The other side of Howard Dean

[quaker bill]

From a recent article:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2003/11/26/on_trail_dean_hones_a_populist_message/


But on the campaign trail, Dean's throw-down-the-gauntlet mantra is woven with another message, one strikingly different in tone, that preaches the virtue of community and the evil of corporate behemoths unconcerned, he says, with the collective good.

"Bigger and bigger corporations might mean more efficiency, but there is something about human beings that corporations can't deal with, and that's our soul, our spirituality, who we are," Dean told a breakfast crowd in Sidney, Iowa. "We need to find a way in this country to understand and to help each other understand that there is a tremendous price to be paid for the supposed efficiency of big corporations. The price is losing the sense of who we are as human beings."

<snip>

The message borrows from a number of previous Democratic campaigns, including those of Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, and evokes the populist strains of Andrew Jackson, William Jennings Bryan, and Theodore Roosevelt, who took stands against the dangers of large entities, from banks to monopolistic businesses.

For a man not given to idle chatter, with an extreme aversion to small talk, Dean seems surprisingly comfortable offering up his emotive meditation on the nation's soul, telling one Iowa crowd recently: "We have to talk about real human values. Not the faux phony family values the president talks about, but the real human values about being able to touch each other as human beings. What we need to do is talk to each other neighbor to neighbor."

<snip>

Dean apparently has something other than the much discussed angry side.

[Zynx]

1. I also read in US News that the angry man thing is mainly an act

and that he's actually a teddy bear in private.

[papau]

5. he is certainly strong willed in private - but "angry" means what?

If angry means he really wants to get something done - ok

or that he suspects others motives - as any of us do - ok

or that he does not consider business as the enemy - also true - he wants jobs for everyone.

If teddy bear he is not as scary as many CEO's - that is also true.

Where "true" is based on my few years in Vermont watching - and planning on how to work with - him for a major company in Vermont -

[Scott Lee]

18. Anger frightens or repels a lot of liberals, for some weird reason

Even when it is necessary. I have a good pal who is a Christian "liberation theologian". Wonderful lady, shares many of our core social beliefs but she wouldn't raise her voice or her hand to save her life. I had a big discussion with her one day about how even Christ taught the virtue of "righteous anger" but she just has this allergy to it.

If Howard Dean's anger is so repulsive to some of you, you are looking at one of the reasons you'll be putting up with Bushes running American government for many years to come.

Make a decision to defend yourselves.

[quaker bill]

23. Being a Quaker, I am non-violent

Non-violence does not preclude anger. It is in the tradition of Friends to speak plainly about injustice and take a strong stand in this regard.

There is no conflict between pacifism and anger spent in the cause of greater justice. The essential difference is made when you can express yourself in ways that demand the truth without doing physical or spiritual violence.

It is hard work. But it needs doing. Anger is one of the most powerful of our emotions, properly directed (at injustice for instance) it can accomplish much.

My directors are all Republicans appointed by JEB. Yet I can convince them to enforce environmental law agressively and get consistent unanimous support from them. Why? Because I bring cases to them that are fully mature and reek of injustice. I have taken the time to gather the facts and present the matter in a way that highlights the injustice that is occurring (to inspire a bit of anger) and request their support to put a stop to it. Interestingly, over time they have grown to like this liberal.

To quote Goldwater "Moderation in the search for justice is no virtue".

[demnan]

2. Dean is a healer

I never did think he was purely angry - he just isn't a big feel good phoney for which I'm glad.

[TreasonousBastard]

3. I hope so.

I also hope this populism isn't an act, either.

One way or the other, it's still a good message that has to get out, and I hope it makes it into the real election.

[ima_sinnic]

4. all right, way to go!

