Dean- the Democratic Bush

From Patrician Roots, Dean Set Path of Prickly Independence
By RICK LYMAN

Published: December 28, 2003

The Park Avenue building where Howard Dean grew up has a neurologist's office on the ground floor and a church just behind. His mother, Andree Maitland Dean, is eager to emphasize that the family's three-bedroom apartment there is not luxurious.

"Look around," Mrs. Dean said in a recent interview, gesturing at the quarters where her boys grew up. "Howard didn't have the least bit of a glamorous upbringing."

Explaining that every time she had a baby, the dining room would serve as a bedroom for the newborn and his nurse, she concluded, "I don't think we could even keep up with the Bushes."

Like her son, Mrs. Dean chafes at the notion that the family lived the kind of privileged existence that many associate with America's current first family — despite the striking similarities between the two families that even a cursory look reveals.

George Walker Bush and Howard Brush Dean III are from opposite sides of the nation's political fault line. Yet besides energizing the left wing of his party, Dr. Dean has some Republicans worried that the characteristics he shares with President Bush could appeal to swing voters, especially when Dr. Dean's current image as a Vermont liberal is leavened with details of the fiscally conservative way he governed Vermont for 11 years.

The two are sons of established blueblood families dominated by powerful fathers. They attended top prep schools and Yale. And they settled far from traditional power enclaves, reinventing themselves as archetypes of their chosen new homes, President Bush in swaggering Texas and Dr. Dean in outdoorsy Vermont.

They were known for hard-partying, hard-drinking in their youths, but those days ended when they simply gave up alcohol as adults. Each man's character was shaped by the loss of a sibling: for the president, a sister who died of leukemia at age 3; for Dr. Dean, a younger brother who disappeared in 1974 in Laos while on an around-the-world trip.
snip...

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/28/politics/campaigns/28DEAN.html?ex=1073192400&en=6cbffd052a8cc178&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

Could they be ANY more similar?

It's like their identical twins!

I, for one, am tired of the elite controling everything.

Dean will be called a hypocrit if he attacks Bush for having Rich buddies.

Dean '04...

Dean Has insulted all of us in the south. Without us you don't get elected

I live in the south and people are excited about supporting Dean. Not sure what it is that he said that insulted you , but you seem to be one of the very few affected.

heard the pro-war Bush crowd won't be on board in '04 and 30% of the voters are Bush/Somebody else and one NEVER gets all the votes.

Dean '04...

Clark will carry Arkansas and might pickup Tennessee.

Dean will lose the following Gore states, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New Mexico and Pennsylvania

a lottery machine to pick those states or is there some kind of logic involved?

from a Southern compatriot who agrees that Dean has insulted the South, first with the Confederate flag remark, then with his plan to talk Jesus in the South.

:hi:

Dean '04...

If Dean holds the Gore states and carries either Nevada, Arizona, or New Hampshire, he's going to the White House.

Without a single southern electoral vote.

:hi:

:)

His statement about the flag was true, and completely misconstrued.

And has done so since he became a doctor.

Dean won't attack Bush for having rich buddies, he'll attack Bush for cutting their taxes and policies which only benefit them, and then passing the bill to future generations.

Bush spent the first four decades of his life in an alcoholic daze.

Dean went to medical school and became a physician.

Bush has spent his entire adult life in Texas, where his father made millions in the oil business and won a seat in Congress.

Dean left home and moved to rural Vermont.

Bush ran several businesses into the ground and lost millions of dollars.

Dean ran a successful medical practice.

Bush won his first election at age 48 with his daddy's help. He lost his first race.

Dean won his first election (State Representative) when he was barely 30 and has since won nine elections in a row. He has never lost a race.

Bush spent his tenure as governor of Texas pandering to the religious right and the big polluters. He literally rented out rooms in the executive mansion to wealthy CEO's from the oil and gas industry.

Dean was a social moderate and fiscal conservative as governor who balanced 11 budgets in a row even though it wasn't required by state law. He lived in a modest suburban home because Vermont doesn't even have an executive mansion.

Bush's wife smokes Virginia Slims and bakes cookies.

Dean's wife is a brilliant Princeton-educated physician.

Bush spent time in Mexico getting laid and using cocaine.

Dean spent time in Southeast Asia looking for his late brother's remains.

Bush couldn't find Southeast Asia on a map if his life depended on it.

Etc.

Bush & Gore = Both Rich Kids.

Bush & Dean = Both Rich Kids.


Bush & Clark = Rich Boy v. Kid with humble beginnings.

Dean was fighting Reagan policies, when Clark was voting for him.

Bush & Kucinich = Rich Boy v. Kid who grew up in poverty.

Sometimes living in the family car, his mother sending him to the corner store to have a bottle heated for her youngest baby. The family was often evicted for having "too many" children, eventually having a family of seven. Dad was a union truckdriver but a large family made it tough on them. Young Dennis did janitorial chores in parochial school to pay for his books.

