for HHS.
This is an interesting article by someone who lived in Vermont while Howard Dean was governor there. It shows the side many of us have known who own this book mentioned and others like it. He governed as a centrist, and worked with both sides.
Interesting.
From Truth Dig:
Howard Dean Should Have Been Obama’s Pick All AlongI lived in Vermont for nearly all of Dean’s 11 years as governor. The 2004 presidential contender who whipped crowds of young voters into frenzies with his bracing oratory was someone we had not seen before. He governed there as a fiscal conservative whose skinflinty ways and careful long-range planning made him popular among small-government Yankees of all political affiliations, Democrat, Republican and Independent. When, in response to a mandate from the state Supreme Court, Dean led the way for Vermont’s civil union law, social conservatives, again regardless of party affiliation, turned on him. He followed up his legislative victory with dozens of visits around the state to gatherings of people who strongly disagreed with him. He listened respectfully and patiently to their grievances, argued why he believed civil unions should be equated with basic human decency and civil rights, and did not backpedal or apologize. The gambit was an extraordinary display of political courage, and savvy. In the next election he managed to hang on to his job by the slimmest of margins.
Though Dean can be famously argumentative, he is not known as a politician who holds grudges. As governor, he’d fight like mad for an initiative he believed in but on the next issue of importance could work with those who had just opposed him. Of course, Dean played the partisan as chair of the DNC, but that was his job description. He served much longer as chief executive of a state with a fixed budget and very real health and human services responsibilities, and his track record in that capacity should count for much.
In the fall of 2003, my publishing company joined with the Rutland Herald and Times Argus to produce the book “Howard Dean: A Citizen’s Guide to the Man Who Would be President,” written by nine veteran journalists who had covered Dean as governor for various news organizations or had reported on previous presidential campaigns.
Here are some pertinent quotes from the book mentioned above.
When Dean left office in early 2003, most states were in dire financial shape, their revenues hammered by the collapse of the dot-com economy. Vermont, by contrast, had a comfortable surplus, thanks largely to Dean.”
“The only real exception to rigid budget discipline was health care. … This did stretch the budget some, but those costs were offset somewhat by increased tobacco taxes.”
Dean “for the first time pushed governmental health care coverage out beyond the welfare population to working people who did not qualify for Medicaid.”
“Government observers in Vermont usually cite two highlights among Dean’s accomplishments in office: tight budget management of the state’s economy, and Success by Six, an effort to link early education programs to social services. … Dean, perhaps because of his medical training, demanded measured results.”
The writer mentions two interesting observations. One that "Dean was a true Washington outsider who took over a broken political machine and achieved astonishing results."
He also mentioned that "the position of HHS secretary would play to Dean’s proven strengths—his medical training and his ability to work within budgets, to name just two."
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