From Arianna Huffington
Dear Friends --
Happy New Year.
With my new book, "Fanatics and Fools: Why George Bush Must Lose So
The
American Public Can Win," finally finished and off to the publisher,
it's
great to be back in the column-writing saddle again…
All the Best -- Arianna
********
DEAN, BOBBY, AND THE GHOST OF LANDSLIDES PAST
Arianna Huffington
I swear, if I hear one more Democratic honcho say that Howard Dean is
not
electable, I'm going to do something crazy (maybe that's what happened
to
Britney in Vegas this weekend).
The contention is nothing short of idiotic.
Consider the source: the folks besmirching the Good Doctor's Election
Day
viability are the very people who have driven the Democratic Party into
irrelevance. Who spearheaded the Party's resounding 2002 mid-term
defeats. Who kinda, sorta, but not really disagreed with President
Bush
as he led us down the path of preemptive war with Iraq, irresponsible
tax
cuts, and an unprecedented deficit.
Dean is electable precisely because he's making a decisive break with
the
spinelessness and pussyfooting that have become the hallmark of the
Democratic Party.
So, please, no more hand-wringing about Dean being "another Dukakis".
And
no more weepy flashbacks about having had your heart broken by George
McGovern, whose 1972 annihilation haunts the 2004 Democratic primaries
like a political Jacob Marley, shaking his chains and warning about the
Ghost of Landslides Past.
There is a historical parallel to Dean's candidacy. But it's not
McGovern
in 1972, as the DLC-paranoiacs would like us to believe -- it's Bobby
Kennedy in 1968.
Like Kennedy, Dean's campaign was initially fueled by his anti-war
outrage. Like Kennedy, Dean has found himself fighting not just to
represent the Democratic Party but to remake it. Like Kennedy, Dean is
offering an alternative moral vision for America, not just an
alternative
political platform.
And like Kennedy, Dean has come under withering attack from his critics
for the very attributes that his supporters find most attractive.
"He could be intemperate and impulsive… the image of wrath -- his
forefinger pointing, his fist pounding his palm, his eyes ablaze".
Sean
Hannity on Howard Dean? No, Theodore White on Bobby Kennedy in "The
Making of the President 1968".
It's the same ludicrous charge of being "too angry" that's constantly
leveled at Dean. Have his Democratic opponents -- and the notoriously
decorous Washington press corps -- suddenly morphed into Miss Manners?
Personally, I could never trust a man who does not occasionally get hot
under the collar.
Of course Dean is angry. Take a look at what's happening in Iraq, with
another 236 American soldiers killed or wounded since Saddam was
dragged
out of his spider hole. And take a look closer to home, where we have
12
million children living in poverty, 43 million people without health
insurance, 6 out of 7 working poor families unable to afford quality
child
care, record levels of personal debt, and more and more U.S. jobs being
"outsourced" overseas. If you still have a pulse -- are you listening
Joe
Lieberman? -- you should be royally pissed.
"I have traveled and I have listened to the young people of our
nation,"
Kennedy said during his announcement speech, "and felt their anger
about
the war that they are sent to fight and about the world they are about
to
inherit."
And young people have been the spark that has lit the fuse of the Dean
campaign. As he pointed out this weekend in Iowa: "One-quarter of all
the people who gave us money between June and September were under 30
years old." So while the Democratic establishment is once again
dusting
off its tried-and-untrue swing voter strategy, Dean is running, as he
put
it, "a campaign based on addition, not subtraction. We want to add new
people to the Democratic Party so that we can beat George Bush. It's
the
only way we can beat him."
Kennedy was drawn into the '68 race by his indignation over the
direction
of America's foreign policy. "This nation," he said, "must adopt a
foreign policy which says, clearly and distinctly, 'no more Vietnams'."
Dean has been saying, clearly and distinctly, no more Iraqs, even when
70
percent of the public said they approved of Bush's policy. That's
leadership -- and the kind of boldness the Democratic Party has been
sorely lacking.
Far from Dean not being able to "compete" with Bush on foreign policy,
he's the one viable Democrat who isn't trying to compete on the playing
field that Bush and Karl Rove have laid out. No Democrat can win by
playing "Whose swagger is swaggier?" or "Whose flight suit is tighter?"
Instead Dean unambiguously asserts that "we are in danger of losing the
war on terror because we are fighting it with the strategies of the
past…
The Iraq war diverted critical intelligence and military resources,
undermined diplomatic support for our fight against terror, and created
a
new rallying cry for terrorist recruits."
In the same way that Kennedy was able to take his outrage over Vietnam
and
expand it to include the outrages perpetrated at home, Dean has gone
from
railing against the war to offering a New Social Contract for America's
Working Families that harkens back to the core message of FDR: "The
test
of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those
who
have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too
little."
It's a message which Bobby Kennedy made central to his campaign but
which
the Democratic Party has since abandoned.
Howard Dean has resurrected it and made it his own because, as he says,
2004 "is not just about electing a president -- it's about changing
America."
That is a big vision. But anything smaller guarantees the reelection
of
George Bush. |