Bush & Edwards = Rich Boy v. Kid who grew up as a millworker's son

They call them "lintheads" in some of the textile-producing areas of the South. (I live in one of those areas; millworkers and their kids are very much lower working class.)

Bush v. Gephardt = Rich Boy v. Kid who grew up in a Union household.

Dad may have been a postal carrier, I'm not sure. Perhaps someone else can tell us.

Kucinich, Edwards, and Gephardt are all sons of union workers. Others?

Bush and Dean are sons of privilege. Dean has perhaps overcome some of the class prejudice but he obviously has blind spots, too.

The Dark Horse Cometh Kucinich 2004

Where his siblings and him had to hide, so the landlord wouldnt know they had that many kids.

Kucinich and Clark both came from poor backrounds and built theselvs up.
In many ways Clark is closer to Kucinich,than Kucinich is to Dean.

probably Gephardt, all have come up from very little. I don't really know about the childhoods of Sharpton (except that he started preaching at the age of 4, which is kind of amazing!), Braun, or Leiberman.

His father was a contractor. They were fairly well off while Sharpton was young, but the marriage broke up and he and his mother had to live in a housing project. I think he was about ten years old at the time. So half and half, I guess.

In your eagerness to smear Governor Dean, the Democrat, you seemed to have missed the fact (still on the front page) that someone beat you to it.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=32462&mesg_id=32462

You'll have to go dig up something else or join the already existing dog-pile. ;-)

Julie

from your own:

Explaining that every time she had a baby, the dining room would serve as a bedroom for the newborn and his nurse, she concluded, "I don't think we could even keep up with the Bushes."

Unless, of course, you and your sibs each had a nurse as a baby. . . :eyes:

God, how plebeian to have to give up the dining room for the new baby and his nurse.

And we were definitely middle class ... and that was a generation after Mrs. Dean had her kids.

Listen folks, Dean's father left his mother all of $7 million when he died two years ago. When she passes away, each of the kids will get under $2 million. They lived on Park Avenue, but it's a 3 bedroom apartment for 4 kids that dad bought for a song.

Yes, the Dean's were an "old family" but they'd hardly qualify for really rich either then or now.

membership in an exclusive country club (excluded blacks and Jews, I believe), etc. A 3 bedroom apartment on Park Avenue has got to be worth a fortune -- don't forget Howard and his sibs will also split the proceeds from the sale of that "modest" apartment when Mom dies. Does she still have the country house, too?

I'd also guess that Daddy Dean might have passed on some wealth to the kids prior to his death, to avoid estate taxes. Affluent people do that all the time. (Sometimes they do it so their kids can get federal aid for college! No lie!) I would also not be surprised if Howard Dean has put some of his money in trust for his kids, to lower his taxes. That would explain his relatively low net worth.

I'm sure there were families richer than Dean's but that doesn't mean they weren't far, far richer than most Americans.

As for the baby nurse, I still maintain it's a luxury most cannot afford. My mother actually had a baby nurse once, but the situation was frankly desperate, with her battling to recover from pneumonia and trying to care for newborn twins allergic to formula, and a kindergartener. My parents went into debt to pay for the nurse (and no one borrowed money back then, except for a mortgage and a car payment, assuming they owned a house or a car.)

7,000,000 !!!!!!! each kid will get 2,000,000 !!!!!!! man how can you say they arnt or werent really rich i cant fathom seven million dollars or a million for that matter live day to day pay check by pay check i have a job not just some after school job but one to help out the family jesus christ seven million dollars not really rich you also say that they werent that rich because they lived on Park Avenue, but it's a 3 bedroom apartment for 4 kids
big freakin deal i live in a two bedroom apt with my mom and two siblings and it aint no park avenue pt heck i lived in a one bedroom they are rich

Bless her socially liberal Republican heart, she cracks me up. (She is still a Republican, I think.) I'm sure I like her more than Dubya's mother. Though that may be a left-handed compliment, now that I think of it! I mean it sincerely, though.

I finsihed reading the four page article and found that they do still own their East Hampton country house, which I've read before is in an especially expensive area, though no doubt Big Howard bought it for a song, as he bought the Parl Avenue place. It's appreciated in value a lot so the Dean sons will get a bundle when Mom dies. The worth of the Park Avenue apartment -- 3 bedrooms in NYC! (And quite likely one of those huge old apartments you see in movies, whether or not the Deans live simply within it.)
Plus the worth of the house in the Hamptons, plus the $7 million -- the three sons will get more than a couple of million each

"Too much can be made of these similarities, of course. Certainly Dr. Dean, 55, and his family feel it is misleading to tag them as Bushlike bluebloods, despite the fact that they own a Park Avenue apartment and an East Hampton country house."

classy...

