A lot of people have talked about Bush's Teflon, Could Dean become the first
Teflon-coated democrat, Do you guys think It's very important for a democratic presidential candidate to have this of Teflon to beat Bush?
"So far, the idiosyncratic nature of Dean's crusade has left him impervious to political attack. A stumbling performance on Meet the Press in June produced not embarrassment, but a wave of Internet contributions from his acolytes. Dean's misstatements of fact (beginning with a hyperbolic tale about a pregnant 12-year-old told to a January abortion-rights dinner) have not dimmed his reputation among his supporters as a truth-teller. Even his maladroit comments about wanting to reach out to Southerners with Confederate flag decals on their pickups did not appear to do any lasting damage.
Dean seems in many ways to be the first Teflon-coated Democrat. Unable to make any charge stick, the other Democratic contenders and the press keep searching for that secret vulnerability. But there is no consistent theme to these challenges. One week Dean is portrayed as a dangerous left-winger who will lead the Democrats to McGovern-like defeat. The next week he is depicted as an insensitive Northerner who does not understand the hateful imagery embodied by the Confederate flag. The attacks are all over the ideological map, as critics can't decide whether Dean is a states-rights ally of the gun lobby or a kamikaze liberal."
"Yet, once again, it is difficult to see how Dean's Democratic challengers get much traction on this issue. At worst, the episode paints Dean as a political operator careful to protect himself on all fronts. But how do you square the notion of Dean the Cynic with the attacks on him as too naive to be an effective candidate against Bush? That's the Dean conundrum: a front-runner with many vulnerabilities but no obvious Achilles heel."