Posted on 02/19/2004 12:08:22 AM PST by Timesink
ARTON, Vt.
For Vermonters, the portrayal of their centrist former governor as the left-winger in the Democratic presidential race was the second biggest surprise of Howard Dean's brief span of political glory. The biggest was the apparent transformation of a campaign clod into a fiery orator who inspired a movement.
He never tried that at home.
In Vermont, Dr. Dean was never a very good politician. He was quite a good governor. He was a prudent steward of the state's finances. He expanded social services while reducing taxes. During the debate over civil unions in 2000, he not only kept his word but he also kept his cool.
On the campaign trail, though, Dr. Dean was a dud. Here was a man with neither a thirst for the political jugular nor a sense of timing.
For years, Dr. Dean didn't have to be good. He was lucky. Though he was only a junior legislator, he got elected lieutenant governor in 1986 largely because no one else wanted the job. When Gov. Richard Snelling died of a heart attack in August 1991, the doctor most Vermonters had barely heard of was their governor.
From the start, Dr. Dean's centrism proved a political boon. His first major decision was to allow Governor Snelling's temporary tax increase on upper-income earners to expire on schedule. Here was a fiscally prudent Democrat who could win the votes of independents and even centrist Republicans.
In 1992 no major Republican wanted to challenge him. So John McClaughry did. Mr. McClaughry is a libertarian, meaning he opposes federal milk price supports and minimum-wage laws, not recommended in a low-wage state full of small dairy farms. He managed 23 percent of the vote.
In 1994 and 1996 the Republicans found two men willing to stand for governor. And stand is pretty much all they did. David Kelley, a lawyer, won 19 percent of the vote in 1994. John Gropper, a businessman, managed 22 percent two years later.
Ruth Dwyer really ran in 1998. An energetic state legislator, Ms. Dwyer appealed to rural Vermonters angry over many of the education and environmental laws those liberals down in Montpeculiar had been passing. But she was also a deeply flawed candidate prone to outrageous statements, such as likening a state logging regulation to the Holocaust. She won 41 percent of the vote in 1998.
So she tried again in 2000, but despite anger over the civil unions law, she did worse. Dr. Dean actually had to campaign against Ms. Dwyer, and met her and the Progressive Party candidate, Anthony Pollina, in debates. Mr. Pollina won them all. Dr. Dean was almost always stiff.
So what made him so much better as a candidate for president? Well, practice makes better, if not perfect, and Dr. Dean improved. Besides, after his February 2003 speech to the Democratic National Committee, when he asked why so many Democrats in Washington weren't standing up against the war in Iraq, he had a following.
Millions of rank-and-file Democrats had been wondering the same thing, and they flocked to the Dean cause. For months, he drew adoring crowds. He was on a roll, and as long as it lasted, he was a good campaigner.
But he did not react well to adversity, perhaps because he had known so little of it. When the Rev. Al Sharpton challenged him about his all-white Vermont cabinet, or John Edwards criticized his remarks about Southern voters, he could have responded with a flash of candor or wit, which probably would have defused any controversy.
The experienced national political reporters wondered why he blew it. Up here, no one was surprised.
Jon Margolis, a former national political reporter for the Chicago Tribune, is a contributor to "Howard Dean: A Citizen's Guide."
Dean's results in Vt. gubernatorial races steadily declined the longer he served. The longer people got to know him, the less he was liked.
I think the "Scream" was the key. I would hope that even the democrats realize that the president is a man who is followed by a military officer who has a briefcase filled with nuclear launch codes. The "Scream" should have given pause about Dean's fitness for office not just his "electability."
When the rest of the goofs adopted Dean's rhetoric they no longer needed Dean.
Gonna miss you Howie. *sniff, sniff*
Guess it's time to find a new tagline.
This is a bald-face lie. Dean lied through his teeth during this whole fiasco. The people of VT overwhelmingly rejected the idea, but he pushed it through a sympathetic liberal legislature voted in by a bunch of ex-New York hippies.
What's astounding is that anyone familiar with Dean would think that his campaign wasn't going to implode. I successfully predicted here on FR Dean's demise one year prior to the Iowa caucus, not because I have Crystal Ball, but because it was axiomatic that his presidential bid couldn't be taken seriously for any significant period of time, and that his record (or lack thereof) couldn't bear scrutiny.
Dean's claim to fame was managing the executive branch of government in one of the smallest, highest tax-burden states in the nation, while similtaneously befuddling the Vermont Republican Party and smoozing the reporters from channel 3, the Free Press, and the Rutland Herald. That's not exactly a momentous achievement. And given his lack of foreign policy experience, there was no way Americans in the vast undecided middle would seriously consider him for President in a post-9/11 world.
The ease with which he could be trivialized and ridiculed made his candidacy a non-starter from the get-go; his temporary success being the result of giving voice to the full-throated fury of Democrat activists who think the Supreme Court stole the last election from them.
Howard Dean, the candidate who had the economic know-how of a quarry-hand from Barre, the foriegn policy insights of a patient at Waterbury State Hospital, and the debating skills of a carney barker at the Tunbridge Fair, has had his 15 minutes of fame, and can now safely disappear into the annals of Vermont political lore and obscurity as he so richly deserves.
Dean certainly motivated and mobilized a lot of young pipple, but for them the real joy was the PROCEDURE. Actually voting was a letdown. It was like a giant game to them, a real adrenalin booster. But despite all the buzz about the revolutionary way Deaniacs were organizing, the fact is that there were far too few of them to really make the guy happen.
The Dean movement reminded me a little too much of the Sci-Fi-Convention scene, where participants go - not for the sci-fi, but for the sex. I think when the truth is finally written BY some Deaniacs, we'll find that this youth-for-Dean movement was more about sex than anything else. How better to find and hook up with new partners?
Michael
Last I new, and this could be out of date, the state income tax rate was 25% of the applicable federal rate. And then add to it the state sales tax (6%?), bottle deposit, and the new statewide property tax assessments that are designed to punish the "gold" towns with confiscatory taxes to replace the loathesome Act 60, and what you have is over-taxed nanny-state that is a socialist's paradise.
Ethan Allen would turn over in his grave if he knew....
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