Category: DeanWatch

Governor Howard Dean, until two weeks ago considered all but a lock for the Democratic nomination for President, explains his stunning defeat in Iowa:

Howard Dean said Saturday he was surprised by the “under the table” campaigning he faced during the Iowa caucus and said the state needs to prevent such negative attacks if it wants to keep the nation’s leadoff presidential vote.
Dean said his rivals “had their folks really beating up on the people who went in, trying to get them to change their minds in caucus.” … Asked Saturday for specifics about the negative attacks, Dean pointed to a book distributed by North Carolina Sen. John Edwards’ campaign that instructed supporters how to attack other candidates during the caucuses. For example, it told campaign captains in Iowa to describe Dean as an “elitist from Park Avenue in New York City.”
“I never dreamed that would happen,” Dean said. “And I don’t think that’s a healthy thing for democracy. It’s enough to have it go on for weeks and weeks in the press, but when it goes on inside the caucus, I don’t think that’s good,” he said.

Dean, you may recall, started the negative campaigning months ago, attacking his fellow Democratic candidates as late as this very week by labeling them Washington insiders, implying that they were not trustworthy. As he has so often demonstrated during his campaign, Dean has a very thin skin — reminiscent of Jesse Ventura in my neck of the woods — and comes across as a crybaby when he complains. If he thinks that crying in New Hampshire is a winning strategy, perhaps he should read up on Ed Muskie’s adventures in the Granite State in 1972.
Suck it up, buttercup, or go home.

Howard Dean, still smarting from the thumping he took in Iowa this week, shifted strategies for the second time in two weeks, according to the Washington Post:

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean shifted his campaign strategy Tuesday to emphasize domestic issues over the war and temper the red-faced outbursts like the one he delivered after losing Iowa, the candidate and his advisers said. Dean, after huddling with top aides to regroup from the stinging loss in the Iowa caucuses, sought to portray himself here as a more traditional policy-minded candidate focused on education, health care and jobs. The front-runner for much of the 2004 Democratic campaign suggested he would ease up on his year-long crusade to change the Democratic Party. …
Dean’s strategy shift, the second in as many weeks, comes as the onetime front-runner is fighting to regain momentum. A loss in New Hampshire could signal the beginning of the end of a campaign that only weeks ago seemed almost invincible, Democratic strategists say, though Dean has vowed to stay in the race until the end of the primaries.

Last week, Dean tried shifting down the rhetoric, thinking that his drop in the polls during the past month may have meant that the “red meat” schtick had worn a bit thin. In the aftermath of the debacle, he reverted to type, engaging in a display that has been compared to everything from an inappropriate high-schoolish pep rally to primal-scream therapy — which perhaps he needed Monday night. Now, even if the previous angry-man persona worked before, questions about his temperament were so universal after Monday’s display that to continue using that persona risks cementing an image of lunacy that has already begun to be hinted at by opponents.
Dean has six days in which to undo the damage done to his status as frontrunner and image as an inevitability for the nomination before the first primary. As the article states, Dean has plenty of funding left for a nationwide campaign, while John Kerry is so cash-poor at the moment that he’s mortgaging his half of the family house in order to keep the doors open in New Hampshire. John Edwards is also rolling the dice in the Granite State. Neither are running any ads at all in the first Super-Tuesday run of states scheduled for February 3. If Dean wins New Hampshire decisively, he could starve Kerry and Edwards of any significant funding. If Dean loses, especially if he loses as badly as he did in Iowa, his funding won’t matter; his credibility as a candidate will be shot, just as Gephardt’s was Monday night.

Blogs for Bush posts today on the strange interview in People magazine with the Doctors Dean, zeroing in on what has to be the most unusual campaign admission since Jimmy Carter revealed the lust in his heart:

Howard: I’m not a big fan of most anti-anxiety drugs, just because they have addiction potential and things like that. You know, once in a while, I take stuff for sleep. That makes sense. But, listen, I don’t want to dispense medical advice in PEOPLE magazine. The anti-anxiety drugs are very good for people who —
Judy: And a lot of them are NOT addictive these days.
Howard: Right. And you know anti-anxiety drugs and sleep drugs were essentially the same thing when I was practicing. And my experience was whenever I took a sleeping pill, there would be rebound insomnia and so I didn’t like to take them.

I’m not really sure what prompted the People interviewer to ask about medication — it was a follow-up to a question about anxiety attacks Dean experienced in the past, also a subject I’m hearing for the first time but apparently something known to the reporter. People take medication for plenty of good reasons and most of the time they are effective and cause no problems, and I’m sure that’s the case with Dean.
That being said, why is Dean volunteering this information? What possible good can come from admitting that you occasionally need sleeping pills? Not only does this give ammunition to your opponents, but by bringing it up himself unsolicited, it makes it fair game for the campaign; after all, no one can argue that Dean wasn’t using the People interview to promote his candidacy. He’s made his anxiety attacks and pill usage another addition to the ick factor that has accrued around him, along with his temper and his clumsy exploitation of religion.
Dean seems to be melting down under the glare of a national campaign. Frankly, he’s in over his head, and the water’s only going to get deeper from now on.

