They could have led the front page with Tom Kean's story from yesterday, but no. They had to lead with an article
beating up on Howard Dean.
Caveat: I'm a Dean supporter, but I wouldn't call myself a Deaniac - I'll support the nominee whoever it is
Dean's Remarks Give Rivals Talking Points
His Readiness to Lead Is Questioned The problem here is that the article doesn't address his readiness to lead at all. At all. Yet that's what someone who glances at the front page of today's Post reads. Ridiculous.
Here's the article, in its entirety, with interspersed comments from your's truly which have not been proofread, and probably won't.
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 18, 2003; Page A01
BURLINGTON, Vt. -- Howard Dean's penchant for flippant and sometimes false statements is generating increased criticism from his Democratic presidential rivals and raising new questions about his ability to emerge as a nominee who can withstand intense, sustained scrutiny and defeat President Bush. > True. Well, kind of. Dean is drawing increased criticism from his rivals. If this article is any demonstration, the media will have no trouble finding bad things to say about Dean.
Dean, for instance, recently spoke of a "most interesting theory" that Saudi Arabia had "warned" Bush about the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Although Dean said he does not believe Bush was tipped off about the assaults that killed nearly 3,000, he has made no apologies for raising the rumor. > It is an interesting theory. It might be true. It might not. How come no planes scrambled that morning?
How come Bush sat in that school for over 5 minutes after the second plane hit without doing anything? "How is what I did different from what Dick Cheney or George Bush . . . did during the time of the buildup of the invasion of Iraq?" the former Vermont governor said Tuesday night aboard his campaign plane. "There were all these theories that they mentioned. Many of them turned out not to be true. The difference is that I acknowledged that I did not believe the theory I was putting out."
Bush this week called the theory an "absurd insinuation." > Yes, after it took him off guard a bit.
Watch this video. Dean's remarks, his critics say, are in keeping with his history of making statements that are mean-spirited or misleading. He has distorted his past support for raising the retirement age for Social Security and slowing Medicare's growth. He has falsely said he was the only Democratic presidential candidate talking about race before white audiences. And he made allegations -- some during his years as governor -- that turned out to be untrue. > This comes straight from Gephardt. Just because I said something off the cuff 8 years ago doesn't mean I ought to be held to it today. Of course it makes sense to fix Medicare - it's horribly bloated and doesn't work. What allegations? This story is filled with allegations that aren't backed up by facts. Okay, on second glance, I see this is addressed below with the growth lessened from 10% to 7%. I don't agree with this, but I don't fault Dean for saying it. He's been fighting it on semantics - if you have to approve increases every year, and in year 1 it's 100, and in year 2 it's 110, before you approve it, if you change it to 107, it's not being cut, it's still being raised from 100. It might be technically correct, but it's eight years old, and it's not relevant to Dean's new healthcare plan, so I don't know why it's still around other than Gephardt likes to say it.
After saying at his last gubernatorial news conference that he was sealing his official records to avoid political embarrassment, Dean now says he was joking and is not sure what is in the files. > This is a non-story. Look for Bush's records. They're even more sealed than Dean's.
When Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) unveiled his health care plan in April, Dean, through his campaign, belittled the lawmaker's record on the subject. Dean later walked away from the statement, saying it did not reflect his views. But this fall, in debates and TV ads, Dean has resurrected the criticism, accusing his congressional rivals, including Gephardt, of producing only rhetoric on health care in comparison to his record in Vermont. > Which, since the federal government, which employs most of these candidates, has done nothing to actually improve health care, is true. Dean actually improved healthcare for Vermonters. Gephardt, Kerry, Edwards & Lieberman have not.
In recent days, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said Dean lacks the "credibility" to be president and accused him of misleading voters about past remarks on Iraq. One example cited by Kerry's campaign: Dean recently said, "I never said Saddam was a danger to the United States. Ever." But in September 2002, Dean told CBS's "Face the Nation": "There is no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the United States. The question is: Is he an immediate threat?"> Threat does not equal danger. I can threaten someone without really being a danger to them.
With polls suggesting Dean is pulling away from his rivals, they are stepping up their criticisms on several fronts, including foreign policy, government experience and credibility. Dean spokesman Jay Carson, asked about the challenges to his boss's veracity, said Wednesday: "That's all they do now: attack Howard Dean." > Which only makes them look more partisan and only does Bush's homework for him. On the other hand, if the stuff gets out early enough, it'll be forgotten by November. Remember Clinton?
Last week, after Dean denied providing a tax break as governor that benefited Enron Corp. -- which a published report showed he did -- Gephardt said: "Once again, Howard Dean refuses to admit the truth. You can't beat George W. Bush if you can't tell the truth about your own record."
Tricia Enright, a Dean spokeswoman, called the quarrel a difference of "interpretation." Dean, she said, restructured the Vermont tax code for scores of companies and did not provide a specific break to Enron. > Sounds reasonable. Not something I would support, but reasonable. If we're talking about Enron, is Ken Lay in jail yet? Not indicted? What? Oh, isn't he good friends with Bush?
