Posted on 11/18/2003 9:32:11 AM PST by .cnI redruM
Candidate: Howard Dean
Category: Foreign Policy
Grade: D
Howard Dean's new ad in Iowa is a lot like the candidate himself: blunt. The ad shows a picture of Congressman Richard Gephardt, Dean's chief rival, standing with President Bush at the White House on October 2--the day Bush and his supporters announced that they had secured congressional support for waging war with Iraq. Says the voice-over, "October 2002. Dick Gephardt agrees to co-author the Iraq war resolution, giving George Bush the authority to go to war. A week later, with Gephardt's support, it passes Congress."
Next the narrator mentions that Gephardt also voted to support Bush's request of $87 billion to rebuild Iraq. Now it's Dean's turn to talk: "I opposed the war in Iraq. And I'm against spending another $87 billion there."
The ad provoked a seemingly hysterical response from the Gephardt campaign, which called it the first negative ad in the history of the Iowa caucuses. Really? The entire history? And whether or not that's true, Dean's campaign was ready with a good answer: "It's an honest disagreement on an important matter of policy." That's absolutely correct: The ad is both substantive and accurate, particularly since Gephardt's support for the war resolution really was critical to its eventual passage. The response also clever, in that it's the very same defense Gephardt has invoked to justify his attacks on Dean's Medicare record.
But an advertisement can be substantive, truthful, clever--yet still be troubling. And this one is. The problem is that phrase, "I'm against spending another $87 billion there."
The first time reporters asked Dean about that vote, months ago, he hedged--saying he wanted to support the troops, but also wanted to make sure Bush financed the spending by reducing tax cuts for the wealthy. That was consistent with his earlier statements, indicating his determination to maintain the U.S. presence in Iraq--even though he opposed the war--because it was too late to pull out.
As it became clear that Bush would do no such thing, Dean announced that he would have voted against the authorization. And I, for one, thought it was a defensible stand if only out of tactical necessity. Voting "no" (or threatening to do so) in order to force Bush to come up with more reasonable funding means playing hardball, but unfortunately that's the way this administration works. The important thing is that Dean was still careful to say he believed it was right to send the money, just as long as Bush found a way to pay for it.
But Dean's statement in the ad has no such nuance. And while candidates deserve a little slack for such omissions when ads run only 30 seconds, this quote seems deliberately designed to play upon the worst instincts of voters--the desire to cut and run from Iraq. It's no secret that Americans overwhelmingly opposed the $87 billion; it's probably the foreign policy issue on which they oppose Bush most explicitly. But responsible leaders shouldn't pander to this sentiment, because it undercuts the slim support for seeing things through in Iraq. Even Dean understands that's something the United States must do. Or, at least, he once did.
It must be a secret, considering the poll numbers.
Dean's camp and their cronies must have some sort of "Double Secret Probation" poll they took amongst themselves to come up with this argument....
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