W
wonderwench
Guest
Mark Steyn's excellent analysis of Howard Dean's transformation from Dr. Bland to Mr. Angry. Neither personality is compelling to the moderate voters needed to win the election.
Is this (to use a phrase America's headline writers have become suddenly fond of) Howard's end? A month ago, Dr Howard Dean was reckoned to have the Democratic presidential nomination locked up: he was set to win the Iowa caucuses tomorrow, the New Hampshire primary a week later, and he was cocky enough to have already moved on to courting the big Southern states. Instead, the former Vermont governor is stalled in a three-way tie in Iowa, and in New Hampshire the wacky general Wesley Clark is said to be rising fast while the Dean balloon slowly deflates.
When precisely did the hot-air balloon receive the fatal prick? Was it when Al Gore decided to endorse Dean and thereby infected him with his own surefire losing streak? Was it when Dean pooh-poohed Saddam's capture and his rival Joe Lieberman said the Governor was living in his own "spider hole of denial"?
Or is the real reason for the Governor's decline that even among Democrats there is a limited market for the ferocious anti-Bush anger Howard Dean tapped into so effectively last year? With his sleeves rolled up to his armpits and veins a-popping in his forehead, Dean has been urging Democrats to "take back your country". And for a while it worked. Six months ago, looking like a raging finger-puppet with a suit stuck on, he was raking in a huge pile of money from the Hollywood crowd and huge numbers of volunteers from young college kids he had improbably fired with a passion for politics.
He was sold as this year's John McCain: the outsider with the independent streak. In 2000, McCain was like a coiled spring - that side of him the thin-skinned Dean does very well. But when you went to a McCain rally there would be tributes to veterans and the Senator would cast his appeal in the kind of language few politicians can use without embarrassment - calls to service, our country's noblest ideals, debts of honour to those who wore the uniform, etc.
Dean, who got a deferment from Vietnam because of a bad back and then spent the next few months on a prolonged ski vacation in Aspen, can't match McCain's resume and doesn't try. When you go to a Dean angerthon, it's all negative: anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-rich, anti-tax cuts. And, in the end, when you've sated your angry base, the non-deranged members of the electorate generally want something positive, or at any rate a little less snarly. There is a world of difference between Clinton saying he feels your pain and Dean saying he feels your rage.
What is mystifying to those of us who have been around Dean a while is that the Howlin' Howard of the past year bears no relation to the guy we thought we knew. From my perch in New Hampshire, I watched him across the river governing Vermont through the 1990s and, although he was certainly mean and arrogant, the chief characteristic of his political persona was its blandness.
I like to listen to WDEV Radio Vermont when I am driving - it has great shows like Music to Go to the Dump By and the Old Squire, who does epic doggerel about the North Country weather. And for 10 years the absolute worst day in the WDEV calendar was when they'd pre-empt this fine line-up to go live to the Capitol in Montpelier for Governor Dean's State of the State Address. He would mumble through his script, sticking to the text, barely making eye contact; his forearms stayed clothed. But like a Vermont cow that has picked up BSE, Howard the Harmless Holstein has jumped the gate and turned into Mad How. (more)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/.../ixop.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=9500
Is this (to use a phrase America's headline writers have become suddenly fond of) Howard's end? A month ago, Dr Howard Dean was reckoned to have the Democratic presidential nomination locked up: he was set to win the Iowa caucuses tomorrow, the New Hampshire primary a week later, and he was cocky enough to have already moved on to courting the big Southern states. Instead, the former Vermont governor is stalled in a three-way tie in Iowa, and in New Hampshire the wacky general Wesley Clark is said to be rising fast while the Dean balloon slowly deflates.
When precisely did the hot-air balloon receive the fatal prick? Was it when Al Gore decided to endorse Dean and thereby infected him with his own surefire losing streak? Was it when Dean pooh-poohed Saddam's capture and his rival Joe Lieberman said the Governor was living in his own "spider hole of denial"?
Or is the real reason for the Governor's decline that even among Democrats there is a limited market for the ferocious anti-Bush anger Howard Dean tapped into so effectively last year? With his sleeves rolled up to his armpits and veins a-popping in his forehead, Dean has been urging Democrats to "take back your country". And for a while it worked. Six months ago, looking like a raging finger-puppet with a suit stuck on, he was raking in a huge pile of money from the Hollywood crowd and huge numbers of volunteers from young college kids he had improbably fired with a passion for politics.
He was sold as this year's John McCain: the outsider with the independent streak. In 2000, McCain was like a coiled spring - that side of him the thin-skinned Dean does very well. But when you went to a McCain rally there would be tributes to veterans and the Senator would cast his appeal in the kind of language few politicians can use without embarrassment - calls to service, our country's noblest ideals, debts of honour to those who wore the uniform, etc.
Dean, who got a deferment from Vietnam because of a bad back and then spent the next few months on a prolonged ski vacation in Aspen, can't match McCain's resume and doesn't try. When you go to a Dean angerthon, it's all negative: anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-rich, anti-tax cuts. And, in the end, when you've sated your angry base, the non-deranged members of the electorate generally want something positive, or at any rate a little less snarly. There is a world of difference between Clinton saying he feels your pain and Dean saying he feels your rage.
What is mystifying to those of us who have been around Dean a while is that the Howlin' Howard of the past year bears no relation to the guy we thought we knew. From my perch in New Hampshire, I watched him across the river governing Vermont through the 1990s and, although he was certainly mean and arrogant, the chief characteristic of his political persona was its blandness.
I like to listen to WDEV Radio Vermont when I am driving - it has great shows like Music to Go to the Dump By and the Old Squire, who does epic doggerel about the North Country weather. And for 10 years the absolute worst day in the WDEV calendar was when they'd pre-empt this fine line-up to go live to the Capitol in Montpelier for Governor Dean's State of the State Address. He would mumble through his script, sticking to the text, barely making eye contact; his forearms stayed clothed. But like a Vermont cow that has picked up BSE, Howard the Harmless Holstein has jumped the gate and turned into Mad How. (more)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/.../ixop.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=9500
