Centerfield

Dean Addicted to Demagoguery?

This is not completely a prediction of Dean losing. I'm going to cover my ass to that extent. It is, however, a speculation explaining the high level of self-contradiction that we see from Dean. Basically, I think he has failed to execute the usual "veer left" Democratic primary maneuver correctly.

Dean seems to have had a good shot of making a good run against Bush when he started. He had viable, novel, centrist-liberal issues, notably the life partners idea and Medicare extensions, which could appeal to the base, to demonstrated belief in the importance of balancing budgets to appeal to us moderates. He has gubernatorial experience, the most important Presidential resume item these days, and has a reputation for effective leadership in NH.

The novelty, success, and nature of his Internet campaign proves that he is an excellent manager, able to attract good people and happy to take ideas that don't originate with him, as well as no micromanager - local campaigns are given wide discretion. A few days ago, the Austin campaign was handing out stickers at a very local kind of event - 1st Thursday on South Congress. That could never have happened at a campaign that had to explain 1st Thu to HQ, and sure enough no other campaign was there.

And he still has passion. He had everything Jed Bartlett on West Wing had except for the Nobel Prize (nor, we hope, MS)....

The puzzle is, what happened to those carefully-thought-out issues? Now his positions on many issues, big and small, are all over the map. When NAFTA came up for a vote, he was for it. Early in the campaign, he came out against free trade except with uniform environmental and labor standards and rates (which basically means never). Leiberman caught him on this in the NM debate, to which he had to weaken his position to be about really needing much more limited labor standards. In a recent Washington Post Q&A, Dean came down firmly on both sides of the issue: "Globalization is here to stay whether we like it or not, but the rules for globalization are not. ... Free trade won't work under the present circumstances."

Free trade is a good example, but it is by no means the only one - the list includes the Iraq War, conduct of the Iraqi occupation, conduct of the War On Terrorism, business regulation, Medicare, etc. etc..

I think the problem is that he has become addicted to paranoia and extreme politics. I think his plan for "going left" was to dirty Bush' nose and establish himself as the Anti-Bush without actually expressing extreme positions.

There is a huge egoboo in going into a room of activists and getting down and dirty on Bush and the Republicans. There is a certain amount of addiction inherent in paranoia as well. He has become addicted to saying things like, "Free trade won't work under the present circumstances." It's fun to come down and lay down the line like that, but a President can only do that on carefully considered issues and circumstances. Candidates are hurt when caught in untruths like this one - free trade is, like it or not, mostly a fact in North America and the EU.

Dean may not have expected either the addictiveness of going left, or its effects on his issues. There is a linkage between paranoia and extremism. Roughly speaking, the more he aligned what he was saying with what rooms of activists wanted to hear, even if he started out. limiting himself to just Bush and Republicans as outgrageous red-meat targets, it's natural from there to start talking about capitalist oppression, in contradiction to the distrusting but pro-capitalistic place he started. It's natural to rank on many things Bush is for, starting of course with the energy industry, but beyond that to capitalism in general, free trade, fighting wars, fighting terrorism, and exporting democracy.

Typical of me, I will first give you the technical, issue-based reason this is a problem. His issues can never solidify. Right now, nobody knows where he stands. So long as he keeps Bush-bashing, he can get the left Democratic wing to support him, but that's not enough to win the general election. He's been running for President for months now, and we have to work from guesswork on what he'd do in Iraq, because although he has sobersides daylight answers that seem likely, he also has extreme answers that would bug the living daylights out of most Americans. Given the solid-to-a-fault alternative of Bush, Dean can't win.

Then there is the paranoia problem. Most of us don't like the idea of our leaders acting from fear. If there is a 9/11/05 on Dean's watch, what will he do? Look at the evidence to assign responsibility and take appropriate action, or will he blame the oil companies? Or maybe the space aliens?

TNR &c and Ruy Texeira think he plans a Sister Souljah moment. Well, if I'm right, it's going to take more than that - I think he's becoming a Sister Souljah himself.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope we see him make the transition to a sober leader with self-consistent issues. I would rather him be the Jed Bartlett than the alcoholic chief of staff. But I won't even consider voting for him until I see at least three - better six - months of sobersidesness on his comments and policies.

Even if he does go sober when "going right", this would already be a huge problem for him - remember the ads on Leiberman changing positions from his own positions to Gore's? Those had limited effect, because loyalty was the obvious explanation for Leiberman's actions. The effect of many self-contradicting sound bites from the head of a ticket in a single Presidential campaign would be something else again. I think that kind of ad would work for me and many others. In fact, this is a big reason I think he went farther than he planned - he's a smart guy and must understand that his life is lived on tape, and the consequences.

This posting actually started out as one in which I wanted to explain why Dean couldn't win because of his issues. But I saw all the self-contradictions on issues and then started to wonder. And now that I have taken a close look, I think maybe we Democrats lost our best hope of victory in 2004 in the process described in this posting. Posted by Jon Kay at December 13, 2003 04:58 PM