This is the "something," IMHO, that people keep wondering about Howard Dean. For years I have wondered when the American people would wake up about the odious thing happening under their noses with corporations, how their tentacles have reached further and tighter and more entwined and controlling. It has been the humongous turd in the livingroom that nobody would talk about but were having trouble not noticing a decidedly unpleasant odor--esp. lately. Howard Dean is appealing to a largely unvoiced need in Americans almost to start from scratch to repair a majorly corrupted system. He is absolutely pure of any corporate scum at all. His candidacy and his entire power--which is the definition of politics, as I recall from HS civics--are derived from We The People.

More than any of the other candidates, Howard Dean has given me the optimistic feeling that control of the government truly would be returned to the people--and that at least the beginnings of legislation to rein in corporations (once again) would even start happening.

on edit: to be fair: Kucinich is the only other candidate who could potentially bring about such a revolution, but mainly on the basis of message, not as evidenced by his ability to bring together the masses into a cohesive force.

[quaker bill]

9. I agree

I see the anger he expresses as arising from this side. I am also angry, but not just over the war. The war is a good focal point, but even more, it is symptomatic of the loss of human values brought on by the misadministration. There are some many other places this is expressed. On the war:

No one dares to seriously report on or discuss the 20,000 to 50,000 civilian Iraqi war dead. (there are virtually no pictures, and we can't even be bothered to count them)

We have a pResident who authorized dropping bombs on a city of 4 milion civilians without "reading the entire report". This complete lack of concern for humanity is stunning. The fact that this simple statement was not an enormous scandal in and of itself is just another symptom of this loss.

The only time anything that could masquerade as compassion comes out of the misadministration is when it is absolutely soaked to saturation with gifts for corporations (see the medicare bill).

I agree on Kucinich, great ideas, but his campaign provides no evidence that he could pull them off.

[vdeputy]

6. I'm a Clark supporter

but this is the best thing that Howard Dean has ever said and it makes me feel better about supporting him if he wins the nomination.

[hedda_foil]

8. He's been saying it all along.

Read or watch any of his speeches from any point in the campaign since he started last year. That's why his support is so strong.

[slinkerwink]

17. thank you

:-)

[janx]

21. There's a lot more.

His American Restoration speech, a speech his gave at his official campaign announcement, was full of hope. It was very moving.

[monarch]

7. Saw Dean's mother and brother at a very small gathering

They both said that the anger thing was a media creation and that anyone who isn't angry at Bush isn't paying attention. In responding to a question about Howard as a young boy, his mother stated that he was an ordinary little boy with an ordinary childhood and that what she remembered most about him was that he was very kind.

[Nicholas_J]

10. Unfortunately

It was Dean who big corporated Vermont.

There were strict laws regulating and prohibiting large corprations and urban sprawl before Dean became governor, and Dean was given more money to run by large corporations than any Governor in Vermont history, raising more money from pharmaceutical companies that any of his Republican opponents were able to raise for their entire campaigns. Deans first Hundred and Eleven thousand dollars for the Fund For a Healthy America came from the Vermont Utilities companies, the majority ownership of whom are in the hands of some of the nations worse neo-cons.

More Dean slick acting being directed by Trippi.

The statements he made are very loaded as they actually say nothing. They do not indicate that Dean actually finds the effect of large corporation and their efficiency to be a negative thing. They are very typical of the kind of statements Dean makes to get anyone who hears them to think that he is on THEIR side,

[Demobrat]

12. Yeah, Dean worked with IBM because they are

Vermon'ts biggest employer. Bad Dean!

[Nicholas_J]

15. And their biggest polluter

And brought in Wal Mart, bringing the number of people who had to work for low paying, now benefit jobs in Vermont to an all time high (Wal Mart, NOT IBM is Vermonts biggest employer), as Well as altering or over-riding zoning laws to allow massive urband sprawl.

Vermont lost more small busineses, percentage wise, than any other state in the 90's. When he came into office 70 percent of Vermonts farms were small family farms, when he left, due to his wooing of larger corporations like ADM, and Monsanto for Genetically modified foods, and the Vermont Egg Factory, The percentage of small family farms dropped to 556 percent, as Dean allowed ignored enforcement of environmental standards on the large corporations, while enforcing them on the smaller farms.

