Posted on 01/01/2004 10:31:52 AM PST by Davis
Last August, Dr. Howard Dean was among the recipients of a questionnaire sent out by the Quad-City Times of Davenport, Iowa, to all candidates for the Democratic nomination. One question was: "My closest living relative in the armed services is ....……"
Fill in the blank was the idea, see. Not hard. Innocuous, really, irrelevant to a candidate's fitness for office. Carol Mosely-Braun had no trouble with it. She answered that hers was a small family and she had no relatives currently in the armed services.
But Dr. Dean's answer was, "My brother is a POW/MIA in Laos, but is almost certainly dead."
Since the truth is that Dean's brother, Charles, had never been a member of the armed services-–he had been on a year-long round the world tour in 1974 when he disappeared in Laos--and was, indeed, "almost certainly dead," (his remains were identified in November) one is pressed to find a reason for Dr. Dean's strange response. Whatever possessed him to answer falsely when the truth would have served him just as well?
One may note, too, that this answer was not a slip of the tongue, a verbal potatoe uttered under stress, something on the order of Dean's solicitation of the votes of rednecks who drive pickup trucks adorned with Confederate flags. Well, that's not a slip of the tongue either, now that I consider it. So, one wonders why candidate Dean said that and repeated it and defended it and made himself thereby a target of scorn for the conscience of the Democratic party, the Reverend Al Sharpton. Was it mere miscalculation or something more compelling?
In other respects, too, Dean's Southern strategy is baffling. Why did he protest from a podium in Tallahassee that Southerners are overwrought by "race, guns, God, and gays" and then describe himself to the Boston Globe on Christmas Day "...as a committed believer. . .in Jesus Christ [who] said he expects to increasingly include references to Jesus and God in his speeches as he stumps in the South."
Why follow this up with this personal vision of Jesus?
"Christ was someone who sought out people who were disenfranchised, people who were left behind. He fought against self-righteousness of people who had everything. . . . He was a person who set an extraordinary example that has lasted 2000 years, which is pretty inspiring when you think about it."
Why did Dr. Dean publish this extraordinary vision of Jesus as social worker with not even a word of His divine nature? How does one square Dean's self-declared status as committed Christian believer with a Christmas Day message on his official website that manages to mention Jefferson and Franklin Roosevelt but omits the word "Christmas"? (I am indebted to James Taranto's Best of Web for this item.)
Surely, this omission wasn't simply a fortuitous event, an Act of God, so to speak. It must have been humanly deliberate, planned. But why? It certainly doesn't seem calculated to get Dean votes in his run for nomination. Can it be that he regards mentioning Christmas in a Christmas Day web message the first fatal step down the slippery slope leading to theocracy? I remind you that George Will, a pundit of the first water, while quite critical of Dean, tells us that Dean "isn't a fool," so what are we to think?
It would be easy to categorize Dean's declaration of his refusal to prejudge Osama bin Ladin's guilt (recanted a day or so after its first expression) as a temporary lapse induced by fatigue. Likewise, it would be tempting to ascribe to the strain of campaigning this bewildering assertion, "I would not have hesitated to go into Iraq, had the United Nations given us permission." I mean, he must know he isn't running for election to the United Nations-–that there are no votes for him there, and that he was under no duty to say anything at all about such a hypothetical case. So what prompted this barmy outburst?
•••
By now, no doubt, everyone can see the pattern of Dr. Dean's behavior. He is the front-runner for the Democratic party's nomination. Yet he seems compelled to try to defeat himself. Why? Why? Why?
I reject out of hand any notion that Dr. Dean is "conflicted," as the boys on the quarterlies might say, and really doesn't want to be President. My theory–-hold on now, this is my blog, and I have wrestled with Dr. Dean's problem for days now. I have consulted scores of sages and many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore.
The only explanation that fits the facts, all the facts, and nothing but the facts, is that Howard Dean's body has been invaded by the wandering soul of a dead person–-a dybbuk. Yes, you read it right. Dean is possessed by a dybbuk.
Scoff, if you want to. That's my theory, and I'm sticking to it. Contrary views, sent to me by e-mail, atrentino@atrentino.com will be considered for publication in our celebrated Sages' Pages.
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