Scott: The piece below was from today's WSJ
Mr. Hunt is a longtime print and video commentator from the establishment DC liberal prospective.
Everything below is true. It is also mostly irrelevant.
1. What is broken is not Dean per se. It is a political process that in the name of popular sovereignty starts a campaign almost before the polls close on the last election. A permanent campaign that engages only the media and a tiny minority of political junkies and activists is a formula built to produce weird choices.
2. This is aggravated by allowing two historical flukes to run the headlines - New Hampshire and Iowa. Yes they have history behind them and I am a traditionalist. Yes it helps to have a few small states early so that an outsider without a big budget can forge ahead on retail politics instead of celebrity. However NH and Iowa are better choices to pick a GOP candidate than a Democrat. Under the current political coalitions the GOP should pretty much sweep the South, Plains and Mountain States [any election where the Democrats make serious inroads into these areas is one the Democrats are going to win anyway]. Bush won by taking all of Dixie and the Border even if Florida was essentially a dead heat; all of the Plains and Mountains except for paper thin losses in New Mexico and Iowa; then getting just enough elsewhere [NH,OH, WV, MO, IN and almost pulling off WS and OR]. So a Republican who shows strength in IA and NH can probably become President if he runs a decent campaign and it is a viable year. The missing piece would be adding OH the following week as it is the most winable of the remaining majors. For a Democrat all a NH primary shows is how suburban Boston and a couple of college towns feel. Any Democrat who is not strong in New England, the Mid Atlantic states and CA is dead anyway. In reverse if the Democrats can take SC they are in sweep mode. The states the Democrats should be testing are FL, OH, WV, IN, OR, MO. They won the two smallest of these in 2000. However changing the rules would mean saying that white activist college students, the birkenstock vote from my generation and the NEA shouldn't run the party. Dreamland.
3. Everyone had a hissy about Dean's Confederate flag statements. Man combines Bush's inability to turn a phrase with Carter's inability to admit error. However while the words were inarticulate the message was on point. Running an economic populist campaign means nothing if the lunch pail Democrats you are trying to appeal to get so turned off on cultural issues that they just ignore the economic message. So what did the fools on rock the vote do? They ran a pander festival on gay marriage and gays in the military. Forget the morality of it. Is the most important point you want to get across to blue collar America your position on transgender rights? What fools these mortals be.
The Doctor Is In, But Can He Win?
Howard Dean is riding high: his presidential campaign is the class of the Democratic field, he is expected to win the backing today of the nation's largest labor union and he could sew up the nomination with early wins in Iowa and New Hampshire.
But conversations this week with a dozen Democratic politicians around the country reveal a deep apprehension over Howard Dean in a general election. They see George W. Bush as increasingly vulnerable, but doubt the former Vermont governor is the antidote, given considerable underlying problems of his own.
These Democrats are, with a few exceptions, non-Washingtonians, uncommitted to any presidential candidate and most spoke on background to be more candid. Virtually every one dismissed the notion that "electability" will be a factor in the primaries.
The despondency over a Dean candidacy is not because of the "L" word. "I'm a little surprised Howard comes off as a liberal," says former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes, who is backing John Edwards, though he served as a fellow governor with Dr. Dean. "In fact he's a very moderate guy." And it's not the "I" word, his passionate opposition to the Iraqi war; even most of the Southerners suspect that's turning into a nightmare.
To alphabetize it, they say instead it is the "C" problems: culture and commander in chief. "Republicans will frame him as a little guy from a little state -- Ben and Jerry's is the biggest company -- who has no national security experience," says a Democrat from the industrial Midwest.
Dr. Dean's effort this week to curry favor with rednecks -- vowing to be the "candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks" was seen as awkward at best. And when attacked in a debate his refusal to back off seemed arrogant, while diminishing his effectiveness in the encounter.
But his culture problems start with civil unions for gays; Vermont, under Gov. Dean, was the first state to adopt such a measure. "That will be very difficult to overcome in this state," says Susan Westrom, the chair of the Kentucky Democratic Party.
It shouldn't be. The chief effect of Vermont's civil union statute was to grant spousal benefits to gay and lesbian partners. That's now the policy of most enlightened companies -- including the owners of this newspaper -- and more and more state and local governments. But the issue is red meat for the right wing. Dick Cheney has a gay daughter, but that would not deter political smears, which more than a few Democrats fear would resonate with culturally conservative voters.
But Dr. Dean may have difficulties connecting culturally in a broader sense, his sympathies with gun owners notwithstanding. He's aggressively secular, not eager to talk about personal faith. Indeed he left the Episcopal Church because it opposed a bike path in Burlington. (This still is not as good as when Newt Gingrich explained he didn't go to Sunday services because his church was gerrymandered out of his district.)
To be sure, ostentatiously religious politicians should be suspect; they are captured beautifully in an otherwise forgettable Chris Rock movie in which a pandering politician closes every speech with a "God bless America -- and nobody else." But where a Democratic candidate has to do better than last time -- Missouri, the Florida panhandle, West Virginia, Southern Ohio -- voters like to hear some God talk.
On commander in chief, credibility was a requisite during the Cold War and then largely irrelevant from 1992 through 2000. In the aftermath of September 11, it matters again. It may not be the biggest issue but it's an admission price to credibly compete.
The Iraqi war, and the Bush administration's dreadful mismanagement of it (see last weekend's New York Times Magazine piece), should benefit Dr. Dean, the most prominent critic of the Iraqi venture. Yet however Iraq evolves, it could be a lose-lose for Dr. Dean.
In the unlikely event that stability and a budding democracy are flourishing next fall, Dr. Dean will be discredited. But if it's a debacle, it will accentuate the need for stronger leadership and the national security credentials that he lacks.
"Karl Rove, with $200 million to spend, will scare people that Dean is someone without any experience or ability to deal with a crisis," worries Tim Hagan, a veteran Ohio Democrat.
The general election is still a year from this past Sunday and if Dr. Dean is the nominee, events -- and his growth as a candidate and financial war chest -- could reshape these dynamics. "We don't know if he has the ability to broaden his base," notes a top California Democrat. The endorsement of the politically powerful Service Employees International Union today would be a signal his support extends beyond disaffected Starbucks voters.
To be fair, not one of the other Democratic aspirants -- a shaky consensus is starting to emerge that Dick Gephardt is the most probable chief rival to Dr. Dean -- excites these party professionals. Thus while they see George W. Bush as beatable -- a calamity in Iraq and a jobless recovery -- they increasingly worry about the ability to tap someone who can beat him.
More than ideology or issues, there are three qualities voters look for would-be presidents to convey: competence, strength and optimism. Dr. Dean, these party professionals fear, instead exudes inexperience, anger and pessimism.
* * *
The greatest scholar on the modern presidency, Richard Neustadt, died this week. His seminal work on presidential power, written more than 40 years ago, remains the best study on how to exercise leadership, particularly the critical use of the "power to persuade." He also was an invaluable resource for political journalists, including me; this brilliant and always generous Harvard professor and dean -- a founding father of the fabled Kennedy school -- will be missed, but his wisdom never forgotten.
Updated November 6, 2003
posted by scott 8:20 PM