Taking large sums of campaign contribution money from pharmaceutical companies to veto a bill they desparately wanted killed, but had passed with overwhelming support in both the house and senate ( Dea took six grand in campaign money from them three days before vetoing a bill that would require pharmaceutical companies to give the state VSCRIPT program the same deep discounts and rebates it gives to private insurance pharmceutical plans). But that six grand was just the down payment. He got much more a few weeks later after he had done the deed in 1996.

[KaraokeKarlton]

20. Excuse me, but

I have yet to see you post even ONE accurate and truthful piece of information about my state. At least you're dependable and I can always count on you to give me a perfect example of the totally ridiculous and false information being spread on this site about Vermont. I actually feel bad for the people who parrot what you post because repeating anything you post about Vermont makes them look worse than just being uninformed.

:eyes:

[Demobrat]

11. Being angry at Bush and the direction the country is going

doesn't make Dean or anybody else an angry person. If it did, we would all fall into that category, wouldn't we?

[madfloridian]

13. Amen to the soul part!

""Bigger and bigger corporations might mean more efficiency, but there is something about human beings that corporations can't deal with, and that's our soul, our spirituality, who we are," Dean told a breakfast crowd in Sidney, Iowa. "We need to find a way in this country to understand and to help each other understand that there is a tremendous price to be paid for the supposed efficiency of big corporations. The price is losing the sense of who we are as human beings."

[blm]

14. Don't ignore his deceptive side:

And how he used IWR as a wedge issue when his own stance was so similar:

>>>>>>>

Huh?Did Howard Dean actually support a war resolution giving Bush authority to attack Iraq? The answer is: pretty much. As Gephardt's crack research staff helpfully points out in a piece of paper delivered to reporters at the debate, The Des Moines Register reported on October 6, 2002, that "Dean opposes the Bush resolution and supports an alternative sponsored by Sens. Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat, and Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican. 'It's conceivable we would have to act unilaterally, but that should not be our first option,' Dean told reporters before the dinner." Back in mid-October a Burlington newspaper quoted Dean as saying, "I would have supported the Biden-Lugar resolution."

>>>>>>
Then he explained his interpretation of Biden-Lugar: "The Biden-Lugar amendment is what should have passed in Congress, because the key and critical difference was that it required the president to come back to Congress for permission. And that is where the congressmen who supported that resolution made their mistake was not supporting Biden-Lugar instead of giving the president a blank check."

This statement caused Kerry to almost jump through his television monitor. It was his turn to make a correction. In what would be the final volley of the Biden-Lugar war, Kerry patiently explained, "the Biden-Lugar amendment that Howard Dean said he supported, at the time he said he supported it, had a certification by the president. And the president only had to certify he had the authority to go. It's no different from--fundamentally--what we voted on."
By my reading of Biden-Lugar, Dean is indeed wrong that Bush was forced to "come back to Congress for permission" to attack Iraq.

The resolution required Bush to do one of two things before going to war. First, he had to get a new U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq. (This was the key difference between Biden-Lugar and the resolution Congress actually passed.) Obviously Bush got a U.N. resolution. It's a matter of some debate whether the resolution authorized the attack. The Bush administration and Britain say it did. Most of the rest of the world says it didn't. But Biden-Lugar had one more rather large escape clause for Bush to go to war even if he didn't get a the U.N. resolution.

