The Dean Legacy

[MarkTwain]

The Dean Legacy
By MATT BAI

Back when he was a rising phenomenon in Iowa and New Hampshire, Howard Dean used to revel in reeling off the names of the various politicians to whom journalists had taken to comparing him: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George McGovern, even Barry Goldwater. (I myself, writing in The New York Times Magazine, drew a parallel between Dr. Dean and Jerry Brown.) But as Dr. Dean's once-soaring campaign lost altitude over the dairy farms of Wisconsin during the last month, Dr. Dean took to invoking a more distant historical figure: Robert LaFollette, Wisconsin's iconic early 20th century governor and senator, whose name is synonymous with progressivism.

- SNIP -

.... Dr. Dean seemed to be suggesting that even in defeat, his campaign was somehow larger than its delegate count. Indeed, this is the conventional wisdom that now surrounds Dr. Dean — that by engaging new voters and reigniting passion among his rivals, something he undisputedly achieved, Dr. Dean will leave a tyrannosaur-like footprint on the Democratic Party and the political system as a whole......Dr. Dean had this much in common with "Fighting Bob": both men saw their presidential ambitions disintegrate in the course of a single disastrous speech.....But LaFollette's legacy as a reformer outlived that catastrophe, and there is a reason for that.....What will be Dr. Dean's lasting contribution to party or country?

- SNIP -

....Dr. Dean can hardly claim to have laid the rails for some powerful engine of change. His campaign, as he never tired of reminding us, was about "taking the country back," which seemed another way of saying it was basically about winning. There was a moment, just after much of the Democratic establishment appeared to embrace his candidacy in December, when the Dr. Dean could have done something truly special in American politics. The party and the campaign were his to mold. He could have risen above his own partisan rhetoric to become the "uniter" that President Bush had promised to be.....

He didn't.

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In the end, the tragedy of Howard Dean's impressive grass-roots campaign is that he will be remembered not for any lasting reform agenda, but for the missed opportunity to create one.

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/politics/trail/index.html

[Kagemusha]

1. The media know not the recent past they lived through

That speech came after Dean lost badly in Iowa after blowing what, 30+ million there?

Saying his ambitions disintegrated because of the speech seems laughable. They disintegrated in the caucuses, not at the podium.

[MarkTwain]

5. Dean failed...

... because he was a failed candidate. Plain and simple. Anyone with a reasonable degree of political sophistication knew that from the beginning.

A full reading of the article reveals that the author never attributed Doctor Dean's failure to that one speech. He merely used that as an example of the similarities between Dean and the man with whom Dean had drawn a comparison to himself.

Moreover, the thrust of the article was that Dean could have been so much more in the political tableau if he had maintained a true progressive focus and had not allowed himself to slip into some very dark places psychologically.

Time for the Doctor to exit the stage gracefully which is something he should have done weeks ago when the electorate rejected him. Not after losing seventeen states - consecutively.

[CWebster]

2. NYTimes just can't help but to deliver the dig

while they hoist uo the empty suit of Kerry, a sort of masthead for their identity and lack of journaalistic integrity since the Bush ascended.

Dean gave the party back its soul and pride in it's identity. Of course those who lack both wouldn't realize either was ever missing to begin with.

[Moderator]

3. MarkTwain...Per DU rules please keep quotes from copyrighted sources

at four paragraphs or less. It is a copyright violation to post more than 4 paragraphs of copyrighted material.

Thanks,

DU Moderator

[MarkTwain]

4. Done..

..thanks. Was unaware.