LaTimes - Bush and Howard Dean: separated at birth?

[meow mix]

It's a question worth asking, not only because the two were reared in wealthy families, punched their tickets at Yale (Bush just three years ahead of Dean), and managed to avoid the mud and blood of Vietnam.

Nor even because both first made their names in politics as moderate governors who reached beyond party lines to pass legislation and banged heads occasionally within their own party.

The real reason Bush and Dean appear to be twins beneath the skin is that their current political strategies and styles are so similar. Dean has ascended in the Democratic presidential race by defining himself as the anti-Bush.

But in his approach to politics, Dean is now Bush's mirror image, the liberal equivalent of a conservative president.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-outlook29dec29,1,3670206.column?coll=la-home-politics

[boxster]

1. It obviously worked for Bush, so it's probably not such a bad strategy.

Dean's campaign strategy has more than a passing resemblance to Bush's, especially in how he deals with "gaffes" - ignore them hoping they'll go away or go on the offensive, if they don't. Dean's "you should be ashamed" line is a classic example of this strategy.

Bush and the media were very effective at shifting the focus to Gore's perceived errors or "lies", even though Bush's lies and misstatements were much larger in scope. Dean is using very similar tactics to shift focus away from his perceived gaffes.

[KittyWampus]

38. Don't Kid Yourself- Dean Is On The Recieving End Of A Complicit Media

Dean has no innate Teflon... it is merely a function of a media that has largely allowed him a temporary pass and have, in fact, boosted him by giving him name recognition. That the press hasn't come down on Dean yet has NOTHING to do with his campaign's strategy.

If you think the media is going to continue to "ignore" Dean's monumental screwups then you need to wake up.

Even if Dean manages to go forward without shooting himself in the foot AGAIN he's already given the press enough ammunition in the last 2 weeks...

[billbuckhead]

2. The world deserves better than Bush vs Dean

Two priviledged ex-drunks who got sober and now think they know everything.

[BeyondGeography]

5. Our party deserves better

Come to think of it, I want my party back!

[sfecap]

28. Yes it does.

Why would we want a DINO who raises money for repukes, praises them and considers neocons "colleagues"? Oh...waitaminite! That's Wesley Clark....wrong thread.

[Bread and Circus]

30. Wow, you just proved the author's point....

It's almost on cue, it's eerie

[lurk_no_more]

34. Why would we want a.......?

because he's not the clear choice of the GOP to face jr., Why? because he can win Why?, because his supporters don't have to try and explain or defend his daily gaffs, Why? because we don't want to have to ask ourselves "why didn't I listen" when bush gets a second term, why, oh why, oh why


” JAFO”

[Bombtrack]

3. I wonder if Dean is bitter about not being asked to be in Skull and Bones

I mean he seems to have had the perfect WASP pedigree.

Dean: You let F*ing catholic Kerry in?

Bonesman: Sorry Howie, you blurt out stupid stuff so much, we're afraid you might give away our secrets

Dean: It's cause I'm short isn't it?

Bonesman: That too

[NV1962]

4. My oh my

What's this? Style prevailing over substance? Strategy and tactics over deciding which wars to wage in the first place?

About as "interesting" and "thoughtful" as reading about primary candidates... in the fashion section.

One parting kiss though: how very, um, interesting that there's just so little in that article about the intellectual differences between the two, no? ;)

[Bombtrack]

6. Not really, I agree with Bill Mahers assessment of Dean

"Not very bright"

[billbuckhead]

7. Bush said he would win because he wasn't as smart as Gore

I guess the Dean camp will say this proves Dean's electability.

[NV1962]

13. Riiiiight...

Granted, even a lamp post has a brighter head than B*

But then again...

Don't drunks (now why am I thinking of B* here...) also prefer lamp posts, for support rather than illumination?

A sleeping Dean runs circles around a waking B* (when he's not between naps, that is)

[SayitAintSo]

11. You don't get throught med school without something up stairs...

Sorry don't buy it ...

