James Lileks:
Does Dean Really Want to Be President? One Wonders, When He Opens His Mouth
The Newhouse News Service ^ | December 3, 2003 | James Lileks
Posted on 12/03/2003 9:45 AM PST by quidnunc
The simplest questions often yield the most revealing answers. Let's pretend we've just asked the Democratic presidential contenders how they feel about apple pie:
John Kerry: Serving in Vietnam, I came to regard apple pie as a symbol of the America for which so many fine men died in a misguided war, and I am determined not to repeat that mistake. And I like it with ice cream.
Dick Gephardt: I will never forget seeing my dad at the kitchen table, shaking his head over the high price of apples, and that's why I'm running today: to give all Americans free and fair access not just to apples, but the whole pie. Government is the crust; people are the filling.
Dennis Kucinich: My dreams are filled with the screams of innocent apples, fed by the millions into industrial mincing machines.
Howard Dean: Well, you have to understand that George Bush not only doesn't get the complex history of splicing and cross-breeding that led to the modern apple, he's alienated the countries in the world whose apple stocks might replenish our own after the worst environmental policies since Catherine the Great threatened the domestic Macintosh-producing regions. You can't solve that by flying to Baghdad and serving pie — which I understand was pecan, an ironic choice, since they've stopped serving pecans at VA hospitals because of Bush cutbacks.
Notice that the perfect hypothetical Dean comment demonstrates his broad, furious intellect and his contempt for Bush without really answering the question.
Why? Because it's beneath him! Ask him the boxers or briefs question, and you might just get a history of textile tariffs, delivered with testy impatience.
So it was an interesting moment on MSNBC's "Hardball" when Chris Matthews asked Gov. Dean whether Osama bin Laden should be tried in the United States or by the World Court.
For a presidential candidate, this is not a difficult question. It requires no long cogitation, no disquisitions about the role of international law from the Wilsonian perspective. It doesn't require any second-guessing.
You say that bin Laden attacked America, and he deserves to be tried there by Americans.That's what you say if you want to be president of the United States, anyway.
Said Howard Dean, in his standard tone of dismissive impatience: "I don't think it makes a lot of difference." Matthews repeated the question. And Dean said it again: "The truth is, it doesn't make a lot of difference."
Try bin Laden in an American court, before an American jury, or try him in The Hague: no difference, monsieur...
CLICK HERE for the rest of that thread.
(If you want OFF - or ON - my "Hugh Hewitt PING list" - please let me know)