I wanted to voice this on the Kos platform, so here it goes. First, I am no big fan of Howard Dean, in fact, I supported Wesley Clark during the primaries. My mission (at the time) was to stop the Dean juggernaut and his "Deaniacs" by any means necessary. Yet, even with that being the case, I thought Dean got a raw deal when he got slammed by the press for "going off" after the Iowa caucuses (we can't possibly suffer a politico with passion, right? what would the neighbors think?). I now understand and appreciate that Howard Dean and Joe Trippi, his campaign manager, are political geniuses and that Dean has alot more to offer than I first thought. Dean, like the phoenix rising, is now coming out of the ashes that was his failed presidential bid and making a political comeback,...a powerplay that will certainly rock the foundations of the American political system.
With his elevation to the position of chairman of the Democratic National Committee only days away, I began thinking of the similarities between Howard Dean (the future head of the DNC) and U.S. Grant and the similarities between Terry McCauliffe (the current head of the DNC) and George B. McClellan. In short, could Howard Dean be to the Democratic Party what U.S. Grant was to the Grand Armies of the Republic, i.e., the Armies of the James, the Potomac, the Ohio, etc.? Remember, before Grant came on the scene, the Union Army was languishing in despair and desperation, dealing with defeat after defeat. Grant, at the time the war began, had been considered a failure by many of his contemporaries (a drunk for all intents and purposes, a West Point graduate that prematurely bailed out of the Army in 1854 for personal reasons, a failure at most business ventures, and because of all of this he had to move back home and work in the family store as a clerk to the chagrin of his father, Jesse). But, Grant did a 180 degree turn and went about "showing something" when the opportunity presented itself and the opportunity did in fact present itself in the form of the Civil War. McClellan, on the other hand, was very polished; he was used to personal success (graduated second in his class at West Point), he was a great logisitician and a brilliant "resource-acquirer", i.e., organizing, getting capital and putting the capital to good use, etc. (sound familiar?). But he didn't possess the talent (or the nerve perhaps) to utilize his forces in such a way that stuck it to the enemy with any great effectiveness. Overly cautious, Lincoln said McClellan suffered from a terminal case of "the slows". Thus, McClellan didn't produce results. But, Grant did. To be fair, without McClellan's brillant organization and adminstrative skills, Grant would not have possessed the finely-honed weapon he wielded so effectively, the Grand Armies of the Republic. The big question is this: does Dean have Grant's capacity to learn from his mistakes? I think the answer is yes. However, one thing is for certain, Dean (like Grant) knows how to stick it to the enemy! Like Lincoln answered over 140 years ago, when petitioned by others to choose someone other than Grant to lead the Union armies: "I cannot spare this man....he fights!". I'm starting to see that the same can be said of Howard Dean...he fights! Semper Fidelis