This morning on Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer Howard Dean issued the most hard-hitting attack on John McCain I've yet seen. Dean used the DNC's complaint against McCain for allegedly violating the campaign financing law bearing his own name to attack McCain's greatest strength: his perceived honesty.
Blitzer tried to get Dean to opine on the prospect of a divided convention in Denver. Dean expertly brushed that question aside to bring up what he really wanted to talk about:
But look, John McCain is a flawed candidate. Here's a guy who is a typical situational ethicist. He runs on his integrity, but he doesn't seem to have any. We're familiar with the fact that he got on the ballot in Ohio with what now turns out to be false pretenses. He qualified because he was taking public financing, and now he says he's not going to. He doesn't have the permission of the FEC to do that.
But Dean was just warming up....
Dean went on:
And just this week, he refused to denounce and reject John Hagee, a militant, anti-Catholic right-wing pastor. John McCain has a history of doing what it takes, regardless of what the ethics of this are. I think he's going to be a flawed candidate. I don't think people want four more years of what essentially is George Bush.
Blitzer dutifully delivered the McCain objection that St. John was only doing what Dean himself did in 2003, but Dean was having none of it. He read to Blitzer from the letter the FEC sent his 2004 campaign allowing his withdrawal from public financing, and pointed out that McCain has no such letter.
So, that is a lie. What John McCain is saying is simply not true. And this is a long-term pattern with John McCain. Let's not forget, this is the John McCain that took $100,000 in campaign contributions and flew on corporate jets for the savings and loan magnate Charles Keating, who is now serving jail time, or was serving jail time. This is not -- the John McCain that he says he is, is not who John McCain is. He's a situational ethicist, very much like George Bush. He thinks it's great to stay in Iraq for 100 years. Thought it was terrific that George Bush vetoed children's health care.
I don't want 12 more years of George Bush, and I think the vast majority of the American people don't want 12 more years of George Bush -- or I mean, four more years of George Bush -- and I think that's what John McCain offers us.
So let's see what Howard Dean has done here in just a couple of minutes: he's called John McCain a liar, a situational ethicist, lacking integrity, a continuation of George Bush, two-faced, a Keating Five alumnus, and an opponent of children's health. And he did all that with a Wolf Blitzer who was determined to pursue the "Dems in Disarray" story so beloved of his kind.
A recent Pew Poll found that the five words voters most associated with John McCain were: Old, Honest, Experienced, Patriot, and Conservative. It also found that around a third of those polled thought John McCain was too old to be president, a number comparable to similar findings about Bob Dole in 1996. Looking at that list, there is one obvious strength Democrats have to attack, his honesty. Howard Dean's FEC complaint and his targeted criticisms of McCain in the press are aimed directly at that target.
Howard Dean is doing precisely what a party chairman should be doing in a presidential election year: acting as the chief critic of the opponents' candidate. To the extent Dean does this, Obama or Clinton don't have to and can take the high road. Dean's tactic is potentially a knockout punch: McCain could be guilty of a felony punishable by five years in prison if he violates public spending limits. Even if McCain can wriggle out of criminal charges, he will be put continually on the defensive with a challenge to his greatest perceived strength with the voters. And Howard Dean will press this attack, we can be sure of that.
Howard Dean has been there for us. His 50-state strategy has built the foundation for the success we see in the primaries today. He will soon be moving on from the DNC, as Markos pointed out earlier today. Please show Howard your support by sending a thank-you or, if you can afford it, a donation to him at the DNC. Don't forget the encouragement to go after John McCain. We owe Howard Dean a lot, but we still need more. Let him know you are watching, and that you care.
UPDATE: Thanks to dear bumblebums, video at Crooks and Liars.