Doctor in the House? (GREAT ARTICLE)

[T_i_B]

VERY good, long article from the UK Observer. Make of this what you will.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,1120202,00.html

Dean tells the story of sitting at his desk, reading a newspaper full of bad news, and suddenly asking himself if he was just going to complain... or do something about it. The answer led to a presidential campaign that began far below the radar of national politics. Slipping over the Vermont border, Dean addressed tiny gatherings. He worked the local media. His stroke of genius was hiring Joe Trippi, a former Silicon Valley mogul, as his campaign manager. That ensured the exploitation of cyberspace. And then there was his passion, which seeped through whatever medium he used. By the time Dean burst on to the national scene last summer, with more cash than any of his rivals, he was already old news to the legions of tech-savvy supporters who had been following him on the internet. It was a classic combination of new and old, of pounding the streets while working the inboxes.

In any US election there is one simple rule: money wins. Against all odds, Dean now has the money. His campaign has raked in at least $25m, more than any other. Now, controversially, Dean has foregone capped state funding in the hope of being able to raise more alone. That sabotaged years of Democrat efforts to take the cash out of politics, but Dean's supporters argue that when you are facing Bush - who also waives state funding - you have no choice.

If Dean becomes President, America could be rebuilt in the style of the good doctor's Vermont. But to those eager to portray Dean as a wild-eyed liberal (in a country where liberal is a dirty word) Dean's record in Vermont comes as a surprise. He governed as a fiscal conservative, angering the left-wing of his state Democratic party. He insisted on a balanced budget and set up a 'rainy day' fund for the state's surplus. Although he signed into law gay 'civil unions' giving homosexual partners the same legal status as married couples, he only did so after a court decision recommending it. He dislikes gun control (Vermont is a hunting state), and has even won plaudits from the National Rifle Association. He promises action on environmental issues but knows he will never end America's love affair with the car. 'I have seen the car park. It is full of SUVs,' he tells each audience he speaks too. 'We have SUVs in Vermont too. Nobody's going to throw Americans out of their SUVs.'

This is the future. For a look at the past, one need go no further than the faltering Joe Lieberman. He should have been a frontrunner. He was Al Gore's running mate in 2000 and is a moderate who would appeal to the middle ground. But this is not a year for moderation. Even Gore has plumped for Dean.

[slinkerwink]

1. great article!

[quaker bill]

2. Excellent article

The brits get it.

[T_i_B]

7. Well some of us get it

Although the idea of a grass-roots left wing movement is certainly not one that the likes of Tony Blair like the look of.

[cthrumatrix]

3. funny how the good news comes again from outside the US media...

our media is "sold out"...does anyone see the trend...it could be like this all year

[Kellanved]

9. want more?

Here: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/english/0,1518,280608,00.html

[Padraig18]

4. What a GREAT article.

Howard Dean is more 'in touch' with ordinary Americans than * could even conceive of being, and this is one reason his message is resonating with the voters. :)

[JNelson6563]

5. Excellent article

Thanks for posting! :hi:

Julie

[dd123]

6. Love those Brits!

Their press is so much better than ours. What is up with that?

[T_i_B]

8. UK Guardian is doing lots of pro-Dean stuff.

I do tend to post whatever decent stuff I can find in the UK press about the US primaries but today the UK Guardian does seem to be quite liking the Doctor. First here is an opinion piece about how Dean is improving US politics

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1120733,00.html

Dean's bid for the Democratic nomination is more than just an electoral campaign. It has all the attributes of a movement - a bottom-up surge of like-minded, motivated people who have discovered they all have something in common and are now mobilising in order to act on it. Around the country strangers are meeting in towns and cities in their tens and twenties, donating money in $10 and $20 bills and coming away with not just posters and badges but "to do" lists. "Participation in politics is increasingly based on the chequebook, as money replaces time," argued Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone. Dean has managed to get people giving time and money.