See you at the polls.

touch with what reality is for most people. I already said in one post here that I thought Dean himself had tried to learn about other people's lives and that's admirable, though he still has some blind spots.

All of us are products of our upbringings. Children of privilege, like Bush and like Dean, are handicapped in trying to understand what they haven't experienced. Neither has ever struggled to afford health care, clothing, food, rent. Neither has ever had loved ones depend on Social Security and Medicare. If they had had those experiences, they would never have supported some of the policies they have. Dean has cut social programs in Vermont and he has in the past proposed cutting Medicare and raising the Social Security retirement age. I don't trust him to do what's best for the least in our country.

Dean is better than Bush, but not good enough.


The Dark Horse Cometh Vote Kucinich 2004

"Mrs. Dean may be a lovely person but she's out of

touch with what reality is for most people "


Calling someone out of touch with reality, thats not an attack... :eyes:

silly me.

It was a well-done article, pointing out all the facets of his heritage. He has an impressive background. His family also seems much nicer than the Bush family.

Thanks for sharing.

Dean might appeal to swing voters.

the dining room would serve as a bedroom for the newborn and his nurse, how demeaning to have to share a room with a private nurse. How can anyone say this poor common man had it better than most poor people.



Food for thought from….“JAFO”

BTW I didn't and I am by no means rich.

than about their shared pro-wealthy political policies. Dean might have only been Bush Lite in the privilege of his upbringing, but he's also Bush Lite in his plans for the US, and that should repel all of us. Well, all the people who aren't Republicans or their fellow-travelers and dupes anyhow.

republicans are bad w/money because they have never had to work hard for it and dont know the value of money

but I thought he said that during an appearance in IA that was shown on CSPAN a couple fo weekends ago.

His policies show that he hasn't overcome the conditioning of a life of privilege, prep school and Ivy League education. He's rejected some aspects of it, but underneath he's still a Rockefeller Republican at heart, a conservative who has and will cut social programs that people depend on.

Dean's own words:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Most of the Democrats in the legislature rebelled against Dean over the budget cuts, and he ended up depending on Republican votes to pass most of his proposals. At the time, a local Vermont newspaper wrote, "The biggest items on Dean’s agenda for next year are likely to provoke more opposition from the Democrats than the Republicans. Nevertheless, Dean said he feels no particular pressure to deliver the goods to his party or to promote the Democratic agenda."15

In the mid-1990s, Dean even aligned himself with the likes of Republican Newt Gingrich on his stance on cutting Medicare. He opined at the time, "The way to balance the budget is for Congress to cut Social Security, move the retirement age to 70, cut defense, Medicare and veterans pensions, while the states cut everything else."16
....
The Rutland Herald described how one protestor, Henrietta Jordan of the Vermont Center for Independent Living, "said it would be much fairer to raise taxes on people with expensive homes and cars, children in private school and a housekeeper at home than to cut programs that helped the 66,000 Vermonters living with disabilities."17 Dean responded callously, brushing off the pleas of Vermont’s most vulnerable by saying, "This seems like sort of the last gasp of the left here."18"

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The rest of this article is here:
http://www.isreview.org/issues/32/dean.shtml

I keep getting stiffed.

Would the temptation for corruption be greater for someone that came from a poorer background? Are politicians that come from humble beginnings more prone to making shady deals? Perhaps there would be no difference but it would be interesting to see a study of this, instead of inane insinuations.

Clinton was pilloried by elites of left and right mostly because he wasn't "their kind of people" The whole obsession with finding corruption with him is in line with your post. Thanks for confirming. The undeserving poor wish you a Merry Christmas!

Compare F.D.R. to Clinton. Who did more for the poor and whose policies did more to benefit the wealthy elite?

Thank you, you made my case. :)

It was revealed over the holidays that President George W. Bush and former Vermont Governor Howard Brush Dean III share a genetic trait known as the Y chromosome. Scientists have not yet discovered any link between this genetic phenomenon and political policy, but Democratic opposition to Dean are concerned.

"Why has the press not talked about this chromosomal issue?" asked Missouri Representative Dick Gephardt in a press release. MA senator John Kerry, also running for the Democratic presidentiual nomination, noted in his own press release that Dean made quite sure that this genetic trait was well known when he attended his draft physical during the Viet Nam conflict.

Political analysts say this is bad for Dean. They claim that if the mainstream press gets wind of this new controversy, Dean's numbers could drop dramatically.

When asked for comment, the Dean campaign replied, "What do you expect? Governor Dean is the only one running who has a set of balls."

Who's been telling Wall Street to lay American workers off? Ivy league trained CEO's and CFO's, that's who. If we can't have minority or a woman as a POTUS candidate, can't we at least have a working class white guy? Why do we always swoon before these Yale and Harvard people?

This is inflammatory.


DU Moderator

2. The subject line of a discussion thread must accurately reflect the actual content of the message.

and a dupe:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=32462


DU Moderator

:evilgrin: