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I am very pleased to read this. I have been a Dean supporter for many months now, having early-on caught a glimpse of the traits you are seeing develop.

I am waiting for the mainstream media to understand that Dean is a, if not *the*, front-runner and has surely made more of an impact than the oft-mentioned Joey L. (who stands no chance to beat Bush).

If Dean comes out winning the MoveOn.org primary (even with less than the magic $$$$ figure of 50%), I think it will cement his role as an early leader, and yes, as a potential new leader for the party.

Where I work near NYC, I have already seen cars with Dean 2004 bumper stickers on them. Haven’t seen a lick of anything for the other Dems or even President Liar Liar Iraq on Fire.

Robbie D.

Dean, Dean, Dean… I was very interested in supporting Dean as a candidate against Bush. He seemed to have good ideas and seemed to be a saavy candidate. I was really getting into the guy.

Then I read the Tim Russert interview.

Dean came off as a misinformed looney whose sole campaign was about being the anti-Bush. He did well on the offensive against Bush and the administration’s actions, but when called to the mat for his own proposals and describing the nitty details of his own idea, he was his own worst enemy.

The economic exchanges between him and Russert were enough to make me cringe. His answers to most of Russert’s questions show that he knows little of what he’s speaking about. I could respect the man if he would have said that he didn’t know enough answer those questions (as he did WRT foreign policy), but it appeared that he kept making up solutions on the spot that were clearly unfeasible. If Dean did run against Bush in ‘04, there’s enough material in this interview alone to make him a laughing stock of the nation.

I appreciate the man’s “go get ‘em” attitude and honesty, but his ideas and performance, when under fire, have done much to change my impression of him as a great candidate to a crackpot. Now I think that if Dean really wants to help the nation and the Dems, he would be best suited to do so as a vice-presidential candidate.

Anyways, my $0.02.

-Chris

chris, i think you’re blowing that meet the press interview out of proportion… i watched it, twice, and i thought howard dean did well answering some ugly questions and accusations from tim russert

the foreign policy question, in particular, was absurd: russert wanted to know exactly how many troops are on active duty, and dean replied that he didn’t know the exact number, but he believed that it was between 1 and 2 million, which is correct - no one knows the exact number, but the closest estimate is 1.4 million… tim took offense that howard didn’t know the exact number of troops, and implied that dean wasn’t fit to be “commander in chief” if he didn’t have the latest defense department enlistment statistics at his ready… then tim asked how many troops were in iraq, and dean said that he wasn’t sure, but thought that there were roughly 135,000 - the actual number is around 146,000 (a difference of 7%)…

here’s the actual exchange, for anyone who missed the show - judge for yourselves:

       Russert: Let’s talk about the military budget. How many men and women would you have on active duty?
       Dean: I can’t answer that question. And I don’t know what the answer is. I can tell you one thing, though. We need more troops in Afghanistan. We need more troops in Iraq now. I supported the president’s invasion of Afghanistan for the obvious reasons, what had gone on and the murder of our people. But I do not support what the president’s doing there now. We need more people there. We cannot be making alliances with warlords in the hope that we’re one day going to have the democracy in Afghanistan. And what I would do in Iraq now is bring in NATO and bring in the United Nations, because our troops on the ground deserve better support than they’re getting.
       Russert: But how many troops—how many men and women do we now have on active duty?
       Dean: I can’t tell you the answer to that either. It’s…
       Russert: But as commander in chief, you should know that.
       Dean: As someone who’s running in the Democratic Party primary, I know that it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of one to two million people, but I don’t know the exact number, and I don’t think I need to know that to run in the Democratic Party primary.
       Russert: How many troops would you have in Iraq?
       Dean: More than we have now. My understanding is we have in the neighborhood of 135,000 troops. I can’t tell you exactly how many it takes. General Shinseki thought that we were undermanned by roughly 100,000. Maybe that’s the right attitude. Tim, you have to understand, and I know you do understand, that as you run a campaign and as you acquire the nomination and as you go on to be president, you acquire military advisers who will tell you these things. And, no, I don’t have a military background. Neither did Bill Clinton. George Bush had a National Guard background. Ronald Reagan did not have a military background. I will have the kinds of people around me who can tell me these things. For me to have to know right now, participating in the Democratic Party primary, how many troops are actively on duty in the United States military when that is actually a number that’s composed both of people on duty today and people who are National Guard people who are on duty today, it’s silly. That’s like asking me who the ambassador to Rwanda is.
       Russert: Oh, no, no, no! Not at all. Not if you want to be commander in chief. But we now have 9,000 troops…
       Dean: So your perception—your position is that I need to know exactly how many people are on duty today in the active military forces…
       Russert: Well, have a sense…
       Dean: …six months away from the first primary?
       Russert: If somebody wants to be president of the United States, have a sense of the military.
       Dean: I do have a sense of the military.
       Russert: …of how many people roughly…
       Dean: I know there are roughly between a million and two million people active duty. I know that we don’t have enough people in Iraq. I know that General Shinseki said that we need 300,000 troops to go into Iraq, not 200,000 troops, and I’m prepared to assume the burden and have the proper people around me advising me on what needs to be done.

