a whack at him (Gillespie)," he said. "But we're not going to take a whack at him." To whack or not to whack? Is that the question?
As for the original terms of the agreement to sequester his records, "I didn't have anything to do with those negotiations," Dean explained. Hardly a tough-guy answer, and an ironic moment. Just the night before, on "Hardball," Dean had called President Harry Truman--the guy with "The buck stops here" sign on his desk--one of his heroes. It's hard to imagine "Give 'em Hell Harry" saying "I didn't have anything to do with those negotiations."
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