[Bombtrack]

14. Bush got a Harvard MBA

or did I misread that somewhere?

[stickdog]

22. Are you really comparing an MBA to an MD?

How facile.

Just like the article.

[Gloria]

8. It's this similiarity that finally turned me off to Dean....it was almost

a "gut" thing. The recent gaffes have just reinforced this.

Beyond that...there is the question of whether Americans want to see more of Bush or if they're in the mood for a more healing persona.

I just don't want to see a Democratic version of Bush....

[drfemoe]

37. Democratic version of B*

Guess which Democratic candidate worked in the Ford White House alongside Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and Bush Sr.? That is an item of interest that B* can relate to very well, isn't it? It was Wesley Clark.

Guess which ones didn't work in a Republican White House alongside those men? Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich, CMB, Al Sharpton.

If we are trying to distinguish ourselves from those who seek world conquest, WC is not the way to do it.

[Brian_Expat]

9. What a whacked-out column

Bush is the anti-grass roots. He could not be more different than Dean -- Bush is command and control, centralized, wealthy and elitist.

[DuctapeFatwa]

10. LOL! O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us

To see oursels as others see us

Robert Burns

[janx]

12. It's just a rehash of the Dean=Bush theme we see from time

to time.

If anything, comparing the two guys in this way serves to emphasize their differences more than their similarities.

[Gloria]

16. Well, sometimes I get the feeling that this is what Dean aspires to...

He has the early pedigree....

[janx]

23. It doesn't matter what you are given.

It matters what you do with it (and what you are raised to do with it).

[Clark4VotingRights]

15. The LA Times is one of the few decent newspapers in the US.

They actually took on Schwartzengroper for example.

I agree that Dean is a polarizing figure:

"If Dean wins, he could polarize the capital and the country as sharply as Bush. Bush's determination to satisfy his base, and his tendency to frame policy decisions as a choice between right and wrong, has led him to shelve almost entirely the bipartisan deal-making skills he demonstrated as Texas governor; he's allowed the congressional GOP majority to exclude Democrats from negotiation on major bills.

Likewise, it's difficult to imagine Dean courting congressional Republicans for too many grand compromises after running a campaign centered on the proposition that Washington Democrats have cooperated with Bush and the GOP too much. Every time a President Dean would sit down with a Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, the official White House blog would probably light up with indignation."

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-outlook29dec29,1,3670206.column?coll=la-home-politics

[stickdog]

18. Exactly. The only way to get anything done in this country is to

compromise until we become Republicans ourselves.

Just look at the legacy of the last three years!

[BeyondGeography]

21. Welcome to DU, Clark4Voting

And good point. We do actually have to think about how we govern, don't we?

Another point liberals need to understand is that some of the money we get to spend on social programs will have to come from controlling defense spending. Now who's in a better position to do that, the General or a perceived weakling on defense like Dean?

[Clark4VotingRights]

27. Thank you for the nice welcome BeyondGeography

Obliged!

[drfemoe]

36. Oh Good

Maybe you are someone that can find out what the General has to say about the missing $1-3 Trillion Dollars from the Pentagon?

Where does he think it went? As a defense lobbyist and top military strategist, would he have some knowledge about how to go about recovering (finding) all that $$? What steps does he plan to take to investigate? Does he have a position paper addressing the trillions in taxpayer money that the Pentagon 'misplaced'?

[stickdog]

17. Bush's dad had an estate in Texas. Dean's dad had an apartment in NY.

Bush worked in a string of failed businesses set up for him by his dad.
Dean went to med school and interned in the the inner city.

Dean is running for President of the United States.
Bush has run the United States into the ground.

Bush raised hundreds of millions from a few Pioneers & Rangers.
Dean raised a few million from hundreds of thousands of regular, individual contributors.

Dean is running a hard driving campaign.
Bush likes to drink hard and drive.

Bush once owned a Lincoln Continental.
Lincoln died in the Ford Theater.
Dean once owned Ford.

The similarities are unCheney!

[NV1962]

19. LOL!

Exactly... Let's leave the nonsense to the GOPers - it's their monopoly.

