Dull, But Still a Draw (Poster Boy For Alcoholism Analyzes Howard Dean)

Howard Dean, who runs for president in the Democratic primaries early next year, spoke to a crowd here that appeared larger than the population of Montpelier, the capital of Dean's home state of Vermont.

His speech was on Tuesday night in Bryant Park, which runs from the back of the Fifth Avenue library, whose soft amber lights in the back windows were calming. The park then goes out a full block to the nervous, loud, speeding white light stream of traffic on Sixth Avenue. In the park were 10,000, and maybe more, waving blue "Dean" signs.

No politician in the land with a working larynx can draw this many to stand and hear a speech. Bush needs a captured crowd at a military base. On his own, he couldn't get half of what Dean draws on a weekday night.

Yet more proof that Jimmy Breslin's mouth rarely leaves the neck of a liquor bottle.

"Last May, I heard him say that the $350-billion tax cut was going to the rich and it undercuts things like schools. This was the first time I ever heard anybody say it...."

....Except for just about every other demogagic Demmycrat politician.

Once before this in this campaign, I stood in a hallway and looked into a large crowded apartment and saw my hero, Bob Graham, dissolve on the living room floor. He was a lovely, smart man who connected with nobody.

Yes, during another deep drinking binge, Jimmy Breslin proclaimed that Bob Graham would definitely be elected our next president. You can read that drunken ranting at this thread: WHY GRAHAM WILL WIN IT.

When I mentioned to people with me that Dean's shirt sleeves were too contrived, they mentioned that I had liked Robert Kennedy, who campaigned in this same Bryant Park in rolled-up shirt sleeves.

"He was Catholic," I said.

Huh! How many slugs of bourbon did it take Breslin to come up with that "brilliant" analysis? If you're a WASP it's contrived if you wear shirt sleeves but it's NOT contrived if you're a Catholic? It seems like Jimmy is deriving a lot of campaign theology out of the bottle.

The Bush people say Dean is the candidate they want. And the southern Democrats, who have a tubby clerk, Al Fromm, speaking for them, say that Dean is this year's McGovern. They had Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana say that Dean would be suicide.

Sober up, Jimmy, and smell the Kool-Aid. BTW, I do have to give Jimmy credit for that funny description of Al From---"a tubby clerk." Sometimes even pickled brain cells do come up with good one-liners.

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