Citizen's Guide to Howard Dean: on Principles & Values

Models his candidacy on Harry S Truman

On domestic policy, Dean pledges to "fulfill Harry Truman's dream of health care for all Americans," and when it comes to foreign affairs, he cites as a model Truman's "Point Four" program aimed at providing technological skills and equipment to poor nations. "Harry Truman believed that a world in which even the poorest and most desperate had grounds for hope would be a world in which our own children could grow up in security and peace," Dean says. Truman may come as close as anyone to being Dean's role model.

"I admire him a lot," Dean says in an interview. "There are similarities between us. We're both plainspoken. He took some really tough positions. The integration of the armed forces was an extraordinary position at the time."

I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party

Democratic insiders laughed back in May 2002 when Dean said he would run for President. By Sep. 2003, he was the front-runner, and those same Democrats were wondering whether anything or anybody could stop him.

How did this happen? Half the answer was a Democrat attacking the Republican president-doing the things that prudent political practitioners warned Democrats not to do. People’s reaction transcended the political-like, “Oh! I thought I was the only one who felt that way.”

Dean’s breakthrough came at a DNC event in 2003. All the other candidates spoke calmly. Not Dean, who blurted out, “I want to know why so many Democrats aren’t standing up against Bush’s unilateral war. I’m Howard Dean, and I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic

Dean surge spawned Clark as Anybody-But-Dean

Dean fueled by large dissident group of Bush haters

Who were these dissidents? Democrats, for the most part, precisely the folks who vote in Democratic primaries and attend caucuses-the very people who will choose the Democratic nominee. And many of them did not simply “not love” Bush. They disliked him with an intensity that (usually) stopped just short of hate.

Though this opposition was not small, it was a silenced minority. Thanks to that near-consensus among the political cognoscenti that Bush was Superman, dissenters were cowed. Expressing anti-Bush sentiments became almost an underground ritual

Dean’s forthrightness differs from Dem party calculatedness

And to take on the Democrats who wouldn’t. One reason Democrats did so poorly in the 2002 mid-term elections was that their leaders were afraid to attack Bush. They carefully calibrated their positions, hoping they could eke out just enough votes from their core constituencies to keep control of the Senate and House. They didn’t. They just frustrated rank-and-file Democrats.

Not only was Dean forthright, he was forthright in plain English. Dean really is something of a policy wonk. But he knows better than to talk that way on the stump.

Liberal in attitude, not in policy positions

But the word “liberal” has come to mean less a set of policy positions that a set of attitudes, even a set of consumer preferences. A “liberal” these days means someone who listens to National Public Radio and drives a Volvo-someone who is different from the average American who goes to church and watches Monday Night Football.

The conventional wisdom holds that Dean and Kerry are the liberals, while Clark, Graham, Edwards, and Gephardt are the moderates. On the record of their public policy positions, Gephardt is to Dean’s left, but Gephardt is from Missouri and a church-going Catholic.

Dean is not very far to the left on the ideological spectrum. Within the Democratic Party, Dean is slightly right of center. For a liberal, he’s pretty conservative.

Propelled to public service by death of his brother?

Charlie’s death, friends say, had another effect: that of halting Dean’s Yale-influenced drift into liberal politics. “It had a huge impact on Howard and moved him thee or four notches to the right,” asserts a college friend. He thinks it accounts Dean’s “pragmatic” and “middle-of-the-road” approach to social and political issues.

Much of this is speculative, and even Dean says he hasn’t entirely worked it through. Nevertheless, there’s no denying the seriousness of purpose that emerged in him during those difficult post-Yale years.