To be sure, plenty of presidential candidates have bent facts and stretched figures to sharpen a point or blunt criticism. And interviews this year suggest that many voters give Dean high marks for speaking his mind.
"To a great extent, the public does not give a damn" about the claims against Dean, said former representative Tony Coelho (D-Calif.), chairman of Al Gore's 2000 campaign. Voters want straight-talking leaders, he said, and former governors such as Dean have "a tendency to say what they think without having everything checked out before they do things."
On Tuesday, when several rivals criticized him for saying America is not safer after Hussein's capture, Dean did not back away. "You know me; if I think something's true, I say it," he told reporters. But critics note he sometimes says things that are not true.
In January, Dean told an abortion rights audience about a young patient he believed had been impregnated by her father. He was explaining why he opposes parental notification requirements for girls and young women seeking an abortion. But Dean later told Jake Tapper of Salon.com that he learned several years ago that "her father was not the father of her child; it was more complicated than that."
Carson said Wednesday that Dean's January anecdote "wasn't misleading at all. The story illustrates the downside of [mandatory] parental notification, and is an example from the life experience of the governor." > And the story fails to clear this up - was it true? Was it a lie? Was it misleading? The point was that the girl's father COULD have been the father of her baby, and that was what worried him about parental notification. Poorly researched and written, Jim and Jonathan.
Some of Dean's opponents in his gubernatorial campaigns say he was prone to misleading statements then.
In a 1998 debate, Dean and GOP candidate Ruth Dwyer argued over new regulations for large farms in Vermont. Dwyer told of Bristol farmer Bob Hill, who struggled to build a barn for his 600 cows while complying with the state's strict permit requirements.
The next day, Dean told the Associated Press he had "done a little research on that farmer. He's in violation of the natural resource conservation service laws." Dean later acknowledged he was wrong and apologized to Hill. > This is what we WANT our elected officials to do. Of course they will make mistakes - Dean apologized. Wouldn't it be nice to hear Bush apologize, or maybe attend a funeral of one of the soliders he sent to Iraq to die?
Sev
eral Vermont legislators from both parties who served while Dean was governor said they rarely found cause to question his honesty and chalked up his controversial comments to misspeaking. "He could be trusted and knew better than to lie to us," said Cheryl Rivers, a former Democratic state senator who sometimes clashed with Dean. "Yes, he would shoot from the hip, but it was not deliberate or malicious." But lately, as he courts liberal Democrats nationwide, Dean has distorted portions of his record as governor, when he was generally considered a centrist. He has repeatedly denied siding with Republicans such as then-Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) in 1995 in calling for slowing Medicare's annual growth from 10 percent to 7 percent, even though he told a Vermont newspaper he "fully subscribed" to the idea. Vermont Abenaki Indian leaders said they were outraged last month to see Dean onstage at a Native American conference in Albuquerque. For more than a decade, they said, his administration vigorously opposed their quest for state and federal recognition, contending the Indians might make land claims and bring casinos to Vermont. Dean drew raucous applause from his New Mexico audience when he endorsed the benefits of tribal gambling establishments. "Needless to say, to hear him say onstage in Albuquerque that he was in favor of gaming for federally recognized tribes came as a big shock to a lot of people in Vermont," said Jeff Benay, a Dean appointee who heads the Vermont Governor's Advisory Council on Indian Affairs and who has advised Dean's campaign. > Let's break this down. Tribe in Vermont wants land and gaming casinos. Tribe isn't recognized by federal government. Dean supports tribe in New Mexico that is federally recognized and has gaming casino.
Carson, responding Wednesday to the Abenaki issue, said: "It would be inappropriate for the state to recognize them before the federal government does." > Considering tribal sovereignty is recognized at the federal level, this is absolutely true. Should Dean have supported the Abenaki's federal claims? Perhaps - I don't know the details.
The dust-up over the Saudi question began Dec. 1, on WAMU-FM's nationally syndicated "Diane Rehm Show," when Dean was asked why Bush was suppressing information from a commission looking into the Sept. 11 attacks.
"The most interesting theory that I've heard so far -- which is nothing more than a theory, it can't be proved -- is that he was warned ahead of time by the Saudis," Dean replied. "Now who knows what the real situation is? But the trouble is by suppressing that kind of information, you lead to those kinds of theories, whether they have any truth to them or not, and they get repeated as fact."
> Yes. Show us the briefings, Mr. Bush.
When asked a few days later on Fox News why he said it, Dean said, "because there are people who believe it. . . . I don't believe it . . . but it would be nice to know." A campaign aide said Dean heard the rumor from various people on the campaign trail.
Staff writer Dan Balz and researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report> What a piece of garbage. Do these people actually have journalism degrees? Does a journalism degree require a class in fact-checking or in objectivity, or in English? How does this is any way relate to his "readiness to lead." It doesn't.
Oh, by the way - check out
www.unelectable.com