More on Dean...

I had a lot of readers respond to last week's column in which I drew parallels between Gov. Dean and President Bush. For those who missed it, I encourage you to search for "Who is Howard Dean?" on tuftsdaily.com. Most of the responses were from Dean supporters who acknowledged that I made some valid comparisons between Bush and Dean but that they loved Dean anyway because, as one reader wrote, he truly represents fundamental change. But does he really? I don't think so.

The general themes that I usually hear from Dean supporters are that he speaks his mind, he takes principled stands, he opposed the unjust/hateful/illegal/you-name-it war with Iraq, he'll repeal Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, and he'll bring jobs back to America and fight to keep those jobs here that haven't yet left.

Even if all of these claims were true, I'd contend they don't represent fundamental change. No candidate running for president, short of Dennis Kucinich, represents truly fundamental change. Kucinich wants to create a Department of Peace and has avowed many times that he will immediately withdraw from NAFTA and the WTO upon taking office. Kucinich also opposed the war on Afghanistan and would withdraw Americans from Iraq, replacing them immediately with UN forces. Now that's fundamental change. At a speech at Drake University in February of this year, Dean made the following remarks: "I agree with President Bush - he has said that Saddam Hussein is evil. And he is." He then went on about Saddam's slaughtering of dissidents, his use of chemical weapons, his violation of United Nations' resolutions, and then stated the following: "He [Saddam] has tried to build a nuclear bomb...Saddam Hussein is a menace. The world would be a better place if he were in a different place other than the seat of power in Baghdad."

In all fairness to Dean, he goes on to tell his audience why, despite these claims, he thinks that war with Iraq is a bad idea. He simply thinks that it's the wrong war at the wrong time - he's not opposed to the war on principle. Just like Gen. Wesley Clark, and former candidate Sen. Bob Graham, Dean at the time was opposing the war because he felt that the resources needed to fight the war were better spent fighting al-Qaida and finding Osama bin Laden. But this is a far cry from the near-pacifism attributed to Dean by many of his supporters.

Dean's image of being a straight-talker is also misleading. Check out this quote from a speech Dean gave to the Council on Foreign Relations just four months later (when, not coincidentally, more and more Americans had started to turn against the war): "I stood up against this administration and even when 70 percent of the American people supported the war, I believed that the evidence was not there and I refused to change my view."

Well, Mr. Dean, I can do nothing but use your own words against you: "Saddam Hussein is evil...he has failed to account for all of his chemical and biological weapons...he has murdered dissidents...he has tried to build a nuclear bomb." It doesn't sound to me like he was refusing to believe that there was credible evidence a month before the war started. This is called a flip-flop, a change in position. And let's face it, all politicians do it.

But to those Dean supporters out there, this is only one of many instances when Dean has done this, can we stop putting him on a pedestal for his so-called principled stands and his straight-talk? He's only been given that label because of his off-the-cuff blurted statements (which I talked about at length last week). Dean is no more principled and no more of a straight talker than your typical Washington politician - he's just less refined.

And on a range of other issues, from trade (Dean advocates stricter but 'enforceable' labor and environmental standards), to Bush's tax cuts (Dean advocates rolling back all of the tax cuts - even those which Democrats fought hard for that are Clintonesque 'targeted' tax cuts aimed at alleviating the tax burden on the middle class), to the need to internationalize the Iraqi operation, to expanding healthcare, to energy policy and the environment, Dean hardly differs from Gephardt, Clark, Kerry, Edwards, or Lieberman.

Sure, there are slight differences. Most of the others mentioned support rolling back Bush's tax cuts for those only making, say, above $200,000 a year, as opposed to a complete rollback of even middle class tax cuts like Dean. On trade, Gephardt is more critical of NAFTA and the WTO. And Kucinich even more so. Dean is right in line with Lieberman, Kerry, Edwards, and Clark on trade. And none of the Democrats running, with the possible exception of Lieberman, would be averse to internationalizing the Iraqi operation sooner rather than later.

Let's face it, the differences among the mainstream (this is my own designation and no one else's) candidates - Dean, Kerry, Lieberman, Clark, Edwards, and Gephardt - are marginal at best. None of these guys represents fundamental change. If you like these candidates, the only intellectually honest way to distinguish them is by personality and temperament, by resume and background, or by some calculus of their electability.

For Dean supporters to place him on a pedestal of uniqueness and for them to claim that he's some kind of outside-the-beltway savior who can save the party and bring fundamental change is intellectually dishonest. And in this whole mix, I keep coming back to one thought: I feel bad for Dennis Kucinich. All of these traits that have somehow been attributed to Dean can actually be found in Kucinich. If you want fundamental change, look to him. If you want a centrist Democrat who is apt to fire-off inappropriate comments and get angry easily, then look to Dean.

All quotes attributed to Dean in this column are pulled directly from transcripts on his own website, www.DeanForAmerica.com.



Adam Schultz is a senior majoring in political science. He can be reached at Schultz@tuftsdaily.com.