Howard Dean is Who?
By Byron LaMasters
Who is Howard Dean? He's been compared to Bill Clinton, John McCain, Jimmy Carter, George McGovern, Bill Bradley, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Ronald Reagan, Ross Perot, Harry Truman, Josiah Bartlett, Barry Goldwater, Steve Forbes, Jerry Brown, William Jennings Bryan and George W. Bush.
Thought you heard them all? In a column yesterday in the Dallas Morning News, William McKenzie makes the case for John Anderson:
Mr. Dean is galvanizing young people. They are dropping everything and setting out to his headquarters. Deaniacs are bonded together by their passion for doing what they think is right. The Bushites shouldn't scoff at that. Idealism will make Dean supporters fight until the last.
Mr. Anderson had a similar effect on young people in 1980. They saw the centrist as the alternative to Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Doonesbury loved pricking our idealism, depicting rookie aides as running the Anderson campaign asunder. Still, there was a band-of-brothers feel, much like the Dean campaign possesses.
Mr. Dean is filled with righteous anger. The man is convinced, I mean convinced, that Mr. Bush is part of the axis of evil. There is nothing like a little moral clarity to get your juices going – and to keep those checks coming in.
Mr. Anderson's angry-man performance in Iowa's January 1980 debate turned our headquarters topsy-turvy. Phone calls came in like machine-gun fire after he soared in that debate. So did the money, as he became the Republican who didn't want the GOP to head into kookdom.
Mr. Dean is popular among suburban professionals in the Northern half of the country. When the Vermont doctor rolls up those sleeves and starts going after the right wing, he is talking the language of suburban boomers from Westchester County to Seattle.
Mr. Anderson also found a ready audience there. Suburban professionals around Boston, San Francisco and Chicago loved him.
Mr. Dean is seen as a liberal star, although his gubernatorial credentials are fairly centrist.
Mr. Anderson also became the darling of liberals, when he actually had a moderate voting record. He represented blue-collar Rockford, Ill., for 20 years, for heaven's sake.
Interesting points, interesting comparisons, but I think that it just proves the bigger point that you can basically compare Howard Dean to anyone. Ultimately, Roger Simin has it right on target. The candidate that Howard Dean most resembles is Howard Dean. For better or for worse...
Posted by Byron LaMasters at December 31, 2003 04:29 PM
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A better John Anderson comparison would be Ralph Nader.
In the end, all Anderson did was take votes away from Jimmy Carter and help elect Ronald Reagan. A conspiracy theorist could make a case for Anderson being a GOP Trojan horse.
Hell, rather than preventing the GOP from heading "into kookdom", Anderson unwittingly supplied the box cutters that hijacked the party there.
The only real purpose of an election is to chose people for public office. You don't vote for somebody to make a statement, or to express indignation, or to let your friends know how cool and trendy you are. Those things are done by putting up web sites, posting signs around your home, going to demonstrations, and wearing t-shirts and buttons.
Political illiteracy in the U.S. is caused by the woeful state of civics education. But nobody in power is about to risk disturbing the status quo by teaching future voters how government and politics really work.
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Also, I'm amused by this passage:
Deaniacs are bonded together by their passion for doing what they think is right. The Bushites shouldn't scoff at that. Idealism will make Dean supporters fight until the last.
Does anybody here claim that the Bushies aren't bonded together by THEIR passion? Never mind that it's a passion for greed, privilege, unilateralism, and religious fundamentalism. lol
And has anybody forgotten the post-election of 2000? Then the Bushies didn't just fight to the last, but beyond the last.
This talk about "passion" and "idealism" is very heartwarming. But as NY Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof recently wrote: The heart is a wonderful organ, but so is the brain.