[cryofan]

25. How disingenuous--a Park Ave apartment and an place in the Hamptons

Right?

[DemDogs]

20. Was waiting for someone to say this

Accommodationists when they governed. Friends of those with cash. Whatever Dean projects now, the LA Times has looked behind the curtain. FINALLY.

[cryofan]

24. more superficial mainstream media news letting Dean slide on his record

From the article:


But in his approach to politics, Dean is now Bush's mirror image, the liberal equivalent of a conservative president.


But Dean is NOT liberal. In fact, judging from his statements when he was the VT gov, he holds the left in considerable disdain ....from http://www.isreview.org/issues/32/dean.shtml
just read Dean's own words from his VT days:


Most of the Democrats in the legislature rebelled against Dean over the budget cuts, and he ended up depending on Republican votes to pass most of his proposals. At the time, a local Vermont newspaper wrote, "The biggest items on Dean’s agenda for next year are likely to provoke more opposition from the Democrats than the Republicans. Nevertheless, Dean said he feels no particular pressure to deliver the goods to his party or to promote the Democratic agenda."15

In the mid-1990s, Dean even aligned himself with the likes of Republican Newt Gingrich on his stance on cutting Medicare. He opined at the time, "The way to balance the budget is for Congress to cut Social Security, move the retirement age to 70, cut defense, Medicare and veterans pensions, while the states cut everything else."16
....
The Rutland Herald described how one protestor, Henrietta Jordan of the Vermont Center for Independent Living, "said it would be much fairer to raise taxes on people with expensive homes and cars, children in private school and a housekeeper at home than to cut programs that helped the 66,000 Vermonters living with disabilities."17 Dean responded callously, brushing off the pleas of Vermont’s most vulnerable by saying, "This seems like sort of the last gasp of the left here."18"


That Dean sure is some liberal, all right!


Also, the LA Times article says:

As a candidate, Dean has shown the same priority. At every stop, he insists Democrats must shift their attention away from the swing voters that Bill Clinton prized to excite core liberal constituencies like union members, women's groups, minorities and gay rights activists. "We are going to take back the Democratic Party from the idea that the way to win elections is to neglect our base," he insists.


Umm....Dean is hardly the right person to excite the liberals, given his longtime disdain for them, as shown in the above quotes.



But Dean has mostly moved to accommodate the left, renouncing his earlier support for free trade and spending restraints on Social Security and Medicare, echoing teacher-union criticism of tougher educational accountability, and, above all, centering his campaign on opposition to the war in Iraq.


Oh, like I really believe this Silver Spoon multimillioniare when he suddenly says he wants to keep SS and Medicare funded, even though he earlier called for rolling it back, as shown in the quotes above. And just when he is trying to get liberal votes....how con-veeeen-i-ent!


Also,

Dean's words about Clinton himself were ambiguous enough to leave the Democratic front-runner with plausible deniability that he was criticizing the former president personally. But Dean unambiguously aligned himself with those who believe Clinton conceded too much ground to Republicans when he described the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist group that incubated many of Clinton's signature ideas, as "the Republican wing of the Democratic Party."



What a hoot! Dean calling another Democrat part of "the Republican wing of the Democratic Party"! Anyone who reads the quotes above must know that Dean is in "the Republican wing of the Democratic Party," if anybody at all is!

Also, from the article:

With that declaration, Dean may be sending a message to his party's most ideological elements similar to the one that Bush delivered when he stepped onto the stage at fundamentalist Bob Jones University during the do-or-die South Carolina Republican primary in 2000. Like Bush then, Dean now is telling his party's ideological core that if he wins, they will be his top priority.


What is that old joke--how can you tell when a dishonest person is lying? His/her lips are moving....

[Zomby Woof]

26. I'm getting some popcorn

This one could be a real doozy. :-)

[Tinoire]

29. It turns into a horror film at the end

I spent 2 years training in I/P and I can barely take this anymore. The more I think about it, the more I feel that nothing less than a full apology, clarification and comparison of the Dean/Kucinich anti-war records on National TV will do.

