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Volume CXXXIII, Number 1 |
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What Dean has to offer and why it's enough to win
JAMES BAUMBERGER
ORIENT STAFF
Six months ago, Howard Dean was barely a factor. Nobody thought a liberal former governor from a small New England state could actually shake things up in the democratic nomination battle for the 2004 presidential election. But the meteoric rise of this dark horse candidate has challenged the very assumptions that seemed to doom his candidacy from the beginning.
Dean has defied political experts by raising large sums of money over the internet, developing massive grassroots support, and gaining a commanding lead over John Kerry in the key primary state of New Hampshire. There is no denying now that Howard Dean is a serious candidate, if not the outright frontrunner.
Initially, his candidacy was greeted with skepticism. The biggest strike against Dean is that he's too liberal to win a general election. Conventional wisdom says that the most centrist candidate will win. Dean is admittedly more extreme than the other high-profile candidates, but he has a wealth of advantages that the others lack.
A great deal of Dean's appeal as a candidate comes from his willingness to take principled stands on issues outside of the realm of centrist politics. He appears removed from the race to the middle in which his fellow candidates are often engaged. For instance, Dean's opposition to the Bush administration's war on Iraq came during a time when the public overwhelmingly supported the war effort. This gutsy position showed that Dean has a backbone, something many will concede the Democratic Party has been lacking recently.
It is this sense of principle and gravitas that has helped Dean attract an army of enthusiastic volunteers and raise more money than anyone thought he could. Simply put, he excites people in a way the other candidates do not. Despite his leftward leanings, Dean will have the ability to excite even independents like other candidates cannot.
Can anyone honestly get excited about John Kerry? I doubt it. Democrats seem to support Kerry solely because they assume that he is the most electable option. But when Kerry tries harder to match Bush where he is strong than to challenge him where he is weak, one wonders how Kerry intends to effectively challenge Bush without showing any contrast. Kerry made his official campaign announcement in front of an aircraft carrier. Sound familiar? Just add a jet and a flak jacket and the picture should remind you of Bush. He then tried awkwardly to criticize Bush's Iraq policy after he voted in the Senate to support the war. It is this wishy-washiness that is Kerry's main drawback. He dances around controversial issues rather than taking them on, and Democrats don't like it.
The other candidates haven't fared much better. Gephardt, Lieberman, and Edwards all voted for the Iraq war authorization. Gephardt isn't doing as well as he needs to in Iowa and has had serious trouble raising money. Lieberman, who is still carrying around baggage from 2000, is so conservative he's starting to look like a Republican. Edwards has quickly become the papier-mâché candidate, almost completely lacking in substance. And the four other candidates in the race have made little progress.
So that leaves Dean.
Yes, Dean's liberal, but he really isn't the ultra-liberal politician he is made out to be, and that will help him go up against Bush. He's a fiscal conservative, and therefore somewhat resistant to the perennial Republican slander of "tax and spend liberal." He's even open to the possibility of amending the constitution to require balanced budgets. Dean's also an ardent supporter of states rights; he opposes national gun control measures because he feels it should be the states' prerogative. He earned an A grade from the National Rifle Association.
Even his liberal agenda isn't that far out. He supports gay rights, but doesn't think that the federal government should mandate that states approve same-sex marriage (sadly, this will play well among the American electorate). While governor of Vermont, Dean provided health insurance for the lowest wage-earners and each Vermonter under the age of 18, all while maintaining a balanced budget. Sure he supports repealing the Bush tax cuts and protecting the environment, but then again so do the other candidates.
Howard Dean is not so middle-of-the-road that he won't be able to excite
voters and mobilize the Democratic base, and he's not so liberal that
he won't be able to connect with the average American. He occupies a unique
place on the political spectrum, one that puts him in a great position
to take on Bush.
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