The talking heads’ leitmotif of the moment is the admonition
that Republicans should not “misunderestimate” newly crowned DNC
Chairman Howard Dean. “Say what you want about the former governor
of Vermont, but there really is nobody on the liberal landscape
that approaches his effectiveness in rousing the rabble,” writes Noel Sheppard in ChronWatch. “Say what
you want about Gov. Dean, he’s an organizer,” added Senate Minority
Leader Harry Reid.
Leave aside for a moment the fact that “say what you want
about…” is political speak for, “look, I know the guy is a
jackass, but…” “Misunderestimating” Dean would be impossible. He
is a clown. Less than one month in office, he has already provided
a lifetime worth of copy for right-of-center bloggers and
interested journalists.
Take, for example, Dean’s remarks at a DNC event with members of
the party’s African-American caucus. Dean, who wanted to be the
presidential candidate for “guys with Confederate flags in their
pickups,” looked around the room and asked whether anyone thought
the Republican National Committee could get so many minorities
together in one place. “Only if they had the hotel staff in there,”
Dr. Dean said, answering his own question.
The new chairman then engaged in a foreign policy debate with
neo-con Richard Perle in Portland, Oregon. At first Dean requested
a media blackout. “DNC Chair Howard Dean has declared a news
blackout of his appearance and requested the media not quote,
record, and/or paraphrase his remarks,” event coordinator Gabrielle
Williams wrote in an e-mail sent to news agencies that morning. “We
apologize for the late notice, but we were just informed of this
request.” Minutes later (minutes!) the erratic Dean opened the
event up to the press. He was right the first time. Seconds into
the debate, a spectator (presumably a Dean supporter) was hauled
away by security screaming, “Liar! Liar! Liar!” Powerless against
the neo-con conspiracy, the protester eventually threw his shoe at
Mr. Perle.
And over a year later, we’re still talking about the notorious
scream. Last week Washington and Lee University professor Edward
Wasserman wrote an op-ed in the Miami Herald in
which he attempts to argue the “Dean Scream” clip was a media
“fraud.”
Last year, a young cable news producer attended one of
our twice-yearly Ethics Institutes at Washington and Lee
University, in which students and journalists gather to discuss
newsroom wrongdoing. He brought two clips.
The first was the familiar pool footage of Dean in Iowa. The
candidate filled the screen, no supporters were visible. Crowd
noise was silenced by the microphone he held, which deadened
ambient sounds. You saw only him and heard only his inexplicable
screaming.
The second clip was the same speech taped by a supporter on the
floor of the hall. The difference was stunning. The place was
packed. The noise was deafening. Dean was on the podium, but you
couldn’t hear him. The roar from his supporters was drowning him
out.
Dean was no longer scary, unhinged, volcanic, over the top. He
was like the coach of a would-be championship NCAA football team at
a pre-game rally, trying to be heard over a gym full of determined,
wildly enthusiastic fans. I saw energy, not lunacy.
Um, yes … It requires a red-faced, spittle-spewing recitation
of all fifty states to declare over an angry throng, “we came in
third, we’ll try to do better in New Hampshire.” What Wasserman
and, for that matter, everyone neglects to point out when
flagellating the media for the “Dean scream” is that the Dean
campaign melted down before the scream; specifically when
the angry little man from Vermont shouted down a poor dirt farmer
in Iowa and declared, “George Bush is not my neighbor!”
WE ARE, OF COURSE, reminded daily that Howard Dean was once
endorsed by the NRA. But did you know he’s also a “fiscal
conservative”? Well okay, not really. But that’s the talking point
du jour, and the mainstream press has been rather
uncritical in reporting it. Unfortunately, for Dr. Dean the facts
get in the way.
The town of Killington, Vermont, has actually voted to secede
from the Green Mountain State and has asked New Hampshire to annex
them. Why? Because of a wildly liberal property tax scheme called
Act 60, which was principally implemented by Howard Dean. Act 60 is
a “rob Peter to pay Paul’s property taxes” Robin Hood scheme that
got socialist novelist John Irving to deride Dean’s plan as
“socialist.”
Let’s consider some real fiscally conservative Governors.
Arnold? Rick Perry? Jeb Bush? Even Bill Richardson? Not one of
these guys — Republican or Democrat — has a town in his state
that is trying to secede because of a confiscatory tax
structure.
Let me say this again: a town in Vermont is trying to secede
because the tax structure implemented chiefly by Howard Dean is
“socialist” and unfair.
When Dean ran for President of the United States, he took his
economic liberalism to the national stage. Dean proposed repealing
President Bush’s tax cuts. All of them. Dean, in effect, ran under
the promise to raise taxes on every living man, woman and child
(and even dead men, women and children.) I don’t care if your name
is Lynndie England, you cannot torture the definition of “fiscal
conservative” enough to include higher taxes on everyone in
America.
On the spending side of the ledger, Dean again fails any serious
test of “fiscal conservatism.” According to the National Taxpayers
Union, candidate Dean’s economic plan would have increased annual
federal outlays by $222.9 billion. Dean’s not a spending cutter,
either.
Ah, but occasionally pundits will confuse “fiscally
conservative” with that overused, utterly meaningless phrase
“fiscally responsible.” “Fiscally responsible” is that modifier
which is generally applied to various deficit-reduction packages
that successfully hike taxes on people, but never seem to erase
deficits. Anywho, is Dean “fiscally responsible”? No. The same NTU
study says Dean’s plan would have ballooned the budget deficit,
primarily on the back of his ill-conceived socialized healthcare
scheme.
The strategy now appears to be to distance Howard Dean from the
press. David Freddoso pointed out in National Review Online
last week that Howard Dean was behaving like a “stealth
chairman.”
Dean’s handlers have done everything humanly possible
to keep him away from reporters’ questions. At the DNC winter
meeting where he was elected chairman, Dean was shuttled out the
back door from a “meet the candidates” session ten minutes before
reporters were to be allowed entry. He disappeared from his own
victory party that Saturday night at Capitol City Brewing Co. after
his brief speech, in the first 15 minutes.
Based on a review of transcripts, his last television interview
appears to have been a full month ago — with George Stephanopoulos
on January 23 — before his victory as chairman had become
inevitable. At the same time as RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman is
interviewing with Judy Woodruff almost every week on CNN, Dean
tried to block media coverage of his Portland, Ore. debate on Iraq
against Pentagon adviser Richard Perle. Dean’s DNC seems intent on
outdoing the Bush White House in media discipline.
Instead of working the media, Dean kicked off his
much-ballyhooed tour of “Red America.” But the tour got off to an
unfortunate start for the chairman. In Kansas, Democrat Governor
Kathleen Sebelius made sure she was all booked up and unable to
meet with him. Dean was reduced to begging yokels to do more to
help the cause. “I’m asking you to run for the school board, I’m
asking you to run for the city council, I’m asking you to run for
library trustee.” Pity the poor rural Kansan when the Dean-inspired
Democrat candidate for dog catcher busts out into a chimerical
conspiracy theory about the neo-cons at the next community
candidate forum.
I remind you. Dean has been the Chairman of the Democrat
National Committee for two weeks. It’s going to be a fun four
years.
