This ad is, to put it bluntly, crap. How on earth are we going to respond as a party to the inevitable Democratic-nominee-into-Hussein-and-bin-Laden ad when we’ve got Kerry and Gephardt campaign officials doing this?
If they wanted to stop Dean because they think he’d be a terrible candidate, or because he lacks experience on defense, they could still do it. They could unite behind Wesley Clark, and help him flesh out his domestic policies & speak with a bit of the same passion and authority there that he has on the issue of Iraq. Clark, a few unfortunate remarks aside, has run a clean campaign based on the idea that he’ll be the best president. Gephardt and Kerry and for that matter Lieberman gave up on that strategy months ago. Clark has a chance to compete with Dean nationally. The others, frankly, do not. I don’t know what Kerry and Lieberman hope to accomplish at this point. Gephardt might win in Iowa, though not if this poll is any indication, but I don’t see how he goes much further. As for Edwards, my guess is that he’s running for VP or attorney general.
I should be rooting against a two man race; that’s the best way for Dean to lose the nomination. But I care about the process, and I care more about the general election than the primary. Better to have a clean race and may the best man win, than to have your most likely nominee attacked from 8 different directions from December through March.
There’s been a lot of talk about Dean as the angry candidate. Some of it is justified, some of it is because he still talks like a Manhattanite instead of the southern and midwestern accents we’ve grown accustomed to, some of it is sheer repetition. But he certainly hasn’t run the angriest campaign; if anything it’s naively idealistic and hopeful. Who’s angrier, the guy having his supporters send handwritten letters to people in Iowa, or the guys running TV ads against him with pictures of Osama bin Laden?
Michael Tomasky says it better than I can:
And goodness knows, if any of the above [Kerry, Gephardt, Edwards or Clark] manages to overcome Dean and become the nominee, he sure will have earned the title.
Unless, that is, he benefited from an insider-driven process designed to block Dean at all costs. At this point, after he has amassed the armies of small donors and bloggers and volunteers, blocking Dean is not blocking one man. It’s blocking the hopes of millions of Democrats who—understand the importance of this—would walk through fire for a candidate for the first time in their lives. That isn’t something that should be done cavalierly; in the long term, blocking the active participation of these millions may do more damage to the Democratic Party than four more years of George W. Bush.
For all the talk about McGovern, he’s not what started the decline of the Democrats’ fortune. That would be the 1968 convention. We’re not stupid enough to do THAT again, but let’s not be the same kind of stupid on a smaller scale.
Katherine, I agree that this ad is a mistake on political grounds. And the creepy voice-over-slow-zoom-in-to-the-eyes-of-Osama is a bit, well, sensationalistic. But the charge against Dean is legitimate. Dean has no foreign policy or military experience. He’s said all manner of contradictory, foolish, and uninformed things on foreign policy matters. GWB will be able to exploit all of this in the general election.
Moreover, GWB’s ads will be much, much worse than this relatively mild attack add. (Get used to seeing Osama’s face in political ads, BTB, ’cause it’s going to be everywhere in the next few months.) If Dean’s best response to this almost-entirely-legitimate attack is “hey, no fair!”, he’s doomed. This ad is the elephant in the room for everyone not already sold on Dean-for-president. Dean must have a substantive answer to it.*
BTW, I disagree with your view that Lieberman has gone negative.
von
*As I’ve penned in these (virtual) pages in the past, I think that Dean is the wrong president for this chapter of the U.S. history. Unless there are drastic changes in his policy positions, I will hold my nose and vote for GWB. I’m also on record as stating that, based on present information, I’d support Clark, Lieberman, or Kerry over GWB in a general election.
Look, I’m one of the people who’ll go through fire for him. I don’t think you’re fair to him at all, as I’ve said before. No use arguing it further; this is directed at any Democrats who read this site (there are some Democrats who read this site, yes?)
No use arguing it further; this is directed at any Democrats who read this site (there are some Democrats who read this site, yes?)
Fair enough. But, understand, it’s not true believers such as yourself who need to be convinced that Dean can handle foreign policy issues.
I’ve been thinking about what I’m about to write ever since Von and Kathrerine put together their 20-23 things I believe posts. It ties in with the Democratic divisions we see now.
Liberals generally put together a laundry list of policies they believe in. Conservatives generally put together a brief outline of principles. (I read that somewhere, but I think it is accurate, today anyway).
The adavntage of the latter in binding a political party is that many things that would be divisive were they argued out are instead agreed to be lesser priorities that need not cause division.