I personally walked away from the MTP interview somewhat disappointed. I thought the military numbers questions were trivia but more telling was the apology issues.

I remember him saying something to the effect of “I didnt apologzie for three things only one thing. I just said I was sorry I said the other two.” It seemed like double talk and the lack thereof is what has been particularly refreshing about deans campaign.

Personally I support the governor (Hell I gave 200 bucks to him on the evening of the MTP interview so I could not have been too upset!”) And I am excited that he seems to be driving the debate right now. I simply wonder if this is all sound and fury too early for the majority of the electorate to care.

d

Please see my reasons to support Dean in the third party blog under Not So Fast, Dr. Dean

Robbie D

unpeople, I thought that Dean handled the military questions correctly. The point that I was trying to get across in my prior post is that Dean should have handled the economic questions in the same manner that he handled the military one. At one point in the interview, Russert really has Dean on the ropes with respect to fixing the federal deficit without (Dean’s promise of) raiding social security, defense, and Medicare. To his credit, he speaks of undoing Bush’s tax cuts, but as Russert makes clear:

Russert: But the deficit’s $500 billion. Half the budget goes to Social Security, Medicare and Defense. They asked Willie Sutton why he robbed banks? He said, “That’s where the money is.” You could close down the entire United States government, other than Social Security, Medicare and Defense and interest on the public debt, and you still wouldn’t balance the budget.

At this point in the interview, Dean starts to waffle more and more, insisting that the solution is an actuarial fix, and not a structural one. Russert also made another point earlier in the interview:

Russert: But in the middle of an economic downturn, Howard Dean wants to raise taxes on the average of $1,200 per family.

At which point Dean’s best response is:

Dean: So says the Republican Treasury Department which I think has very little credibility in this matter. Let’s look at the record.

I mean, seriously, is that the best rebuttal to the criticism that he can come up with? “The Republican Treasury Dept. is putting out misleading numbers?” If this is the case, than it is a problem, but I have yet to see any backing for these accusations. I could go on, but his whole grasp on wanting to balance a budget without cutting the things above is simply unrealistic. This type of “cloud in the sky” thinking is what frightens me.

-Chris

I’m a big Dean supporter but I agree about the MTP interview. Russert did his job, (Why has NO reporter EVER asked Bush tough questions with follow-ups?,) and I feel it was an opportunity for Gov. Dean to answer some of the things being written about him. Instead I think he was trying to “wing it,” as Broder wrote. Maybe it was because he had to fly home because of his son that weekend, but he clearly had not been preparing for this interview. The answers on the budget questions - how can he not have spent time thinking about this and preparing a plan for his presidency if not just for answers to reporters’ questions? The military questions - did he think this would not come up?

But Dean’s a smart guy and he’ll certainly be prepared next time.

Could George W. Bush stand up under the kind of attack Russert launched on Dean, even today? Would he agree to it? Would Russert conduct himself with Bush as he did with Dean? Just asking..