Howard Dean, who has accused George Bush of waffling on domestic abuse — as if the federal government had jurisdiction anyway — wrote a supportive affadavit for a state trooper on his security detail who later was discovered to be a wife beater, according to ABC News:

In his presidential campaign, and as governor of Vermont before that, Howard Dean has taken a tough, zero-tolerance stand on domestic violence, accusing the Bush administration of not being committed to the issue. Yet Dean said he had no idea that one of the men closest to him was repeatedly abusing his wife. Dennis Madore, the state trooper who headed Dean’s security detail for nine years, was “a classic abuser,” according to Jerry Diamond, a Dean supporter and former Vermont attorney general who was the lawyer for Madore’s wife, Donna, when she filed for divorce in 1997. …
Court records show that Madore’s lawyer, Phil White, also a close friend of Dean, was first made aware of the abuse allegations on March 7, 1997. On May 23, 1997, Dean inserted himself in the case, filing a three-page affidavit at White’s request for use in a custody hearing, in which he described Madore as “a firm but gentle disciplinarian” and a “wonderful parent.”
According to Diamond, it was a highly unusual move. “I’m sure that there are very few cases on record where a governor might have done that,” he told ABCNEWS. Diamond said the affidavit raised questions about the governor’s judgment in getting involved and was deeply upsetting to Donna Madore, whom he said suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder because of the domestic violence.
“I think she was shocked, more than disappointed,” said Diamond, who said he was authorized to speak for Donna Madore. “She was shocked that the governor would do something like that.”

I doubt that Howard Dean actually knew that the state trooper abused his wife in front of their children (attorney-client privilege would have prevented White from informing Dean), but doesn’t Dean’s affadavit in a Vermont court while governor present some clear conflict of interest? Granted, the judiciary is independent, but filing amicus briefs on behalf of the staff in a divorce proceeding, especially when Dean could not possibly have known the relevant facts at hand, sure looks intimidating to me. I’d like to know how Dean came to the conclusion that Madore was a firm but gentle disciplinarian when he signed the affadavit, which as Dean should know is sworn testimony. Testifying that he had knowledge of something he clearly didn’t may not meet the legal test for perjury, but it’s certainly not ethical, and as a sitting governor the ethical lapse is even more significant.
It’s not like he wasn’t warned, either:

But in 1997, Dean, by his own account, ignored a warning he received about Madore just a few days after he filed the affidavit. In a phone call to his Burlington home on June 1, 1997, Maggie Benson — a longtime Dean supporter and friend of Donna Madore — told the governor that Dennis Madore was an unfit parent and that Dean could damage himself politically by being involved.
According to Dean’s handwritten notes on the call, he hung up on the supporter because he construed her tone to be threatening. “She said she did not believe Dennis was a good father and I told her the conversation was inappropriate,” Dean wrote.
After hanging up on Benson, Dean called the trooper’s lawyer, White, who told him to write down his recollection of the conversation. There is no indication in the governor’s notes that Benson specifically mentioned domestic violence.

Dean never reported the conversation to the police (and White’s omissions should cause Dean to reconsider their relationship). As the executive for Vermont and nominally in charge of law enforcement, Dean had a duty to report the allegations to the authorities. Even as a doctor, if Dean suspected abuse, he would be obligated to report it. This call came from one of Dean’s own supporters, and yet all he did was talk to the trooper’s lawyer. Having just filed an affadavit a few days earlier, one would hope that he would want to investigate, on his own at least, as to whether his endorsement of Madore as a “gentle” parent was accurate, in order to make sure that justice was served. Instead, Dean took no action at all after the single conversation with the trooper’s lawyer.
Howard Dean, who is so good at casting stones, apparently lives in glass houses more frequently than previously thought. While scolding Bush for not paying attention to domestic abuse, Dean spent his time actively avoiding confronting it in his own office. How many more of these issues need to arise before Dean’s complete lack of credibility is finally recognized by the Democratic Party?
UPDATE: Blogs for Bush posted this almost simultaneously to me. Also, welcome to all Hugh Hewitt listeners and readers!
UPDATE II: Glenn Reynolds, Andrew Sullivan, and Mickey Kaus feel that this is a cheap shot hit piece. Only Kaus gets specific; he thinks that there is no way that Dean could have known the affadavit was factually untrue. Actually, I agree with that, as my post above states. My issue with Deans actions are these:
1. What is a sitting governor doing by intervening in a divorce proceeding on behalf of a staff member? Doesn’t this at least appear to be an intimidation attempt, and also a bit of influence peddling? After all, governors appoint judges, and the judge hearing this case has to be mindful that Dean’s support could be helpful to his own career … which is why governors shouldn’t go out of their way to involve themselves in court cases.
2. Why did Dean testify to something for which he had no specific knowledge? Doesn’t that also present some ethical issues?
3. The information about the phone call from his supporter is a bit murky, but if Dean heard that Madore was an unfit parent in some specific manner (like abuse), didn’t he have an obligation as the head of law enforcement in Vermont to report that information to the police? Failing that, just to withdraw his affadavit in the case?
I agree that Dean probably didn’t actively obstruct justice for someone he knew to be an abuser, but it appears that he nudged the Vermont justice system in certain directions to help out a staff member. It points out some questionable ethics from the man who paints himself as a reformer.

