The rise of the bike path left

When Howard Dean was still on top of the world looking down on the Democratic presidential nomination, the indispensable columnist Mark Steyn, writing in the Wall Street Journal, dubbed the good doctor the figurehead of the "bike path left."

This was a reference to Dean's decision to leave the Episcopalian Church because his parish had opposed his plan to build a local bike path. As Steyn noted, what made this controversy remarkable, considering the recent dust-ups within the Anglican community, was that this was not in fact a gay bike path, nor a path one biked on the way to a gay marriage. No, this was just an ordinary bike path, and, for all the theological issues involved in the controversy, Dean's church might just as well have been a McDonald's or a Jiffy Lube. It was just, in Dean's words, a "big fight." "I was fighting to have public access to the waterfront, and we were fighting very hard.."

Steyn contrasted Dean's readiness to rumble about a bike path with his more leisurely attitude toward war. When Saddam was captured, Dean had said, "I suppose that's a good thing." When the butchers Uday and Qusay were killed in a raid, Dean said, "The ends don't justify the means." About Osama bin Laden, Dean explained in 2003, "I don't think it makes a lot of difference" if he's tried in the Hague or in the place where he orchestrated the murder of thousands of Americans. Asked if the Hague would be good for Saddam, too, Dean airily replied, "Suits me fine."

In short, about the war on terror Dean was dismissively blase. About bike paths he was a pit bull.

This is all relevant because Howard Dean has emerged from the ashes of John Kerry's immolation to run the Democratic party.

Interestingly, many elected Democrats insist he will not lead the party. Sen. Joseph Biden, for example, explained: "No party chairman has ever made a bit of difference in the public perception. . He's not going to have a policy role."

So, apparently, Dean will be little more than the guy who calls the repairman when the DNC's Xerox machine is out of toner. So why did the party's nominal leaders oppose his campaign to be DNC chair? That Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid failed to stop Dean suggests that the base marches to his drum, not theirs.

Perhaps Pelosi and Reid recognized that the party's best hopes do not reside in rallying left-wingers who use "summer" as a verb. The essential characteristic of the Bike Path Left is its passion for lifestyle issues. Dean was famously the governor of Vermont, where lifestyle has become a religion for its urbane yet fashionably rustic citizenry. The flinty old Vermont of yore has given way to the Vermont of Architectural Digest and wealthy transplants from New York and Boston. Dean represented this transformation perfectly. In the Vermont statehouse, Calvin Coolidge's sober, thrifty visage gazes from his official portrait to Dean's. While all the other governors dress like bankers, Dean chose to pose as if for the cover of an L.L. Bean catalog, studiously relaxed on the shore of a pond in an open-collared flannel shirt, khakis and racy hiking boots. Previous governors probably liked the great outdoors, too, but they didn't think their job was about validating lifestyles.

Simply because the BPL cherishes lifestyle politics doesn't mean it is always laid-back. Dean is, famously, a man of considerable rage. Just this week he remarked that he "hates Republicans." (Presumably all of those bumper stickers in Burlington proclaiming that "Hate is not a family value" will have to be scraped off.) And as the original bike path fight demonstrates, his passion about the importance of lifestyle trumps his faith in more traditional arrangements. Dean signed the first same-sex partnership law and is now a vocal advocate for gay marriage. This isn't a petty issue like a bike path. It's a very important one to voters on both sides. Indeed, gay marriage might well have won the election for George W. Bush.

Which is why some Democrats fear that Dean will remake their party as the champion of the Burlington state of mind. Defenders call him a "pragmatist" who governed as a "centrist." They always leave out that a Vermont centrist is someone who cares about the property values of limousine liberals. Nonetheless, Dean and his supporters say they're serious about reaching out to more traditional voters.

But his bike path passion appears to be elsewhere. In a fascinating report from the DNC's recent meeting, Tony Carnes of Christianity Today recounts how Dean sees his party's failings as nothing but a "language" problem. "We learned in the last election that language makes an enormous difference," he explained dispassionately.

Later, at another gathering, Gloria Nieto, vice chair of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Caucus, broke into sobs, wondering aloud whether the Democrats would remain a welcoming home for lesbians. Dean immediately "leaped off the stage into the audience to hug her," writes Carnes. "With a sob of his own catching his voice, he brought the audience to standing ovation" when he declared, "That's why I am a Democrat."

Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online, a Townhall.com member group.

Oh, yeah. George W. Bush whupped their sorry butts because of his masterful use of the English language...

Governors of Vermont (from The Political Graveyard):

Governors of Vermont, 1778-2000 (May be incomplete!)
Thomas Chittenden 1778-89 Moses Robinson 1789-90 Thomas Chittenden 1790-97 Paul Brigham 1797 Isaac Tichenor 1797-1807 Israel Smith 1807-08 Isaac Tichenor 1808-09 Jonas Galusha 1809-13 Martin Chittenden 1813-15 Jonas Galusha 1815-20 Richard Skinner 1820-23 Cornelius Peter Van Ness 1823-26 Ezra Butler 1826-28 Samuel Chandler Crafts 1828-31 William Adams Palmer 1831-35 Silas Hemenway Jennison 1835-41 Charles Paine 1841-43 John Mattocks 1843-44 William Slade 1844-46 Horace Eaton 1846-48 Carlos Coolidge 1848-50 Charles Kilborn Williams 1850-52 Erastus Fairbanks 1852-53 John S. Robinson 1853-54 Stephen Royce 1854-56 Ryland Fletcher 1856-58 Hiland Hall 1858-60 Erastus Fairbanks 1860-61 Frederick Holbrook 1861-63 J. Gregory Smith 1863-65 Paul Dillingham, Jr. 1865-67 John Boardman Page 1867-69 Peter T. Washburn 1869-70 George Whitman Hendee 1870 John W. Stewart 1870-72 Julius Converse 1872-74 Asahel Peck 1874-76 Horace Fairbanks 1876-78 Redfield Proctor 1878-80 Roswell Farnham 1880-82 John Lester Barstow 1882-84 Samuel Everett Pingree 1884-86 Ebenezer J. Ormsbee 1886-88 William P. Dillingham 1888-90 Carroll S. Page 1890-92 Levi Knight Fuller 1892-94 Urban Andrian Woodbury 1894-96 Josiah Grout 1896-98 Edward C. Smith 1898-1900 William Wallace Stickney 1900-02 John G. McCullough 1902-04 Charles James Bell 1904-06 Fletcher Dutton Proctor 1906-08 George H. Prouty 1908-10 John Abner Mead 1910-12 Allen Miller Fletcher 1912-15 Charles Winslow Gates 1915-17 Horace F. Graham 1917-19 Percival Wood Clement 1919-21 James Hartness 1921-23 Redfield Proctor 1923-25 Franklin Swift Billings 1925-27 John Eliakim Weeks 1927-31 Stanley C. Wilson 1931-35 Charles Manley Smith 1935-37 George D. Aiken 1937-41 William H. Wills 1941-45 Mortimer R. Proctor 1945-47 Ernest William Gibson 1947-50 Harold John Arthur 1950-51 Lee Earl Emerson 1951-55 Joseph B. Johnson 1955-59 Robert T. Stafford 1959-61 F. Ray Keyser, Jr. 1961-63 Philip H. Hoff 1963-69 Deane C. Davis 1969-73 Thomas P. Salmon 1973-77 Richard Arkwright Snelling 1977-85 Madeleine M. Kunin 1985-91 Richard Arkwright Snelling 1991 Howard Dean 1991-

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