On "Meet the Press," he said that the ouster of Saddam Hussein did nothing to improve the situation of the Iraqi people or American security. In April, shortly after Saddam's fall, he observed, "We've gotten rid of him, and I guess that's a good thing." Yet earlier, on Face the Nation, he said "there is no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the United States."
He does not believe that the United States should presuppose Osama bin Laden's guilt in reference to Sept. 11, though bin Laden gloats over his architecture of the tragedy.
He proposed that Sept. 11 was a Saudi conspiracy.
Prior to U.S. entry into Iraq, the Des Moines Register quoted him as saying, "It's conceivable we would have to act unilaterally, but that should not be our first option." -- a position far from the dovish image he has since developed. And, according to the Boston Globe, he claimed that President Bush should be taken at his word that Iraq constituted a threat.
According to the Quad City (Iowa) Times, he claimed his brother, who had been missing in Laos, was POW/MIA when, in fact, he was a civilian. During the Vietnam War, he obtained a medical waiver for a back injury and spent the next three months skiing in Colorado.
He claims to be from "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," yet when he was governor of Vermont he had the full backing of the NRA, supported Newt Gingrich and the Republican Party on the issue of Medicare spending and emphasized balancing the budget to the extent of cutting social welfare programs for the needy and elderly. As Vermont's governor, he ardently supported NAFTA, then later claimed on ABC's "News This Week" that he did not support it.
Furthermore, as The Washington Post reported, the governor "showered tens of millions of dollars in controversial tax breaks to attract businesses to Vermont . . . [and] poured relatively little money into state colleges and the university, where tuition costs are the highest in the nation."
His vaunted signing of and support for civil unions legislation, again according to The Post, occurred only after Vermont's Supreme Court determined that it was unconstitutional for civil unions not to exist.
He sealed his gubernatorial records, saying at the time, "We didn't want anything embarrassing appearing in the papers at a critical time in any future endeavor."
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Howard Dean, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States.
There's some delicious irony here. In the 2000 election, a Republican governor rode the fallout from a president's credibility problem to the White House. That governor -- George W. Bush -- ran on a platform of restoring integrity and honesty to the Oval Office.
It gets even better. According to the Montpelier Times-Argus, Dean in July warned that there exist "fundamental questions" about President Bush's credibility on foreign policy.
Look who's talking.
While the Democrats should call into question Bush's credibility on foreign policy -- the issue which many pundits predict will be the centerpiece of the 2004 election -- Howard Dean is not the man who can do so. Dean's problem is not his perceived McGovernesque take on foreign policy; it is his inability to consistently tell the truth under fire. The same problem, incidentally, led to Clinton's impeachment.
But all is not lost for the Democrats. Yet.
In a highly polarized nation where many Americans -- despite a third-quarter spike of 8.2 percent in the GDP -- still seek work that doesn't exist, the Democrats stand a decent chance of winning the 2004 election. But it will take a trustworthy candidate with foreign policy experience like Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, whose campaign, once thought to have fizzled for good, has regained life and is making headway in Iowa and New Hampshire, or Gen. Wesley Clark, who is also campaigning strongly in New Hampshire and making inroads in the South. The Democrats will not win with Howard "Mad as Hell" Dean.
In fact, many Republicans are praying for a Dean nomination. The cover of the National Review, a leading conservative publication, depicted a red-faced Dean with the caption, "Please Nominate This Man." Karl Rove, Bush's senior political adviser, was seen cheering at a Dean rally.
Thanks especially to Clinton, the electorate wants a president it can trust. And in this age of terrorism, it wants a president who can lead with experience and knowledge in foreign affairs. In fact, Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee, admitted that portraying the Democrats as weak on national defense will be a key strategy in the drive to re-elect Bush. Is Howard Dean the man to convince the nation otherwise? Certainly not.
