(Delusional) Democrat Dean Gets "In Your Face" With Bush

BOISE, Idaho (Reuters) - Democrat Howard Dean, the outsider whose presidential campaign has suddenly caught fire, said on Sunday the only way his party could beat George W. Bush next year was "to be in the president's face."

The former Vermont governor, whose anti-war rhetoric and liberal stance are clearly to the left of his Democratic rivals, saw no need to moderate his tone or his message despite their warnings that he would lead the party back into the "political wilderness."

"I think my message is a centrist message and is where most American are," he told reporters aboard his aircraft on a profile-raising coast-to-coast political swing. "I don't expect Democrats or Republicans to accept that yet."

On his first foray into presidential-style travel, Dean ventured close to the press section of his aircraft -- a 60s-era Boeing 737 chartered from Casino Express Airlines based in Elko, Nevada -- before going in to face reporters.

A doctor who hasn't practiced full-time for 12 years, he had just come from seeing a patient -- a flight attendant with swollen ankles. He did not reveal the diagnosis, but did dispense plenty of other insights.

Dean expressed surprise at his surge in popularity and his success at fund-raising. Recent polls show him leading his eight Democratic opponents in Iowa and New Hampshire, where the first contests of the 2004 presidential election season will be held in January.

"I thought I'd be struggling at 5 percent, hoping to light a fire in Iowa and New Hampshire," the potential front-runner said. "I started out as a classic insurgent."

Dean scoffed at descriptions of himself as politically too far left and personally too blunt and angry to win election.

"Being a physician means you cut to the chase quickly," he said. "The downside is I can be a little bit brusque but I always thought I had a pretty good bedside manner."

Dean, who delivers his stump speech off the cuff, said he hated using a prepared text. His aides said the campaign had never transcribed the 30-minute address filled with red-meat Bush-bashing and sprinkled liberally with irony.

The in-your-face side of Dean, a stocky man of medium height -- he is 5ft 8 and three-quarters but says he is 5ft 8 lest people think him vain for adding the fraction -- comes through loud and clear at every rally.

In Boise, on the third stop of an 80-hour, 10-city "Sleepless Summer" tour, Dean conjured up some of the left's favorite conservative and corporate boogeymen -- Attorney General John Ashcroft, House Majority leader Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas, and former Enron Corp. chief Ken Lay, a Bush friend and major Republican donor.

"Some are saying 'he's a liberal Birkenstock Democrat from Vermont. He can't win because he didn't vote for the war in Iraq,"' Dean told supporters in Idaho, a Republican stronghold that rarely sees a campaigning Democratic presidential candidate.

Dean said he backed the first Gulf war and the war in Afghanistan, but not this year's U.S.-led Iraqi invasion because Bush had failed to justify it honestly and adequately.

He would never send troops "to a far land to die without telling the truth to the American people."

"We have to be in the president's face to win." Dean explained as he held court in the narrow aisle of the ancient aircraft dubbed the "Grassroots Express" and decorated with sprigs of plastic greenery more closely resembling shallots.

the only way his party could beat George W. Bush next year was "to be in the president's face

There is over 214 years of history that Dean pretends to ignore. Dean knows quite well that when there are problems facing the nation, the voters vote for the man whom they think will fix them. When there are no problems the voters will vote for a man who proposes to do nothing.

The 1920s were a good example of good times. It was said that the public wanted the good times to last. The voters were afraid of any candidate that proposed change. So Calvin Cooledge beat Davis in 1924 by about 2 to 1 because the voters didn't want anything done... and Cooldege,as they said at the time, did nothing better than anybody.

But when times are tough, and dangerous as they are now, the public wants the problems fixed and safety returned. Attacking a man who is trying to fix problems and return safety is a very bad campaign idea for a general election. Republicans tried that against FDR in 1936 and it failed miserably. Attacks as Bill Simon proved in 2002 limits support to the party base.

Dean is well aware of that situation. He is playing to the galleries to get the nomination. If he gets the nomination he will not run that way against President Bush in the fall of 2004.

Don't mistake Dean for an ideologue. In the 1994 election Republicans won the house for the first time in 40 years. They did equally well in the Governor's races that year. That really shook up the Democratic Governors. They were angry with Clinton over the Hillary care that cost a lot of Democratic Governors their jobs in 1994. After the election the Democratic governors demanded a meeting with Bill Clinton. They wanted to tell Clinton what they thought he should do. The meeting was held behind closed doors in D.C.

After that meeting an Associated Press Reporter asked Dean about what he and the other Democratic Governors told Clinton do. Dean answered the reporter by saying, "No one told President Clinton to move to the LEFT ... ... I can tell you that."

Dean was saying that the Democratic governors, Dean included, told Clinton to move to the right. Dean did not say they told Clinton to stay the course or hold to Democratic principles. They did not say they told Clinton to articulate the left's message better. Dean said "NO ONE TOLD CLINTON TO MOVE TO THE LEFT!" That leaves them either telling Clinton to keep doing the same or move to the right. Clintons current actions were what produced the 1994 defeat, they would not proposed he make no changes.

Anyone who thinks Dean is a Democrat with firm ideological beliefs should look at his past actions. He has all the firm beliefs of a snake oil salesman. He will say what ever it takes to get what he wants. He wants the nomination. If he gets it he will want the office.

I am convinced Dean thinks the public has a very short memory. Perhaps the public does, but video tape is a fantastic memory jogger. Dean is not hedgeing his bets. He has not learned the skill of saying something that appears to mean one thing now, and can appear to mean another a year from now.

It is a major flaw. No major league candidate would make that mistake.

You're on to something, as usual.

I know that Dean's reversed course on his Social Security plan (raising the retirement age to 70), and he's hedging on his campaign financing pledge (he said he'd take public money and stick to the spending limits, challenged all the other Dem candidates to do so too, and now that he's doing so well, he's hedging). And I've read articles that indicate that already he's toned down some of his "fiery" rhetoric.

So Dean's just another politican. It will be interesting to see how Democrats react to Dean's shifting. But some liberals just like to be seduced. (Of course, some conservatives do too, as with this Ten Commandments saga.) Other Dems will start to be disappointed but figure anyone's better than Bush.

It's the moderates who have to be reminded that Dean is just another opportunistic politican. And I don't see Dean doing too much flipping on foreign policy, and that is where Bush can tell people, as with Dukakis, that we can't afford the risk of President Dean.

Excellent analysis.

This electoral cycle is probably one of the most important in America's history, and we are going to see more lies and chicanery from the dems than even we, who know them so WELL, are expecting.

I would suggest to Dean that getting in a Texan's face is a good way to end up eating dirt.

Remember Freepers it's going to be up to us, US!, this time to get the truth out. We did it during the impeachment at a time when many of us stood alone on street corners and suffered the abuse of liberal slurs. Now we know the power of the net
we can do it, we MUST do it, the alternative is a nation unrecognizable to any of us living today.
We have SEEN the changes the left has made and wants to make,
we cannot allow them to continue, to do so would be to see "...the last best hope of mankind.." gutter and go out.

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