In Power Line's words, this will hurt Dean, but I don't think it will be as bad as some would think. I originally saw this story this afternoon but didn't give it a good read. Fortunately, Hindrocket takes a close look at the story, as reported by the AP based on documents from an undisclosed source. Dean was warned repeatedly over more than ten years that security for Vermont's nuclear reactor was substandard, and in fact was rated the worst in the nation:

During Dean's final year in office in 2002, an audit concluded that despite a decade of repeated warnings of poor safety at Vermont Yankee, Dean's administration was poorly prepared for a nuclear disaster.

"The lack of funding and overarching coordination at the state level directly impacts the ability of the state, local and power plant planners to be adequately prepared for a real emergency at Vermont Yankee," state Auditor Elizabeth M. Ready wrote in a study issued five months after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Security was so lax at Vermont Yankee that in August 2001, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staged a drill in which three mock terrorists gained access to the plant. The agency gave Vermont Yankee the worst security rating among the nation's 103 reactors.

Compare this against Dean's rhetoric on Bush's security performance after 9/11:

The documents contrast with Dean's position as a presidential candidate who has portrayed himself as more concerned about nuclear security than Bush.

"Our most important challenge will be to address the most dangerous threat of all: catastrophic terrorism using weapons of mass destruction," Dean said in his speech in Los Angeles last month. "Here, where the stakes are highest, the current administration has, remarkably, done the least."

Hindrocket's analysis is terrific, as always, noting that with Von Hoffman-like timing, New York Times magazine quotes Dean in a story published today as saying, ''The line of attack is not Iraq, though there'll be some of that. The line of attack will be more, 'What have you done to make us feel safer?' I'm going to outflank him to the right on homeland security, on weapons of mass destruction and on the Saudis. Our model is to get around the president's right, as John Kennedy did to Nixon.'' Dean's decade-long track record of ignoring security threats hardly positions him to the right of anyone except perhaps International ANSWER. Hindrocket concludes with the interesting proposition that oppo agents within other Democratic campaigns released this to the AP as a last-ditch effort to derail Dean's nomination ... or at least, one would think this is last-ditch, unless they have something else for him.

However, I don't think that this is the Big One that others perceive it to be, although I think this story provided by The Friendly Ghost may be much more damaging. According to the AP, as reprinted in the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus, Dean took a lot of campaign donations from energy providers, including the ones involved at running Vermont Yankee, who later sold the facility with its known security issues unaddressed:

After it became clear in the late 1990s that selling Vermont Yankee was a top goal of the utilities, the administration failed to heed warnings for more than two years that the money the nuclear plant was paying for emergency planning was much less than was needed. An administration official said there was concern about interfering with the sale.

Why? Maybe this explains it:

Nearly a fifth of the roughly $111,000 collected in its first months by Dean’s presidential political action committee, the Fund for a Healthy America, came from people with ties to Vermont’s electric utilities, according to a recent Federal Elections Commission filing.

Here's why I think that Dean will still be able to skate by this for the nomination; he will argue, with some justification, that nuclear-plant security should have been the purview of the federal government, even pre-9/11, but especially afterwards. This view will likely be acceptable to his base, but he is getting pushed farther away from centrist voters that won't hurt him before June, but whose absence will kill him and other Democrats in November. You can bet that Karl Rove will be all over Dean's financial statements and will be demanding to know what exactly Dean delivered for all of that cash, while I think even the Democrats will quail at going that far to trip Dean up. Selling out environmentalists to power companies will demotivate Dean's base and may drive them either to vote Green -- whoever that candidate will be -- or not vote at all. The latter option will absolutely cripple Democratic efforts to hold seats in both houses of Congress.

There is one thing for certain; Dean has compiled a record which thoroughly belies the populist truth-bearing outsider image he has carefully crafted for this campaign. He's too far ahead to be stopped prior to the nomination now, I believe, but by the time the dust settles in November, he may have a difficult time capturing any electoral votes at all.

Note: Blogs for Bush notes that the Dean campaign has published a statement on the issue which addresses almost none of the concerns raised by the AP or the Times Argus.

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» Pot to kettle from PunditFilter
Howard Dean's "hole in the resume" (R) is foreign policy experience, though he routinely criticizes Bush's foreign policies. He has also blasted Bush for the lack of national security. Now it turns out those attacks were also compensation for that... [Read More]

Tracked on January 4, 2004 3:25 AM

» Pot to kettle from PunditFilter
Howard Dean's "hole in the resume" (R) is foreign policy experience, though he routinely criticizes Bush's foreign policies. He has also blasted Bush for the lack of national security. Now it turns out those attacks were also compensation for that... [Read More]

Tracked on January 4, 2004 3:27 AM

» Pot to kettle from PunditFilter
Howard Dean's "hole in the resume" (R) is foreign policy experience, though he routinely criticizes Bush's foreign policies. He has also blasted Bush over national security. Now it turns out those attacks were also compensation for the embarassing secu... [Read More]

Tracked on January 6, 2004 3:39 PM