QUICK NOTE: I am re-posting this diary entry with the hopes that an afternoon posting will garner more constructive comments than the "You're a f---ing Idiot" comments I got putting this up at 4:00 am. Please disregard if you have seen this already. If you want to check out some of the previous worthwhile comments the original diary is here.
Dean supporters and detractors alike should check out the latest from Slate's Will Saletan:
Hard-Headed Howard: Dean can win, with a little tough love. I don't always subscribe to all of what Saletan writes, but his debate wrap-ups are usually pretty good, and by and large, he has presented (IMO) among the more balanced looks at the primary race and the various candidates.
This latest "I sound like I might endorse Dean, then yank it back" column hits upon many of my own reservations about Dean, but manages it in the more well-written style that a guy who gets paid to do this stuff should employ...
The link above gives you the whole deal, but I'll give some highlights here. He starts out with a bang:
Is Howard Dean electable? Should you vote for him? My answers, after watching him for a year, are: 1) theoretically, yes; and 2) tentatively, no.
Now Deaniacs, he lays it all out and gives just cause for the second part of that statement. And throws Dean plenty of bones in the process:
I'm not one of those pundits who thinks Dean is too liberal or too Yankee, that he's another George McGovern or Michael Dukakis...[edit]...Dean doesn't fit that mold. McGovern talked like a wimp; Dukakis talked like a drone. Dean talks like a real person and a leader....[edit]...When he has the stage to himself, he's the best speaker in the race. He's deft, cogent, and forceful. He makes people believe. You can't teach that.
I've been saying that for a while. If everyone could attend a town-meeting with Dean (or at least watch one on CSPAN) I think he'd do fine. But most people see him only in the debates, which is Dean at his worst.
Dean has many of Bill Clinton's best attributes. He's a veteran executive and a natural innovator. He knows his way around the policy debates but also knows how to cut through nuances to get to the point. That's one reason why he can do a lot better in the South and Midwest than many of my colleagues imagine. Perhaps, like me, at some point you've watched a Dukakis or a Walter Mondale talking to a Southern audience and shouted at your TV set, "No, you idiot, just say this!" Dean is a guy who can figure out what this is. He talks about run-down schools and disappearing jobs. "You've been voting for Republicans for 30 years," he tells Southern whites. "What do you have to show for it?" Dean doesn't know the region the way Clinton or John Edwards does, but he's got the instincts to comprehend and penetrate cultural barriers. You can't teach that.
Here is where Saletan and I part ways. Aside from the fact that I don't think Dean is good at articulating his points, at least not in debates and interviews, Saletan's main "Clinton" point here is off. Dean is missing the most important of Clinton's attributes -- empathy. Dean himself admits this, "I'm less 'I feel your pain" and more"What can I do to fix your pain'" (or something like that). While in many cases Clinton's empathy was bullshit, it worked. And it worked wonders. No one could enter virtually ANY setting and connect with people the way Clinton could. It was probably his single greatest strength.
This might be pinning too much an an intangible, but this is where Dean began to lose me. I remember back to Clinton talking to MTV viewers. Clinton talking to seniors, it didn't matter, he engaged people with a freindliness and accessability Dean will never master. I think this quality is a necessary part of the recipe to defeat Bush, and I began to look for the guy most likely to possess this skill and it led me to Clark. Now, I'm not saying Clark is Clinton, but he has the most potential.
Here's where Saletan's critique gets rolling:
So what's the catch? To begin with, Dean can be a bit too confident. He can be--how do I put this delicately?--a jerk. Dean's fans call this candor...[edit]... If what Dean candidly expresses is arrogance, the candor doesn't make up for the arrogance. Dean's biography suggests he's been very confident for a very long time. Can he learn enough humility in nine months to get elected? I don't know.
You betcha. The reason Dean can't tap his inner-Clinton is he can't turn off his ego. He not only can't empathize, he lectures. This might be "the doctor" taking over, giving you the hard truth for your own good. But there's a reason why people avoid going to the doctor -- to avoid hearing what they're afraid to hear. Dean's not my doctor, and most people really aren't ready to hear some of Dean's bad news and then turn around and vote for him.
Next, Saletan talks about the "Dean religion problem." Which I can only hope will blow over, I hate this crap. It's got no place in the debate and I won't waste time on it here.
He then hits Dean on the Iraq War / National Security deal. This is a well-beaten horse.
Lastly, Saletan skewers Dean with his stance on taxes...
Finally, there's the tax problem. Clark, Edwards, Kerry, Lieberman, and Kucinich propose to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the rich but keep the Bush tax cuts that went to the middle class. Dean and Dick Gephardt propose to repeal all the Bush tax cuts. The Dean-Gephardt position would lose the election, plain and simple. ...[Saletan refers to some polls numbers for a while]... We saw how the raise-your-taxes argument ended in 1984, with Mondale's crushing defeat. This year, we're seeing it again...
I went into this with my much-ballyhooed DEAN DEATH SENTENCE diary a month or so back. I still stand by that post. This single issue alone will doom Dean's chances against Bush. It is absolutely a killer issue. If Dean could magically reenlist and win the Vietnam War single-handedly, transform himself into a Clintonian schmoozer, and never make another mistake on the campaign trail, this issue will still sink him. It is his greatest weakness, yet the one he can most easily remedy. Will he?
In Sunday's debate, Dean said that after repealing Bush's middle-class tax cuts, he would introduce his own, but not until he balanced the federal budget--which, by his reckoning, wouldn't come until well into his second term. According to the Washington Post, Dean's aides promised a vague interim tax reform plan "dramatic enough to keep the shape of the tax system front-and-center in the general election." A Dean aide told the New York Times Dean would announce this magic plan "after President Bush unveiled his budget." That means after Feb. 2. By that time, Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Missouri, Arizona, and four other states will have voted. If things go according to plan, Dean will have effectively locked up the nomination. He's asking you to nominate him first in the hope that afterward he'll somehow get voters to accept a bitter pill they've never accepted in a presidential election.
Then, the final nail.
I say it's the other way around. In a democracy, the candidate is supposed to satisfy you before he gets your vote. Dean has tremendous virtues as a nominee, and his flaws are fixable. But at least two of those flaws are demonstrably lethal, and Dean has refused to fix them. If he doesn't fix them by Monday, my advice is to vote against him. It's the only way he'll learn.
Of course, I expect everyone to vote for the guy they want no matter what Will Saletan says. I intend to. I live in Michigan. I have a bit longer than the folks in Iowa to watch what Dean does and make up my mind.