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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JakeStraw who wrote (24686)	1/16/2004 2:42:26 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793698

Yesterday's positions aren't necessarily today's By Walter Shapiro USA TODAY .....Gephardt, the only candidate whose political future depends on victory in Iowa, enters the closing days of the caucus race clearly believing that Dean remains vulnerable to charges that he has undergone a full ideological makeover to run for president. At his Wednesday news conference following a speech in which he suggested that even Dean's anger was feigned, Gephardt said about his rival, ''You just have conflicting statements (from him) on a lot of these issues. He said that Medicare was 'the worst federal program ever,' the worst thing that ever happened . . . And now he acts like he's the biggest defender of Medicare ever.'' (Gephardt was referring to a 1993 news clip that quotes Dean, then Vermont's governor, saying that Medicare is ''one of the worst federal programs ever.'') These comments were a prelude to an attack ad that the Gephardt campaign aired Thursday in Iowa featuring Dean's decade-ago comments challenging the administration on Medicare. The new commercial was a strategic response to a Dean ad deriding Gephardt (as well as Kerry and Edwards) for their support of the war in Iraq. But the most intriguing aspect of the Gephardt spot is the way it begins: an off-screen announcer asks ominously, ''How much do you really know about Howard Dean?'' The Dean record does indeed raise questions about the timing of changes in his issue positions. Dean, once a strong supporter of NAFTA, admitted to me in September 2002 that he had changed his mind and started to question the merits of free trade during a conversation with the head of the United Auto Workers union in Iowa. Dean can argue with emotional force that treaties like NAFTA have led to the ''hollowing out'' of the Midwest. But there is something convenient about his converting to the politically popular side of the trade issue just after he launched his campaign for the White House. Yet nothing Dean has done during the campaign is as dramatic as the way that Gephardt reframed himself during the mid-1980s, just before his initial presidential bid. He went from an anti-abortion congressman who supported Ronald Reagan's tax cuts to a populist crusader for tax justice who unequivocally favors abortion rights. Questioned Wednesday about his own political pilgrimage, Gephardt conceded, ''All of us have evolutions on issues. That always happens.'' After that burst of honesty, Gephardt reverted to his original theme as he claimed that Dean's ''dramatic, all-over-the-lot'' position changes jeopardized his ability to challenge Bush. For all the verbal fisticuffs, there is one controversial issue in this campaign that unites Gephardt and Dean: rescinding all the president's tax cuts. Kerry, in particular, has been attacking both candidates for wanting to raise taxes on the middle class. But while Gephardt needs to regain the revenue (an estimated $700 billion between 2005 and 2012) to pay for his expensive health-care plan, Dean wants to roll back the tax code to the Clinton years to move towards a balanced budget. Dean, whose outlook is more complex than the McGovernite stereotype, often seems animated by a cause that the White House and most Democrats have long abandoned: thrift. Sarah Buxton, who was Dean's personal assistant when he was governor and is now the campaign scheduler, says the only time she saw Dean lose his temper was over rock chipping. He was angry over the idea of Vermont spending $50,000 on rock chipping to beautify a stone formation after a road was cut through it. Rock chipping is also an apt description for what Dean's rivals are trying to do to the Democratic front-runner over the final weekend before the caucuses.