Howard Dean

By and large I've avoided getting into overtly political topics on this blog. The way I feel about it is that there are more than enough blogs out there covering politics full-time. I could add my two-cents to the discourse, but I'd inevitably be regurgitating that which has already been written about time and again throughout the internet and/or the print press. So I refrain. That said, I'm going to just this once break my personal promise and talk about Howard Dean.

Last week, on Arriana Huffington's laughable Huffington Post, Norman Mailer postulated that the Newsweek's apocryphal Qu'ran flushing story was actually planted by "black ops" people within the Pentagon to discredit the mainstream media. Somehow, I doubt the veracity of the charge. However, if Mailer had speculated that Howard Dean was in fact a double agent for the GOP, he might have a bit more evidence to back it up.

Since assuming the helm of the DNC, Dean has come up with such gems as "...this is a war between good and evil. And we're the good", and that he "hates Republicans and everything they stand for". Now, this is all fair game, this rhetoric. But I have to wonder if it is doing the Democrats any favors. Clearly rhetorical political bomb-throwing is an old and beloved sport in American politics. John Adams once called Alexander Hamilton "the bastard brat of a Scotch peddler" (he was, but it still wasn't a very nice way to phrase it), but to my mind, I would think it would be a lot wiser for a man of Dean's stature to take the high road and let his minions speak in this manner. Dean's problem is simple: he speaks the same way in public as he does in private. For a guy like Michael Moore, it is understandable. Moore isn't running for office, and he gives his minions what they want: red meat. Dean, on the other hand, has a completely different position to fill politically. He's supposed to raise money for the DNC (rumor has it he's doing an abysmal job), expand the political base nationally (kind of hard to see him doing that, considering he's pissing off more people than he's attracting), and he's supposed to eloquently represent the Democratic Party on the talk show and political speech circuit. He's blowing all three, and the Democrats know it. How else can one explain Dean getting smacked down by none other than Rep. Barney Frank, the man who could be the most far-left wing congressman in the House? Frank rightly admonished Dean for saying that Speaker of the House Tom Delay should be arrested and thrown in jail immediately. Delay might or might not be guilty of the ethics violations for which he is being investigated, but as Frank rightly pointed out, he's been convicted of nothing, much less charged. Constrast Dean's statement last year when he was running for president and said in regards to Osama bin Laden, "I have this old fashioned notion that somebody is innocent until proven guilty". Hmmm...trial by jury for Osama, but no due process for Tom Delay.

In the macro-political realm, there are different levels of rhetoric that one can get away with depending on which position you inhabit. Rep. Bacchus (R-Ala.) can call Bill Maher a "traitor" for inferring that the armed services of this country are inhabited by the dumbest members of our society; his chances of paying for it at the polls are small, and if anything, he might manage to up his positives. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Ca.) can grab a bullhorn and cheer on throngs of rioters/constituents during the Los Angeles riots and she'll never have to worry about losing her seat. Conversely, for a US Senator to say or do such things would probably lead to political destruction. The rhetoric should be cooler, or at least behind closed doors, when you're a national figure. Sen. Harry Reid might whine about Bush's judicial nominees as "radical right wing extremists", but this is pretty tame in comparison. Reid knows there's a line that shouldn't be crossed. As Dean is probably more well known than most of the US Senators in his own party, and particularly since his pronouncements are more widely distributed, he should really put a cap on it. He's doing his party irreparable damage. It would help the Democrats if they could filter him somehow, but I doubt that is do-able.

Somewhere throughout all of this, Karl Rove is smiling.