Thursday, February 19, 2004
Howard Dean
I'm going to miss Howard Dean in the race for the Democratic party nominee for President. Last Summer I predicted that he was the candidate to watch. I had seen him one of the Sunday television news programs and two things about his appearance impressed me. The first, was that his positions were clearly liberal. As he used to say he was representing the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. The second characteristic I found interesting was how contradictory he was. Now this is not uncommon; after all I am talking about a politician. But what truly amazed me was how he could express a viewpoint, be told by the moderator that what he had said differed 180 degrees from what he had expressed only moments earlier, and then explain away his error as a weakness of comprehension by the show's host. And he did this many times without blinking an eye.
But now we have no one in the race who represents the ideological extremes of their party. John Kerry sounds very similar to Bush. I don't think his policies in office would differ that much from the President's. On the other side of the isle we have a man who discovered the value of making national defense his top priority after September 11, 2001, but who cannot identify a single federal program or department whose existence lies outside of the powers granted to the national government by our constitution. No wonder the budget deficit has ballooned like Howard Dean's face in that speech after he came in third in the Iowa caucus.
So we will have an election in which the visions of the candidates of the two major parties diverge only slightly around the edges. I so miss people like Representative Army or Senator Gramm who could articulate the reasons we created this country in the first place. I remember clearly when we were debating Hillary Clinton's healthcare plan and I heard Senator Gramm explain his vehement opposition to her proposal. "Its all about individual freedom and liberty," he calmly noted. And so it is.
PermaLink | 5:42 AM |
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But now we have no one in the race who represents the ideological extremes of their party. John Kerry sounds very similar to Bush. I don't think his policies in office would differ that much from the President's. On the other side of the isle we have a man who discovered the value of making national defense his top priority after September 11, 2001, but who cannot identify a single federal program or department whose existence lies outside of the powers granted to the national government by our constitution. No wonder the budget deficit has ballooned like Howard Dean's face in that speech after he came in third in the Iowa caucus.
So we will have an election in which the visions of the candidates of the two major parties diverge only slightly around the edges. I so miss people like Representative Army or Senator Gramm who could articulate the reasons we created this country in the first place. I remember clearly when we were debating Hillary Clinton's healthcare plan and I heard Senator Gramm explain his vehement opposition to her proposal. "Its all about individual freedom and liberty," he calmly noted. And so it is.
PermaLink | 5:42 AM |
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