http://desmoinesregister.com/opinion/stories/c2125555/23039925.htmlEditorials
Dean, from long shot to leader
By Register Editorial Board12/21/2003
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In the recent meeting, Dean came across in the same direct, seemingly unaffected manner as when he was explaining Vermont's health-care system a year ago. He occasionally stroked his chin as if he were a doctor talking to a patient. Other times, leaning forward at the conference table, he slipped off his loafers and carried on the conversation in his stockings. This physician whose family has a Wall Street background comes across like plain folks.
<snip>Dean said the "big message" of his campaign is about restoring trust in the two major institutions - the government and corporations. Both, he said, no longer care much about ordinary people.
From Howard Dean
On trade: "What we've done is globalize the rights of multinational corporations . . . What we have not done is globalize workers' rights. I want to revisit our trade agreements to say . . . we're going to globalize workers' rights, environmental rights and human rights, too." On getting other countries to help in Iraq: "It's really not that difficult. The problem is it's impossible for this president because of his bellicose style, his apparent deliberate antagonizing and humiliation of people who have policy differences with us." On health care: "In my state, everybody under 18 has health insurance. In my state, everybody under 130 percent of poverty has health insurance. One-third of our seniors have real prescription benefits, and we balance the budget every single year. . . . If we can do this in a small, rural state, you can do this everywhere in America." On his campaign: "The other campaigns are spinning that our campaign is about anger. What it is really about is hope."
<snip> Corporations, he said, "move their headquarters to Bermuda and their jobs to China," while government under President Bush seems to be "government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations."He also said of Bush, "Anyone who cuts Pell grants with one hand and then gives tax cuts to Ken Lay with the other has got something the matter with him, and this president's got something the matter with him."What's the matter is Dean's view is that neither Bush nor the big corporations care about the struggles of ordinary people. Restoring concern for ordinary Americans, he said, is what the Dean campaign means when it urges voters "to take our country back.
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...Dean said he would redirect tax breaks away from big corporations and toward small businesses that create most of the new jobs and tend to stay in America. Instead of tax cuts, he said he would invest in infrastructure such as roads, schools, broadband communications and renewable energy, which would create jobs immediately and strengthen the economy in the long run."We haven't had a major federal infrastructure investment in this country since the Interstates," he said.While much of the focus is on national security, Dean said, "The most important issue in this campaign is economic security. It's jobs, it's health insurance and health care, it's education."Despite the focus on domestic issues, Dean had quick answers for foreign-policy questions, and the intensity rose when he talked of the "incredibly stupid mistake" of going to war in Iraq.Dean said what really stirs his anger is that, having made the mistake of getting into Iraq, there is now no easy way out. He said Iraq posed no imminent security threat to the United States before the war, but it could now if radicals take over the country when U.S. troops leave.He argued the invasion of Iraq actually makes the United States weaker, not stronger.The conversation at the Register took place before news of the capture of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein last weekend, but Dean has since made it clear his views have not changed. "The administration launched the war in the wrong way, at the wrong time, with inadequate planning, insufficient help and at unbelievable cost," he said in a speech Dec. 15."The capture of Saddam is a good thing, which I hope very much will help keep our soldiers safer. But the capture of Saddam has not made America safer."When Dean affirmed his views on Iraq, it brought to mind what he said at the Register about the need for leaders to be tough, and he was asked what it means to be tough. "It means to be single-minded about what your objective is," he said. "It's not enough just to swagger, as this president sometimes does. You have to be tough enough to bring the whole people with you. . . . and to be willing to withstand the slings and arrows of the critics as long as you're convinced you're doing the right thing. If you give in every time the wind blows in a different direction, you're done."
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