Thanks to Dean's mis-representations and those of many Dean supporters, Kucinich's credentials as an anti-war candidate are now being questioned by less-informed voters who think that Dean is the only one who opposed the war. What kind of bloody BS is that?!!! Kucinich is being questioned??!!!!!!!!! I've been livid since finding that out. Trippi is a bloody idiot for thinking

1. that Kucinich supporters would take this quietly
2. that this isn't going to lose Dean AND the Democrats votes,
3. that what back-fired on him when he ran that disastrous campaign for Mondale won't back-fire on him, on us all, again

Very disappointed. Sad. Angry.


Anyway here's the comparison from the Kucinich site:

http://www.kucinich.us/antiwar.php

With mainstream media repeatedly labeling Howard Dean a fervent foe of the
Iraq War, many antiwar-oriented Democrats have flocked to Dean's campaign. But
as the record shows, the presidential candidate who opposed the war consistently
and unwaveringly from the beginning is Dennis Kucinich.

By contrast, Dean made alternately hawkish and dovish statements on Iraq
prior to the Oct 2002 Congressional resolution, then muted his voice after the
war started in March 2003, and recently insisted to the Washington Post that "I
don't even consider myself a dove" and "now that we're there , we're
stuck." Dean has also declared the bloated Bush military budget off-limits to
cuts.

Here is a relevant timeline from mass media accounts:

Sept 21, 2002, KUCINICH -- "Leader of the Opposition"
The NY Times runs a news story about how "a small group of Democratic die-hards in the House
is trying to rally opposition to military action." The piece refers to
"two dozen or so mainly liberal lawmakers...though they may be viewed as outside
the mainstream of even their own party, they are raising their voices against an
invasion, even if their leadership is not." The piece accurately calls Rep.
Kucinich a "leader of the opposition" and ends by quoting him: "This is an
attempt to start a serious debate inside the party."

Sept. 23, 2002, DEAN -- Might Endorse Pre-Emptive Strike
Dean gives a waffling endorsement of President Bush's pre-emptive war:
"Pre-emption is not off the table, but the moral high ground does matter," he says, as quoted in
the Iowa City Press-Citizen. The paper reports that Dean "also said he would
endorse a pre-emptive strike against Iraq if it can be proven that Saddam
Hussein has access to weapons of mass destruction and the means to discharge
them."

Sept. 25, 2002, KUCINICH -- Denounces Pre-Emption
Introduced by anchor Judy Woodfruff on CNN as "one of the most active House opponents to
President Bush's proposed resolution on Iraq," Kucinich denounces Bush's policy
of pre-emptive war: "Since when do we equate patriotism with going to war? Since
when do we equate patriotism with preemptive strikes and with
unilateralism?...America's always been a nation that's worked with other
nations. And after September 11 of last year, we had the entire world community
working with us. Now we're separating ourselves, isolating ourselves from the
world community because we want to go it alone."

Sept. 29, 2002, DEAN -- "If You Don't Do This...We Will Go Into
Iraq"
On CBS "Face the Nation": After saying that the administration "had
not yet made" its case that Saddam was an immediate threat, and that if we
attack Iraq, "it's got to be gone about in a very different way," Dean also
states: "It's very simple. Here's what we ought to have done. We should have
gone to the UN Security Council. We should have asked for a resolution to allow
the inspectors back in with no pre-conditions. And then we should have given
them a deadline, saying, 'If you don't do this, say, within 60 days, we will
reserve our right as Americans to defend ourselves and we will go into Iraq.'"

Sept. 29, 2002, KUCINICH: "There Is No Imminent Threat"
On the same CBS "Face the Nation": "At this point, frankly, the evidence does not suggest
that Iraq was connected to 9/11, that there's any connection between Saddam
Hussein and al-Qaeda, that there's any connection between Iraq and the anthrax
attacks on this country. We don't hear from the CIA that Iraq has any usable
weapons of mass destruction that they could deliver to the United States."
Kucinich adds: "There's no imminent threat. If I thought there was an imminent
threat to this country, I wouldn't hesitate to vote for action. But I have to
tell you, there is no imminent threat."

