for the record, i am not a dean supporter... yet. i might be in the future. i have remained agnostic about the whole democratic primary so far. in the end i will support basically anyone against bush. i won't commit to anyone this early as part of an almost silent, and rather pathetic when you think about it, protest against the whole primary system. as the primary campaign season gets earlier and earlier, the race seems to be decided before anyone actually casts a vote. dean may well emerge the winner, but i want to pretend that voters decide this rather than some polling firm. if you think diebold voting machines are subject to manipulation, reflect for a minute on the potential with private (and sometimes ideologically committed) polling companies.
so why am i bothered by brooks's column about dean? because brooks, like virtually every columnist i have read, has not noticed what most strikes me about dean, he is running a campaign like the republicans do. when republicans run for president, they portray themselves as farther to the right than they actually are during the primary season. that's called "playing to your base" and they do it to garner the favor of the right wing of the party who have a large turn out rate and who hold a majority votes within the party. when the primaries are over and some republican is nominated, then the candidates unveils his (for it is always a "his") "middle-of-the-road" positions to win the center. for while the right wing base can carry a republican through the primary, it is but a minority of the general electorate (and not a particularly well-liked minority in the general population). that is how republicans win elections and the press seems to understand that. when the last primaries were covered, they regularly noted how bush's pandering to the crazy right was just a necessary evil for him to get nominated.
dean is positioned to follow the same strategy. as the anti-war guy, he has gotten a solid lead among the more left wing side of the party, even though he has pretty solid centrist credentials from his record as governor of vermont. he just isn't emphasizing them yet for strategic reasons. i predict he won't emphasize his more moderate side until after he has the nomination wrapped up. this confuses brooks, just as it confuses many columnists. brooks's column is really nothing more than an attempt to play a game of gotcha! with dean. he contrasts the views of the "old" dean with that of the "new" dean. but much of his portrayal of the "new" dean is simply not accurate. for example, brooks writes "The old Dean was a free trader. The new Dean is not." meanwhile, the "new" dean said the following:
Capitalism is the greatest system that people have ever invented, because it takes advantage of bad traits, as well as our good traits, and turns them into productivity. But the essence of capitalism, which the right-wing never understands - it always baffles me - is, you got to have some rules. Imagine a hockey game with no rules...Nobody benefits. Nobody benefits. So you have got to have reasonable rules. And the rules have to protect everybody in the game.
(thanks to ntodd for pointing out the quote on his site). clearly dean is not the communist radical some people are trying to make him out to be.
dean's strategy of playing to the left while he campaigns for primaries should be familiar to political watchers like brooks. but instead, he is feigns confusion by it and uses it to point out such illusory contradictions. the contradictions, however, seem to be mostly in brooks' head. although, to be fair to brooks, the stereotype of dean as a left-winger seems to be in a lot of people's heads these days.
the misconception that dean is a radical leftist seems to come from his association with the anti-war crowd. for whatever reason, there seems to be a two dimensional stereotype of who the anti-war people are which draws of picture of them as radical 20-something hippy wannabes. the stereotype seems to assume that all protesters are essentially the same people. so when someone marches against the war in iraq, they are conflated with the anti-globalization protesters in seattle. reality, of course, is a bit more complex. dean was not at seattle. as far as i know dean has never made any statement supporting the anti-globalization cause. there is no logical connection that would link opposing the war in iraq with anti-globalization. no doubt some of dean's supporters are anti-globalists, but that does not mean dean is.
there's another reason that i didn't like brooks' column. it's not just the fact that brooks' misrepresentation of dean offends me a little. more importantly, this particularly pisses me off because as a member of the crazy left, i want to be pandered to. is that too much to ask? if bush bends over backwards for the black-helicopter-watching types, why can't any politicians pay attention to me? so i say, let dean follow the pander-to-the-left-during-the-primary-season strategy. it's about time that someone does.
