The conduct of Senate Democrats during judiciary committee
hearings into the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Samuel Alito
not only failed to make a significant dent in the nominee’s chances
but also caused long-simmering tensions between party leaders to
boil over into the open. Sources have confirmed to this reporter
that Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, long
considered the party’s most volatile member, saw the performance of
several senators as a direct challenge to his authority. Dean is
said to have bristled at what he saw as pallid attempts at the kind
of deranged partisan hackery that the former Vermont governor has
specialized in since taking the national stage, telling one
associate angrily, “Those clowns are trying to work my side of the
street!”
In an acrimonious phone call to Senator Joseph Biden, Dean
mocked Biden’s long-winded, intellectually incoherent questions for
Alito as ineffective. “It’s taking you an entire week to capsize
your presidential hopes for ‘08. It’s been done before and done
better by yours truly!” Dean shouted at one point. Recalling the
night of the 2004 Iowa caucuses, the DNC head drew an unflattering
comparison with his ability to cause his own presidential campaign
to self-destruct in a mere matter of minutes. “A couple of nonsense
syllables like ‘Eeeyargh’ screamed at the top of your lungs are
worth half an hour of that blathering about your Irish-American
background, how you hate Princeton and Dianne Feinstein’s
eyeglasses any day of the week. It’s idiosyncratic, sure, but who’s
going to think you’re a raving lunatic after that? No one, that’s
who!” Dean reportedly yelled, adding that Biden was “playing in the
big dog’s yard now” as he slammed down the phone. A chastened Biden
was noticeably more verbose and self-aggrandizing the next day in
an obvious attempt to achieve Dean-like levels of being
simultaneously off-putting and deliriously wrongheaded. It was too
little, too late. Watching on a television in his office, Dean
shook his head, saying at one point, “I think it may be time to
take this bunch to school.”
Striking a somewhat more conciliatory tone in a meeting with
several committee members at DNC headquarters later that afternoon,
Dean offered guarded praise to Ted Kennedy for his recent attempts
at intellectual incoherency: referring to Alito as “Alioto”;
expounding on the “Goldwater presidency.” Still, the DNC head
insisted, more could be done to bring Kennedy’s rhetoric up to what
Democratic observers consider to be the Dean gold standard. “Dean
pointed out how he himself was willing to definitively pass
judgment on Alito as being ‘ethically tone-deaf,’” confided a
source who was in the room. “By itself, that’s not very impressive.
But then the chairman detailed how that comment plays out against a
backdrop of his prior comments about Osama bin Laden, refusing to
pronounce him guilty before a trial, or Saddam Hussein’s ouster,
saying ‘I suppose it was a good thing.’ It was a perfect example of
the classic Dean style: each single jarring note is merely part of
a symphony in the key of a sublime lack of seriousness.”
The answer, Dean insisted, was hard work and long hours of
practice, holding up former vice president Al Gore as an example.
Gore had started out as a wooden and only mildly unbalanced orator
but, since the 2000 election, had progressed to delivering speeches
in a manner that made him appear as if he were only moments away
from swatting himself in the head in order to kill the bees buzzing
around inside. For his speech this week on the “Bush police state,”
Dean revealed that Gore is said to have spent weeks working with
the actor Tom Cruise in order to further perfect a mien of clueless
stridency. Organizers had even toyed with the idea of equipping the
stage with a couch for Gore to jump up and down upon but felt that
the possibility of him gnawing on the cushions during the more
histrionic passages was too great.
As the meeting ended and the attendees milled about in the outer
offices, Dean said in a stage whisper, “Watch and learn.” The
chairman signaled to his closest advisers, collectively known as
the “Rabid Response Team,” and office staff to gather around for
one of Dean’s characteristic off-the-cuff speeches. These remarks
typically result in giving party morale a shot in the foot and this
occasion was no exception. “With the Alito confirmation hearings in
progress, I know that all us here want to be soldiers in the battle
against a conservative takeover of our courts,” Dean opined. “And
to echo sentiments I recently expressed regarding Iraq, the idea
that we’re going to win is just plain wrong. So hold your heads
high and keep fighting! Keep fighting this already completely,
completely lost cause. You’ve got to believe in victory! In this
case, it’s the other guy’s victory but keep believing
nevertheless.”
“If only we could terrorize them in their homes in the dead of
night the way real soldiers do,” called a gloomy male voice, one
distinguished by a slight Boston accent.
“Remember,” Dean continued, “all is not lost until we lose and
lose big, which is something that’s unavoidably going to happen.
Now, let’s go get ‘em! But by getting them, I mean, getting them
only up to a point that is far, far from winning which, for us,
isn’t going to happen. All right, carry on.”
As the assembled aides straggled listlessly away, Dean offered
committee members a parting shot, “You’re all on notice. No more
half-measures. Until you can reliably come up with the kind of
ill-advised, off-the-wall comments that make Tim Russert put his
head in his hands during commercial breaks and fill the air with
the sound of moderate Democrats across the country tearing up their
DNC fundraising letters, I’m going to be on you every second. Now,
does anyone need another one of my patented anti-pep talks?”
To a man, sources report, committee members raced for the
elevator.
