The media vs. Howard Dean (WP's Richard Cohen)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11573-2004Jan12.html

The former Vermont governor makes something like one gaffe a day -- or so we are told. The latest, which has come to haunt him in Iowa, was made years ago. He disparaged the caucuses, saying they were "dominated by special interests." As one who has stood in the Iowa cold listening to this or that candidate explain his position on ethanol, industrial hog farming or -- the worst yet -- the plight of the so-called notch babies (Social Security recipients born in any one of just three years), I found his statement unremarkable at best. It is true beyond a reasonable doubt.

Dean has been campaigning hard in Iowa and so it behooves him to sing the praises of the caucuses. They have their virtues, but they are odd affairs -- and Iowa itself is not your typical state. In traveling with him last week, I heard him answer questions on farming that while not unimportant -- if I were a farmer I might have paid more attention -- would strike the average American as having nothing to do with his or her life. But the facts don't seem to matter. Dean is being quizzed as if he had impugned the patriotism or sexuality of the average Iowan -- remarks in such bad taste that his very sanity must be questioned.

Something similar happened when Dean said that the capture of Saddam Hussein has not made America safer. You could quibble with that assessment, but the fact remains that since Hussein's capture, additional Americans have been killed in Iraq, the United States went to Code Orange, planes were grounded and some were escorted into various U.S. airports by fighter jets. If we are safer, we sure ain't acting like it.

Nonetheless, Dean's common-sense observation was treated as if the man had left his senses. He could -- and he did -- cite the number of American servicemen killed in Iraq since Saddam Hussein crawled out of his spider hole, but it did not matter. It was as if Dean had blurted an obscenity.


Nice to see the WP allowing some balance from their columnists!

However, watch them turn on whoever wins the nomination. The nominee better not be a flip-flopper who dodged the draft.

Apparently the WP is unaccustomed to it

I think its about time that there was a politician who spoke his mind and didnt actually do so in a typical tepid Democrat way. The media expects, and is use to political correctness when it comes to responses from any democrat, and then the'll express "shock" when the answer is blunt, as if only republicans have the right to express what there really feeling. The media I think was successful into pressuring Al Gore to change his character, to becoming a tepid leaning to the right politician...but Dean wont have any of that, he is who he is and isnt going to change for a pro-bush media.
Mostly all of Deans "Gaffes" have turned out to be truthful, Husseins capture didnt make anyone more safer..Code Orange and planes detained on New Years, and more soldiers dying in Iraq soon after is solid proof of that. But he was blasted by the media and the right wing for something that was actually truth, for making a comment that wasnt with popular belief,( referring to saddams capture supposedly making us safer) a belief at the time that was wrapped in feel good patriotism, that blindly makes everyone forget about the real problems caused and those we face. So Dean speaks bluntly and not in a politically correct context, big deal..boo hoo..what he says is true.