I already posted today on the anger meme that is used by the media to discredit Dean. Well apparently, it seems like Republicans have done their work to make the attack even more vicious. The new version combines allegations of Dean's anger and anxiety problems (taken from People Mag Interview) to argue that he would be too mentally unstable to handle difficult situations as president. That is either he'd respond to a problem in a fit of anger or anxiety that would cause him to do something dangerous. I've seen this new argument being propogated on a blog entry at Dean for America.
Note: Before I post that entry, please be aware I am not trying to spread dirt on Dean. I am just anticipating the Republican attacks we are going to get if he wins the nomination.
Here's the blog entry:
Reflections on the Eve of Battle
We're a little more than a day away from the true beginning of the Democratic Primary Season. Every candidate is marshalling his forces for the attack. They will march at dawn. Frankly anyone who says now that they know how the events of the next few days will unfold is a liar. Everyone has plans for battle, but no such plan survives the first contact with the enemy.
The campaign season to date has led me to two unshakeable conclusions. First, the Democrat Party is a thoroughly diseased and debased institution, one which cannot even command the loyalty of most of its own supposed members. The only thing holding it together today is hatred of President Bush and, quite frankly, even that isn't working very well. The Democrats are torn asunder by two factions: a `moderate', DLC, faction which is mostly fond of America and another Copperhead faction which actively hates America. More on this later.
The second conclusion I have come to is this: Dr. Howard Brush Dean III, the Mayor of Vermont, is totally unfit to be the President of the United States. Forget politics for a second. Anyone who is even vaguely familiar with me knows that I hate Howard Dean and would like nothing more than to see him win the nomination in a bruising fight and then lose to President Bush in a McGovernesque landslide come November. But the health of the Republic is something that, for me at least, transcends politics.
Dr. Dean is, by his own account, mentally unfit to occupy the supreme executive office in the land. This must be of the utmost concern to anyone concerned with the nation. In an interview with People Magazine, Dean admitted that, upon hearing the news that the Governor of Vermont had died and that he was now Governor, he began hyperventilating and suffered an anxiety attack.
According to anxities.com, a web site which caters to people with anxiety disorders, a panic attack's symptoms can include, "increased heart rate, dizziness or lightheadedness, shortness of breath, inability to concentrate, and confusion." Moreover, by many accounts, people who have panic attacks are prone to suffer recurrences of such attacks.
Dean says that the attack occurred because, "To suddenly get told that you have responsibility for 600,000 people -- it provokes a little anxiety." Think about that for a second. If this man had an anxiety attack on being told that he had responsibility for 600,000 people, then how on Earth is he ever going to be response for three hundred million people?
Think about it folks. Put that good of your country above faction. We live in a dangerous world. ICBM's can reach this country from another in just a few short minutes. What happens on the day when missiles are flying, the Secret Service is rushing the President onto the National Emergency Airborne Command Post and the Secretary of Defense says, "Mr. President, the first nukes will land on American soil in fifteen minutes"? What happens if the President suffers from hyperventilation and confusion then?
Go back to 9-11. Remember the moment when, in that Florida classroom, Andy Card stepped up to President Bush and told him that a second plane had hit the second tower, that America was under attack. How would the world have reacted had President Bush responded to that news by going into convulsions?
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt died, Harry Truman was hastily called to the White House, where Eleanor Roosevelt gave him the news. Think about that. In the middle of a global war, the most terrible war in the entire history of the world, Harry S. Truman of Missouri is called in and informed that he is now the most powerful man in the world. How did he respond? By taking command, and taking charge. We don't demand perfection of our leaders, but we must demand that they not respond to a crisis by passing into an incoherent state.
Don't get me wrong here. I don't like the rest of the Democrats running for President either, in fact, I hate them. But that doesn't mean that I'm so crazy that I would prefer to give that man even a chance at the White House simply to keep, say, John Kerry, out of it. Forget policy differences for the moment. After all, even if the worst-case scenario were to come to pass, there'd still be enough Republicans in Congress to keep even say, Al Sharpton from doing something totally insane. We're talking about a man who is simply unfit to be President due to his temperament and psychological state.
When I read about Dean's "you sit down" outburst in Iowa last week (where he yelled at a man to sit down, after he asked a hostile question) I didn't think much of it. I've been at enough political meetings to know that there are often questioners who are out to make themselves the focus of the meeting. But then I saw the video of the incident. It wasn't a playful comment, or even a merely firm one: it was one born of fury.
Posted by A D A M Y O S H I D A at January 17, 2004 10:36