Dean is not the most leftwing candidate in the race by any standard. He is pro-gun, pro-death penalty and a fiscal conservative. But he is the most leftwing candidate to prove sufficiently attractive to sufficient numbers of people to be pivotal in the process. However, in order to run against George Bush he must first run against the Democratic party leadership. And in order to win that battle he has had to galvanise and energise entirely new constituencies that were either dormant or non-existent. As such, his insurgent candidacy marks the first electoral awakening of the growing ranks of the disaffected and disenfranchised - a group not confined to America but spread over most of the western world. Over the past decade, they have protested, petitioned or just grumbled in each other's company. But the one thing they have not managed, until now, is to make a decisive difference at the ballot box. Instead, they have chosen between voting for parties they no longer believe in, or parties they know cannot win, or just not voting at all.

In the Dean campaign we are gaining a glimpse of the organisational methods that could bond the disparate and disenchanted at a local and a national level, whether in Germany against Schröder's economic reforms or in Britain against Blair's foreign policy and tuition fees. It does not answer the question as to whether activists should stay in those parties, form new ones or join others. But it does indicate how, wherever they end up, they might mobilise large numbers of people effectively at the polls.

The fact that Dean has become the focal point for this energy matters. His winning the nomination would be roughly the equivalent of Ken Livingstone taking over the Labour party. Not that Dean has the same politics as Livingstone. But, broadly speaking, they stand a similar distance to the left of their party establishments and - recent reconciliations notwithstanding - are equally loathed by their party bosses.

And a piece about the Real Howard Dean from an acquaintance.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1121018,00.html

I write this as a Vermonter who has known Dean personally (as an acquaintance) for many years. Several of my friends worked with him closely when he was governor, as members of his staff or advisers. Only a few weeks ago I had dinner with him and he brought up the McGovern comparison himself, drawing a chuckle from everywhere in the room. Dean is, let me tell you, no George McGovern. He is actually the furthest thing from a typical north-eastern liberal that can be imagined.

Dean is, I think, a pragmatist without an obvious ideological bent. Trained as a physician, he studies a given situation, assesses the facts, and makes a diagnosis. As governor, he was remarkably decisive, even combative, willing to make cuts in healthcare and education to balance the budget. On the other hand, he strongly backed the idea of universal healthcare, and made sure that medical assistance for Vermont's children under the age of 18 was guaranteed - a real achievement. Famously, he supported the idea of civil unions for gay couples in Vermont, although he did so rather quietly, signing the act presented to him by the legislature behind closed doors. In a sense, this pragmatic governor simply went along with the majority opinion in Vermont, where a substantial gay population exists.

It is worth recalling that Dean was elected governor of Vermont five times in a row - a tribute to his appeal in this largely rural state. Indeed, there are many more cows than people in Vermont, which has a population of just over half a million people. Pick-up trucks are the vehicle of choice around here, and deer hunting is immensely popular. Dean is popular with the hunters. Indeed, the National Rifle Association has bestowed upon him its highest rating. Every citizen, in Dean's view, has the right (if not the duty) to blow the back end off a buck or doe. Few liberal politicians in the US, I should note, have ever received such positive attention from the National Rifle Association.

During his years as governor, Dean was mainly known as a fierce budget cutter, a proponent of fiscal responsibility. I remember complaining loudly to friends that he was just a Republican in disguise. He balanced the state's budget year after year, even though Vermont does not require a balanced budget, as do many states. My friends in the environmental movement were often unhappy with Dean's refusals to support their cause if it meant spending money or doing anything that might inhibit the growth of business in our state. Dean's own father was a well-known figure on Wall Street, and he grew up among business people, in New York City and Long Island. He understands them well, and is genuinely in sympathy with their needs: not something one could say of George McGovern or most liberal Democrats.

It was, of course, Dean's unambiguous stand against the Iraq war that lifted him into the status of front-runner in the Democratic primaries. He has been able to focus the anger of his party faithful, who have found Bush's "preemptive" war intolerable. Yet it would be a grave mistake to think of Dean as a left-leaning pacifist of some kind. If anything, he is a warrior by nature. He says he would have invaded Afghanistan and attacked al-Qaida without getting waylaid by war in Iraq. As president, he would probably work closely with the UN, as he understands that this is the best way to cultivate American allies in Europe and elsewhere.

[Lisa0825]

10. Great article!!!

Thanks for posting!!!
:yourock:

[NashVegas]

11. Tee-Hee - More Whining from Howie Kurtz

'It is amazing how quickly "frontrunner-itis" sets in,' lamented Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post. 'I remember him a year back when he would have been desperate for the attention.'