Oct. 10, 2002, WAR RESOLUTION -- Dean at 1%
Thanks heavily to Kucinich's leadership, nearly 2/3 of House Democrats vote "No" on the war
resolution. But the four men in Congress then running for president all vote
"Yes": Kerry, Gephardt, Edwards and Lieberman. Dean is at 1 percent in polls
(Marist College poll, Oct. 9-10).

February 2003, DEAN -- "Democratic Wing of Democratic Party"
First reference in news media (according to Nexis Database) of Dean using the Paul
Wellstone-line: "I'm here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic
Party."

February 19, 2003 DEAN -- Unilateral Action Is...Unavoidable
Choice
Salon's Jake Tapper summarizes Dean's oft-repeated position on
attacking Iraq: "Saddam must be disarmed, but with a multilateral force under
the auspices of the United Nations. If the U.N. in the end chooses not to
enforce its own resolutions, then the U.S. should give Saddam 30 to 60 days to
disarm, and if he doesn't, unilateral action is a regrettable, but unavoidable,
choice."

March 19, 2003, WAR BEGINS

March 20, 2003: DEAN (Muted Remarks) vs. KUCINICH (Pulled No
Punches)
Dean and Kucinich address press groups in Washington D.C. AP
reports on their respective comments:

Dean: "'I'm not going to back off my criticism of the president's
policy, but I'm certainly going to change the tone,' Dean said between the
speeches. 'There won't be the kind of red meat remarks that you make in front of
partisan Democratic audiences.'"

Kucinich: "Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio took his presidential campaign
to the same newspaper audiences, but he pulled no punches in assailing the
president for starting the war. He urged Bush to bring the troops home and focus
on problems in America's cities, including unemployment, pollution and failing
schools. 'This is a sad day for America, the world community and the people of
Iraq,' he said. 'These are offensive, not defensive attacks, and they are in
violation of international law.'"

May 2, 2003, BUSH DECLARES END OF "MAJOR COMBAT" IN IRAQ

August 12, 2003, DEAN -- "We Cannot Leave Iraq"
"I think it was a mistake to go into Iraq in the long run. Now that we're there, we're stuck
there, and the administration has no plan for how to deal with it, and we cannot
leave because losing the peace is not an option. We cannot leave Iraq" (Buchanan
& Press, MSNBC)

September 7, 2003, KUCINICH -- Get U.S. Out and U.N. In
"The Bush Administration's arrogant occupation of Iraq has harmed the United States'
position in the world community, caused the deaths of 289 American soldiers at
last count, and diverted tens of billions of dollars from domestic needs. Now
the President is asking for another $87 billion. We must allow the UN to take
over peacekeeping operations in the country. The UN must take over management,
accounting, and distribution to the Iraqi people of Iraq's oil profits. There
must be no privatization of the Iraqi oil industry. The UN must handle the
awarding of all contracts for the rebuilding of Iraq so that there can be no
more sweetheart contracts for companies like Halliburton."

[cryofan]

31. a kick for spindizzy politicians

[Hep]

32. *yawn*

Here is that dreaded Y chromosome thing again. Actually, Dean is the mirror image of Reagan, but Dean opponents here would never understand it in a million years. They see the word Reagan and think evil. They won't even pay attention to the logic.

[mrgorth]

33. Bush was a moderate governor?

?

[Bucky]

35. In Texas terms, ayep.

That means more than just executing white people by the way. Bush had really good relations with Democrats in the state Lege. What he passed was appalling, but it had bipartisan support. I think in this context "moderate" means not a total asshole. In fact, in the national context it means that now, too. All of America has become Texas.

Vermont is the new Austin, yall just don't realize it yet. I long for the day when America becomes Arkansas again.

[jpgpenn]

39. Many of us knew this along

Thanks for the link!:toast: