>>The Wall Street Journal compares
Howard Dean to Barry Goldwater. I hope they are right. In 1964
Barry Goldwater tapped into a deep well of conservative voter
sentiment. He was not able to turn his nomination victory into a
presidential victory because the philosophical and political
infrastructure was not in place to convert sentiment into a political
movement.
>>
However, at the time a number of astute leaders on the right committed
themselves to do the work to create the requisite infrastructure.
John M. Olin and other philanthropists funded it, and a generation of
intellectuals and political entrepreneurs worked on ideas and
organizations. Twenty years later this movement led directly to
the Reagan presidency. And for the twenty years since Reagan our
national politics has been dominated by an overlay of right-wing
ideas–adopted by DLC Democrats as well as Republicans.
>>
Howard Dean tapped into a groundswell–no, a gusher–of sentiment that
pulls in a different direction. Not exactly left or right, this is the “Second Superpower“
sentiment of defining oneself and ones’ self interest to include all
the world and its people. This is the sentiment of respecting the
planet, and caring for the interests of future generations. This
is the sentiment of caring about public health, about social and
individual well-being, and about communities. This sentiment was
stirred to action by the Iraq war, and it found in Howard a candidate
willing to embrace and honor it. Most of all, it found in Howard
a Democrat willing to articulate its anger and frustration–against the
Democratic establishment as well as Republicans.
>>This
sort of thinking does not seem radical in most venues in society–but
it has not been well-articulated in our national politics for at least
two decades. For example, the great ecologist Edward Wilson
points out that for all on the planet to live a US lifestyle would
require the resources of five earths. This is not a radical or a
controversial idea, but if a presidential candidate embraced this idea
and explored its consequences, he or she would seem hopelessly fuzzy or
lefty.
>>Second
superpower types need to create the ideas and the institutions to be
able to govern the country. Howard Dean’s candidacy showed the
sentiment–now we need to do the years of work.
>>Howard
Dean will be seen as a pioneering figure who helped reveal the outlines
of a new political consensus, and helped galvanize the systematic
initiative to come.
>>John
Kerry has adopted some of the rhetoric of the new sentiment. It
will be interesting whether he can go on to help with the second
superpower agenda, or whether he will fall back into the old ways.
From The Wall Street Journal:
>>
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
>Dean the Dream
>>He’s the most consequential loser since Barry Goldwater.
>>Thursday, February 19, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST
>>Howard
Dean’s withdrawal from the Democratic primaries yesterday ends one of
the more remarkable flameouts in Presidential history. But while the
former Vermont governor won’t be his party’s nominee, he deserves to be
recognized as the most consequential loser since Barry Goldwater.
>>Perhaps
because he wasn’t from Washington, Mr. Dean figured out the current
mood of Democratic activists well before his competitors did. He found
they were angry, and that they wanted a champion willing to declare
himself as the anti-Bush. “I represent the Democratic wing of the
Democratic Party,” Mr. Dean said during his salad days last year, and
the crowds loved it. In both attitude and agenda, the Vermont liberal
has set the terms of Democratic debate.
>>On
the war on terror, he has almost single-handedly pulled his party to
the antiwar left. As he often said on the stump, his main competitors
all voted for the Iraq war. But as Mr. Dean climbed in the polls by
denouncing the war, he made opposition to it a party litmus test.
Senators John Kerry and John Edwards, who had voted for the war in late
2002, opposed the $87 billion to finish the job a year later. The
candidates who stayed honorably hawkish–Dick Gephardt and Joe
Lieberman–went down to defeat.
>>Mr.
Dean was the first candidate to call for repealing all of the Bush tax
cuts. Soon every Democrat was for raising taxes in some substantial
way. Senators Edwards and Kerry now assail the Patriot Act they voted
for, again following Mr. Dean. They also attack the education reform
they voted for, in another Dean echo. Imitation is the sincerest form
of politics.
>>
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>>Mr.
Dean’s personal candidacy foundered, famously, after a series of
undisciplined public remarks. But it’s also true that his collapse came
only after Mr. Kerry and others had moved sharply enough in Mr. Dean’s
direction that there wasn’t much policy difference left.
>>
Mr.
Kerry has now adopted 90% of the Dean agenda and about 70% of his
attitude. The Massachusetts Senator is winning the bulk of Democratic
and liberal votes, as the exit polls show he did in Wisconsin on
Tuesday, while Mr. Edwards pulls in more Republicans and independents.
>>It
is too soon to say how all of this will play out in November. Certainly
the white, liberal part of the Democratic base is newly energized, even
if Mr. Dean’s Internet uprising failed to live up to its media hype.
This will matter in an election in which the turnout of core supporters
could be decisive. The nasty, and often personal, attacks on President
Bush begun by Mr. Dean and continued by others have taken their toll on
the President’s approval rating. Mr. Kerry is now leading Mr. Bush in
head-to-head polling. The media are abuzz with hope.
>>Yet
we can’t help but wonder if all of this liberal anger and intensity
won’t boomerang in the end. The Dean movement has clearly erased all of
the New Democratic moderation that Bill Clinton made famous in the
1990s. On trade, taxes, education and values, the Dean-Kerry Democrats
are to the left of the Clintonites, not to mention left of the mood in
the “red” states they lost in 2000 and will need to win this time
around. We doubt it’s an accident that Senator Hillary Clinton, waiting
in the wings for 2008, is now more hawkish than Mr. Dean and Senator
Kerry on the war on terror.
>>”What
we set out to do was make the rest of the country more like Vermont,”
Mr. Dean said yesterday in his exit remarks, adding that his supporters
shouldn’t support a third-party candidate this autumn. He needn’t
worry. The Democrats have become the Deaniacs.
