Some comments of interest from Dean's book: "You Have the Power"

Just some random thoughts here and there. Here is a comment on the media. Here is an interesting part in the section about the press. Dean was speaking of how the media uses partial truths and spin.

SNIP..."A prime example of the good and the bad is a story about a state trooper who for years provided my security when I was governor. He was fired as a result of events surrounding his admission of involvement in domestic abuse. The spinner story was that I had knowingly covered this up.

This story first surfaced when a local Republican got it on television in my 2000 reelection campaign. It had no particular effect on my reelection, since it was completely false. Then in 2003, VT Republicans hoping to curry favor with the Bush folks tried to peddle the story again to Felix Schein of NBC. He turned down the story after going to Vermont and seeing it for what is was.

So Brian Ross of ABC used it. " END SNIP..

Very telling about who took time to check it out.

As an entity, the media's part of what's wrong with our democracy. We don't get accurate facts anymore, only infotainment and gossip.

SNIP...At the time he was Kerry's press secretary. He..."called the Boston Globe because he'd found an article in the Aspen Tomes that said I'd spent a year after college living in Aspen and skiing. Lehane, who has built his reputation as the spinner of all spinners by cultivating reporters over late-night drinks and softly bending them to his will, got the Globe to write a story saying that although I'd been deferred from the draft for medical reason, I'd been well enough to spend the next year pounding the bumps in Aspen. The story was written to sound as though I were a draft dodger and that the medical deferment had been manufactured....."

Not only do you have a guy like Lehane who, being desperate to find dirt on a candidate and finding none, resorts to bribing journalists with drinks; you have a journalist who is so desperate for any kind of story that s/he gobbles it up!

They're all in it together, I swear.

And it doesn't even matter that it was about Dean this time. Next time it'll be someone else's turn.

"I didn't mind the gaffe stories quite as much as the ones that were entirely made up. Newsweek's Michael Isikoff, for example, pursued a story that I had participated in insider trading, and the Boston Globe printed a story that I'd had a secret meeting with Enron over a captive insurance company (which Enron didn't own until a year after the supposed secret meeting. Both stories died of their own ridiculousness, but not before they'd been picked up by the national media. (and my words....picked up at DU over and over)

He mentions these were about the time Gore endorsed him.

including the medical ones? That hit the media. Have you gotten to that part yet? Does the book cover that?

I think that more people who run for office should document these things. It would make for some entertaining reading.

Than previously thought. VT office made an error in counting. I can't link to the cache, so here is the article:

SNIP..."Dean Said Not to Seal As Many Documents

Saturday May 15, 2004 2:01 AM


By CHRISTOPHER GRAFF

Associated Press Writer

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - A record-keeping error dramatically inflated the number of documents Howard Dean sealed when he stepped down as governor of Vermont last year, state officials said Friday.

The sealing of Dean's papers for 10 years became a major issue in his presidential campaign as reporters and opponents continually questioned the candidate on why he sealed so many papers for so long.

A revised count shows that Dean sealed 93 of the 283 boxes he gave the state when he left office, meaning he sealed 32 percent of his papers, a figure that is significantly less than his two most recent predecessors'.

While preparing for a lawsuit contesting the sealing of the records, state officials determined 59 boxes were mistakenly included in the inventory of sealed documents.

William Griffin, the chief assistant attorney general, said the error came to light when lawyers were looking for expense vouchers from the Dean administration.

``It's pretty simple. They were transferring boxes from the fifth floor, and they all got on the same truck and ended up at the same place,'' Griffin said.

The 59 boxes came from other state offices and contained documents and financial records that do not fall under executive privilege, but the state is required to keep them for a certain number of years.

Secretary of State Deborah Markowitz said the mix-up happened in Dean's office in the hectic rush to move out of the governor's office as his term came to an end.

When Dean stepped down as governor in January 2003, it was estimated that he had left with the state 335 boxes of papers, of which 190 were to be made available to the public immediately and 145 were to be sealed for 10 years under a claim of executive privilege.

The Washington-based group Judicial Watch filed suit in Vermont state court in December seeking to force the release of those papers, arguing that Dean lacked authority to issue a blanket claim of executive privilege over so many documents. A state judge agreed in February, and the case is now on appeal to the state Supreme Court.

Former Gov. Madeleine Kunin sealed 46 percent of her papers for six years, while Richard Snelling sealed 40 percent of his for 7 years."

I would love to see the % other governors seal, wouldn't you?

Dean on p. 137:
SNIP..."A reporter on the campaign plane once accused me of being contemptuous of the press. Even though I denied it, she and I both knew it was true."

the day after.

In his book, "You Have the Power", Dean talks about the Democrats' loss of power in the 90s.
"The Democrats, throughout the 1980s and early 1990s didn't stick up for the people who were left behind by the Reagan revolution and the corporate restructuring that came at the end of the first Bush recession. Eschewing 'class warfare', they didn't stick their necks out for the millions of American whose wages and living standards were frozen or falling.

The Democrats missed the growing resentment of the 'angry white men' who would later vote them out of congress because they just weren't listening. And when....tried to catch up with the Republicans by belatedly wooing angry white men, they failed to understand that we needed to woo them differently...not with the unsubtle appeals to racism and homophobia used by the Republican Right, but with economic arguments.

SNIP..."We became afraid of the Right, afraid of the anger, and instead of being steadfast, we pandered....The Democratic Party has paid a big price for that. Worse, our people have paid a big price for the collapse of our will to lead. We failed to articulate a vision for American that keyed into Americans' hope of ovecoming economic and social instability. ..."

...."By remaining silent about the things that mattered so much to Americans, we allowed ourselves to be painted into a corner and to be defined by the Republican opposition. .."

Then he says this kind of behavior "laid the groundwork for the rise of the radical right".

;-)

This little book is amazing. You wouldn't believe all of what's in it. The information about the media is most interesting.