YET ANOTHER DEAN ARTICLE

Meet Howard Dean (Lexington, 26/06/2003, The Economist - subscription required)

HOWARD DEAN admits that when he decided to run for president even his mother said it was preposterous. He meant nothing to anybody except his fellow Vermonters and a handful of health-care bores. Now, he is the Democrat to watch. He is selling himself as the embodiment of authenticity: an anti-politician who is not afraid to express outrage. And he is turning his sharp-edged personality into an asset, proof that he is not just another blow-dried mediocrity from the Beltway. The result is huge enthusiasm. “Howard Dean” bumper stickers are replacing “Peace Now” stickers on the nation's Volvos. In the first quarter of this year he raised more money in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Beverly Hills than Mr Kerry or Mr Lieberman.

Mr Dean is actually rather an odd champion for the party's Democratic wing. As governor of Vermont for 11 years the doctor-turned-politician was a pragmatic New Democrat in the Clinton mould. He resisted irresponsible spending increases, fought with the state's Progressive Party and vigorously upheld the right of Vermonters to carry concealed guns. He even defied a national trend by changing his mind in favour of the death penalty. He continues to sell himself as a “deficit hawk” and “balanced budget fiend” (the Bush fiscal policy, he says, is modelled on Argentina's). His health-care plan is much more market-driven than the Clinton administration's plan, and much cheaper than Dick Gephardt's ($88 billion compared with $214 billion). His views on the Middle East are pretty close to the Israeli lobby's. He is against medical marijuana laws and the anti-global-warming Kyoto protocol.

So would Mr Dean be able to repackage himself as a centrist if he won the nomination? Hardly. His views on guns count for little compared with his strident opposition to war in Iraq and his determination to repeal “every dime” of Mr Bush's tax cuts. For good or ill, Mr Dean has decided to climb on the back of the leftist tiger. He cannot climb off without being eaten alive. On Capitol Hill Democrats worry that a Dean candidacy will not only allow Mr Bush to sweep the electoral college but also to cull vulnerable Democrats in the conservative south and the middle-American heartland. What chance has a liberal north-easterner backed by money from Beverly Hills and Harvard Yard of helping the Democrats in vulnerable Senate seats in Arkansas, South Carolina and the two Dakotas?

Besides, Mr Dean does not have to win for his party to lose. His insurgency is already tugging other candidates to the left. Hardly a day goes past without the other front-runners producing some new piece of populist rhetoric. This week Mr Gephardt promised that as president he would use executive orders to countermand “any wrong thing that the Supreme Court does”. The problem for the Democrats is not just the man from Vermont but the rank-and-file rage that he embodies. Far too many Democrats are just too angry to think straight at the moment. And far too many would rather go down to glorious defeat than make the irritating compromises necessary for power.

2004 = 1932. Posted by M Ali Choudhury at June 28, 2003 4:23 PM