Glad to hear your dad's on the mend!
More serious, Dean's foes say, is his penchant for adjusting his positions on issues, especially since he's hawking himself as a nonpolitical Yankee with a backbone as thick as the trunk of a Vermont maple. Indeed, on the war in Iraq, he was opposed from the start and has wavered very little. On other issues, though, there's been more swaying in the breeze. Years ago he was a supporter of Jimmy Carter's against the insurgency of Sen. Ted Kennedy and was, therefore, on the pro-business side of the party; now Dean rails against Carter's political descendants in the Democratic Leadership Council. Dean was for NAFTA and GATT, but now opposes any further free-trade agreements unless they have higher labor and environmental standards. He once thought it might be wise to raise the retirement age to protect Social Security; now he rules that out. Dean once thought Medicare was a miserable, poorly administered program; now he wants to save and expand it.
In Dean's NEWSWEEK interview, motion seemed evident in his attitude toward Osama bin Laden. In late December, Dean said he believed the "old-fashioned notion" that, if captured, the master terrorist should be bound over for a jury trial. A few hours later he issued a statement saying that bin Laden should, in fact, be dealt with by the same kind of military-run tribunal Saddam Hussein is expected to face. Last week he told NEWSWEEK that, if the American military has bin Laden in its sights, soldiers should kill him. "Of course we ought to off Osama," he said. "I was asked a hypothetical question about what would happen if Osama was captured. If we can get Osama, we ought to get Osama, however we can get Osama."