According to Biden-Lugar, all Bush had to do was "make available to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate his determination that the threat to the United States or allied nations posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program and prohibited ballistic missile program is so grave that the use of force is necessary, notwithstanding the failure of the Security Council to approve a resolution."
Isn't this exactly what happened? Bush went to the United Nations. He failed to get a clean resolution authorizing force. Then he "determined" that the threat from Iraq's WMDs was "so grave that the use of force is necessary." At the time Bush complained that Biden-Lugar would "tie his hands." He preferred the Gephardt resolution that had no strings attached. But in the end, assuming you interpret the "make available ... his determination" clause literally, the war resolution Howard Dean supported would probably have led to exactly the same outcome--a unilateral war with Iraq.
>>>>>>>

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=dispatch&s=lizza112503

[quaker bill]

16. Biden-Lugar

Also limited the purpose of the war to disarmament. It did not authorize "regime change". It required repeated reporting to congress on progress and planning.

On another note, Dean was not in the Senate. The subject of the debate was which was best, IWR or Biden-Lugar? An anti-war resolution was not under discussion. In that context, I favored Biden-Lugar as well. But would have vastly favored an anti-war proposition, if such were available.

[Scott Lee]

19. The truth has revealed Bush's obsession with regime change

not with disarmament. As it always was, this "war" is about a personal beef Bush has with Saddam that goes clear back to Daddy.

While acknowledging this was choice of eating rat shit or cat shit, Biden/Lugar would likely have lessened the damage to Iraq, her people and to the US international prestige ravaged by this horrible mistake.

[FrenchieCat]

22. But why is this article about Dean showing up

in this article on the PNAC site????? Where they say that he stance on Foreign policy is no different from the establishment...i.e., from PNAC.....???

http://www.newamericancentury.org/defense-20031117.htm

Howard Dean is no George McGovern. He opposed the Iraq war, he says, because it was "the wrong war at the wrong time," not because it was emblematic of a fundamentally misguided American foreign policy. Dean has not, in fact, challenged the reigning foreign policy paradigms of the post-9/11 era: the war on terrorism and the nexus between terrorism and rogue states with weapons of mass destruction. "I support the president's war on terrorism," he told Tim Russert this summer. He supported the war in Afghanistan. He even supported Israel's strike against a terrorist camp in Syria because Israel, like the United States, has the "right" to defend itself. (European Deanophiles take note.) Dean does not call for a reduction in American military power but talks about using the "iron fist" of our "superb military." He talks tough about North Korea and at times appears to be criticizing the Bush administration for not addressing that "imminent" threat more seriously. And he especially enjoys lacerating Bush for not taking the fight more effectively to al Qaeda, a bit like John F. Kennedy criticizing Eisenhower in 1960 for not being tough enough on communism.

Of course, all this tough talk could be hot air. Maybe Dean is doing a great job controlling and hiding his inner peacenik. If so, that in itself tells you something about the current state of the foreign policy debate. Even Mr. Speak-My-Mind thinks he has to talk tough. George McGovern didn't.

Another possibility is that Dean's opposition to the Iraq war has been over-interpreted by his supporters on the Democratic left. They think he rejects the overall course of American foreign policy, just as they do. But maybe he doesn't. They think he's one of them, but his views may not be all that different from those of today's Democratic centrist establishment. When Dean criticizes Bush's foreign policy "unilateralism," he sounds like a policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, not a radical. "There are two groups of people who support me because of the war," Dean told Mara Liasson a few months ago. "One are the people who always oppose every war, and in the end I think I probably won't get all of those people." The other group, Dean figures, simply "appreciates the fact" that he "stood up early" and spoke his mind and opposed Bush while other Democrats were cowed. Dean may not be offering a stark alternative to Bush's foreign policy, therefore, so much as he is simply offering Democrats a compelling and combative alternative to Bush himself. The Iraq war provided the occasion to prove his mettle.

[quaker bill]

24. Why do speculative articles show up anywhere?

Dean might be this, Dean might be that. No one who refuses on any basis to use military force to defend this country from real enemies will ever be elected President in my lifetime.

The facts are that this war was based on made up BS about a non-existant threat. Dean did not need to be a peacenik to oppose it. No one did.

While I oppose all warfare, I find stupid ones based on lies especially objectionable. Apparently so does Dean.