Howard Dean has castigated George Bush endlessly over “unilaterally” going to war in Iraq — even though we were joined by several nations in actual combat and many more in diplomatic and/or material support — but unilateralism used to sound really good to the combative Vermont governor, regarding Bosnia in 1995:

After long and careful thought, and after several years of watching the gross atrocities committed by the Bosnian Serbs, I have reluctantly concluded that the efforts of the United Nations and NATO in Bosnia are a complete failure. … Since it is clearly no longer possible to take action in conjunction with NATO and the United Nations, I have reluctantly concluded that we must take unilateral action. While I completely agree with you that no ground troops should be committed for other than humanitarian purposes in Bosnia, I would ask that you take the following steps in Bosnia. First, lift the arms embargo as it applies to the Bosnian government. Second, enforce a full embargo of the sort that is now in effect in Iraq on the Bosnian Serbs and upon Yugoslavia. Third, break off diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia. Fourth, commit American air power to support the Bosnian government until the situation is stabilized and the civilian murders and atrocities by the Bosnian Serbs have been stopped.

Note the reservation Dean expresses about using ground troops for anything other than “humanitarian purposes”. In other words, bomb the hell out of the Yugoslavians but don’t get our skirts dirty in the Balkan mud. And also please don’t do anything that might actually resolve the situation; just bomb Serbs until they stop committing atrocities, instead of creating a situation with a commitment of combat troops to make sure it stops for good. We were able to stop the atrocities for the moment, but we still haven’t found a way to create a stable environment for the Bosnians, Kosovars, and the Serbs to coexist without tearing each other to pieces. We’ve been committed there for almost ten years and have no exit in sight, and yet the Left calls Iraq a “quagmire”.
Half-hearted steps like these are what gave the impression that the West in general and the US in particular were paper tigers, possessing mighty forces but bereft of will to use them in our own defense and in defense of liberty. The notion of electing another executive who would perpetuate the same policies that led over the course of three decades to 9/11 frightens me more than Dean’s numerous reversals and prevarications ever could. (via Power Line)
UPDATE: Blogs for Bush asks an interesting question: is this one of the reasons Howard Dean has sealed his records for 10 years?

… Howard Dean would have already dropped like a rock in the polls, based on the extraordinary number of gaffes he’s already committed, such as his remarks after Saddam’s capture. So far he’s had a Teflon candidacy, but a couple of incidents yesterday may have put a big dent in his shields:

Under fire in a campaign debate, Howard Dean conceded Sunday night that he never named a black or Hispanic to his Cabinet during nearly 12 years as governor of Vermont. “If you want to lecture people on race, you ought to have the background and track record to do that,” Al Sharpton snapped at the Democratic presidential front-runner in an emotionally charged exchange in the final debate before next Monday’s Iowa caucuses. …
“You keep talking about race,” the former street activist chided Dean when he had a turn to ask a question. He said that not one “black or brown held a senior position, not one. . . . It seems as though you’ve discovered blacks and browns in this campaign.”
Dean bristled at that and said it was untrue. He said he had had “senior members” of his staff who were minorities, but Sharpton cut him off and said he was asking about his Cabinet, which has fewer members.
“No, we did not,” conceded Dean, whose state has a population that is nearly 98 percent white.

Carol Mosely-Braun let him off the hook, but he still wound up looking rather foolish. To top that off, he managed to get rude with a voter, abeit a Republican, later on (via Blogs for Bush):

“Please tone down the garbage, the mean mouthing, the tearing down of your neighbor and being so pompous,” Ungerer told the former Vermont governor and Democratic front-runner. “You should help your neighbor and not tear him down.”
“George Bush is not my neighbor,” Dean replied.
“Yes, he is,” Ungerer said, to which Dean responded: “You sit down. You’ve had your say and now I’m going to have my say.”

Spoken like a true … doctor, as Marjorie Williams notes in her column:

The man is a doctor. This is the least-examined chapter of his career. But suddenly it all makes sense: Where else but in medicine do you find men and women who never admit a mistake? Who talk more than they listen, and feel entitled to withhold crucial information? Whose lack of tact in matters of life and death might disqualify them for any other field?

Read all of Williams’ excellent and entertaining column. Little by little, Dean the man is sneaking past Dean the packaged candidate, and perhaps the media is prepared to finally start reporting it. Perhaps.