Dean Still Standing After Foes Take Shots
Old Barbs Do Little to Rattle Front-Runner
By David S. Broder
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 5, 2004; Page A06
JOHNSTON, Iowa, Jan. 4 -- One by one, Howard Dean's rivals took their best shots at the man they have to beat for the Democratic presidential nomination, the urgency of the task heightened by their awareness that the first true voters' test of their chances is less than two weeks away.
As a winter blizzard howled outside the suburban headquarters of Iowa Public Television, inside the studio, the former Vermont governor found himself ducking a barrage, not of snowballs, but of barbed questions and criticisms. At the end of the two-hour debate, sponsored by the Des Moines Register, Dean was still standing, and no visible damage showed.
The wisdom of veteran Iowa Democrats is that the fervent following Dean has attracted by his opposition to the Iraq war and his scorn for those he calls feckless Washington leaders of his party will only be reinforced by the denunciations from his rivals.
The question is whether any of the three major candidates vying with him for support among those still undecided on their course of action at the Jan. 19 caucuses can capture enough votes to deny Dean a victory in the year's first indication of voter sentiment. The way things have gone so far, a win here could trigger an early Dean rush to nomination.
Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.), who won the Iowa caucuses in 1988, and Sens. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and John Edwards (N.C.), who campaigned extensively here throughout 2003, are hoping that doubts about Dean's durability in a general election against President Bush will benefit them.
But the heaviest verbal blows came from Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), who abandoned the Iowa competition months ago to concentrate on New Hampshire's Jan. 27 primary and Feb. 3 contests in southern and border states. Unlike retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who is following the same skip-Iowa strategy and turned down this nationally televised debate, Lieberman flew into nasty weather to challenge Dean's credibility and electability.
The raw material for the verbal punch-out was not new. For much of the past month, even as Dean collected far more campaign cash than any of his rivals and scored the endorsement of former vice president Al Gore, the candidates have seized on growing media attention to his verbal "gaffes" and to seeming contradictions in his record.
Dean on Sunday did not back away from any of the controversial statements but sought to put them in a more favorable context.
In the first hour, Dean was called upon to explain his comment that the capture of Saddam Hussein had left America "no safer" from the threat of terrorism, to justify his call for a repeal of the Bush tax cuts, including those on middle-class families, and to rationalize his past support of NAFTA and free trade with his present criticism of those agreements for costing American jobs.
But the tone became more personal and intense when the candidates were invited to question one another.
Dean sought to set a tone of chumminess by declaring he would work to elect any one of the group who won the nomination and asking whether others would make the same pledge. As six other hands were raised in solidarity, Dean bragged, "I told you I could bring Inside the Beltway and Outside the Beltway together."
But the truce was over almost before it began. Lieberman assailed Dean for refusing to make all his gubernatorial papers public, charging that his example "undercuts" the Democrats' indictment of Bush and Vice President Cheney and their penchant for secrecy. When Dean said he had left the issue in the hands of a Vermont judge and contended he was acting to protect the privacy of gay people who had written him about the Vermont civil unions law, Lieberman scornfully said, "You are ducking the question."
Next up was Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (Ohio), who is challenging Dean from the left, urging an immediate pullout from Iraq, while Dean says the United States, having invaded that country over his opposition, now must stay long enough to stabilize the situation. Kucinich chose to attack on a domestic issue, questioning why Dean was not supporting a single-payer health plan that would provide government insurance for every American.
Dean's response: He had learned a lesson in Vermont. Try for too much in one bite, and you may get nothing. His incremental approach had made Vermont one of the best insured states, and his way would speed the country on the same road.
Then it was Kerry's turn. As threatened as Gephardt is by Dean's support in Iowa, Kerry has been even more damaged by Dean's surge to the top of the polls in New Hampshire. Kerry zeroed in on Dean's comment to the Concord Monitor that he did not want to prejudge Osama bin Laden's guilt on war crimes, because the al Qaeda leader may some day face trial. The comment has been cited by Republicans as indicative that Dean is squishy-soft on terrorism.
"I want to see Osama get what he deserves," Dean replied, "the death penalty." But as a potential president of the nation that might try him, he added, "I have to stand for the rule of law." Kerry said it will take more than that to "stand up to George Bush."
Edwards, who is campaigning as a Democrat with a "positive message," took fewer direct shots at Dean, but poked fun at the New York-born Yankee's confession that he had discovered only recently that southerners liked to hear political candidates talk openly about the role of religion in their lives. In New England, Dean said, reticence on that subject was admired, and he is still learning to adjust to the customs of the South. "You can tell from my accent," Edwards said, "I already knew that."
But if the rivals had hoped to trigger some kind of outburst from Dean, whose temper is a well-advertised attribute, they failed. At no point did the doctor bluster or betray any sign of irritation. Invited at the end of the two hours to join the others in confessing an embarrassing mistake, Dean actually managed to look humble and contrite.
Last year, he said, he mistakenly accused Edwards of misrepresenting the record on his vote on the Iraq war resolution, only to discover his error and ask for Edwards's forgiveness.
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