In the Democratic party today the various constituencies don’t seem to be bound by common underlying priciples (other than anti-Bush). Instead the fighting happens because various constituencies pet issues are worth politically dying for for them. Is pollution control more important than abortion? Is raising taxes more important than a living wage? Is the environment more important than extending unemployment benefits? Not that these are precise examples, but a laundry list approach doesn’t prioritize.
Conservatives can generally be tied together by saying something like “free markets, low taxes, strong defense and family values.” Such a short list implies that issues/principles excluded are not important enough to risk destroying the implementation of the major principles. Thus it is easier to bind a political group.
The Democratic party no longer has 3-4 major principles that have broad agreement within the party that take priority over the rest of the issues and make them not worth fighting about.
Instead, all issues are equally important, or at least there is no agreement in what the priorities should be. I suppose “Get Bush” could be binding, but such a negative approach doesn’t seem to fly very well.
Katherine, I’d ask you if you had 3-4 ideas that you believe the Dems rally around today?
(there are some Democrats who read this site, yes?)
Well, Democrats certainly link to this site, so I presume some of them are reading it. I dunno what else I can do to help make it more Left-friendly…
spc67–well, I can give you 3-4 general ideas the Democrats SHOULD rally around. But they do precious little rallying.
I could give you: “equal opportunity, strong defense AND strong alliances, health care for all, and individual liberty” if you want something as brief as your four. When stated in terms that general it’s easy to find people who agree with you. When you get into the specifics, that’s where you find disagreements, but those are inevitable. The question is whether those disagreements trump your loyalty for the party.
von–it’s not directed at Dean’s current primary supporters, but also not at people who’d vote for Bush over Dean, since it’s more about the future of the Democratic party than anything.
Moe–inevitable, when our blogfather is as conservative as he is. Just mildly frustrating at times. (And we do have some, though they mainly came from Tacitus too.)
Katherine — I count myself as a Democrat, but I showed up here because I’m a friend of Moe’s. 🙂
(OK, I confess that I do read Tacitus as well, and I consider myself a somewhat-conservative Democrat, but it was the writing of all three of you that brought me here and keeps me coming back.)
Thanks Michael. And there’s of course nothing wrong with reading Tacitus….If all else fails I can sic my three sisters on you, but I want to avoid the “sweetie, you’re so BRILLIANT!” posts from my mom that might result. 😉
In fairness to Dean, he’s starting to flesh out what his foreign policy will look like if elected president. It’s not all bad.
thanks von. I didn’t know about that upcoming speech, which I eagerly await.
(btw, I don’t think you’re too hard on Dean any more than I’m too forgiving of him or too hard on, say, Gephdart–but we’re far enough apart, and have both thought about it enough, that there’s limited usefulness in the conversation.)
“Katherine — I count myself as a Democrat, but I showed up here because I’m a friend of Moe’s. :)”
Which means that he knows all my secrets. Including the one about my secret ninja powers*… but I may speak of that no further.
😉
Moe
*There are, alas, pictures. It would seem that Halloween just encourages me to be a bit, well, odd sometimes.
There are, alas, pictures.
It would be unfortunate indeed if those pictures fell into the wrong hands, and were, ahem, posted on a blog.
Hopefully a “substantive answer” on Dean’s part will entail more than his musing about “interesting theories” as to whether Bush was warned by the Saudis about 9/11.
Since Dean sees fit to attack President Bush on foreign policy, it seems perfectly justifiable for him and Republicans to do the same in return. Of course given Dean’s penchant for contradicting and reinventing himself (no wonder Gore endorsed him), it’s entirely possible that by the time the general election rolls around, Dean will be saying that he was “really for the Iraqi mission all along.” 😉
Dean’s problem is, he doesn’t have a record to run on.
Actually Dean does have a record to run on. He will for example talk about how he balanced the budget in Vermont (nearly) every year while Republicans will mention that he nearly tripled spending while governor with a number of tax increases and the raiding of some of the trust funds. A couple of facts which will pretty much inoculate Bush from charges that he is not “fiscally conservative” enough as well as put in doubt Dean’s claim that he wants to limit federal spending to the rate of economic growth.
Dean will talk about agricultural issues and how he was the “architect” of the Northeast Dairy Compact. A fact which will cost him the vote of most of the dairy farmers in the Midwest where that program is universally reviled because it paid Midwestern dairy farmers a lower subsidy then those in Vermont. Not a good thing to have on your record when you’re competing in Midwest swing States like Wisconsin and Minnesota.
So yes Dean does in fact have a record which will be used against him Republicans just as Democrats wish to use the POTUS’ record against him.