Howard Dean's mascot should be an angry poodle. It's perfect: Primped up on the outside, the poodle is just a sexed-up rat.
I say this having seen Dean live, before he caught fire. For the entire speech at the Capitol Hilton in Washington, D.C., Dean said things that needed to be said, about America, Bush and how one may not survive the other. He energized a ballroom bigger than Shriver; pot-bellied Teamsters and Electrical workers leapt to their feet to cheer him on.
He got the audience going because he had fire in his heart and was willing to breathe it out of every pore in his body.
I thought the fire that night was genuine. Now I think it's an act. Dean's straight talk schtick is like those bottles of compressed air I buy to clean out my camera: Every time you spray, the same thing comes out. It's not vibrant or real: it's mechanical.
I see this every time I watch him in a debate or on television now. Change the background, change the sign and change the person standing next to him (maybe), uncork the standard speech like so much cheap champagne, and the crowd goes wild.
Example from the New Mexico debate: What would you tell parents whose children have died fighting in Iraq?
Dean responded by telling viewers about how President Bush lied to the American people. Yes, Bush did. But that wasn't the question. It was canned answer #343.
He says stupid things without thinking - The Washington Post ran an entire story on Aug. 29 completely composed of "the straight-shooter's" not-so-straight talk - that I keep wondering what he really thinks and what he really wants to do.
From what I've read of Dean, I'd say he's nowhere near what he's selling himself as. It all depends on whether you listen to his language - which is angry - or his accomplishments - which are careful, restrained and slow.
Dean was dragged kicking and screaming to sign one of his big liberal points of honor, the civil unions bill.
As Slate Magazine's Campaign 2004 Field Guide points out, the Vermont Supreme Court forced him to choose between gay marriage and domestic partnerships. He chose domestic partnerships, which, with a small bit of irony, he signed into law while closeted, without ceremony or fanfare.
Dean, in his speeches, says the civil unions bill showed his courage. He says he stood up for change, regardless if it helped his election chances or not.
I think it shows him to be just another politician - he knew the risk, and didn't act until he was forced to.
He says we should be friends with our allies. But Dean has a hard time making sure he doesn't offend people. Former Vermont state senator Dick McCormack told The Washington Post's Michael Powell that he wished he had saved all of Dean's apology notes. The tone of those apologies, according to McCormack, sounded like, "Dear Dick, Perhaps I was a little hard. I shouldn't have called you a communist."
But, despite all this, the dear doctor and his supporters swear he's a straight talker in the John McCain style.
He's not.
He's just another double-talking politician. He plays the angry liberal because he senses many want an angry liberal.
I like angry liberals. I like fiscal conservatives. On his record alone, I like Dean.
He stood against fiscal recklessness, stood against that tax increase mentality that many liberals have and stood against conservatives' attempts to exploit the Vermont wilderness.
While he cut taxes, he did so in a reasonable way. I happen to think that his Vermont record is not a negative. And I think that his record stands against Bush's point for point, especially on health-care and fiscal discipline.
We should can Dean because his dishonesty will prevent him from using that record to trounce Bush.
Bush's record as president is replete with saying one thing and doing another on many issues, such as carbon dioxide or fully funding homeland security. Only a Democrat who speaks forcefully and honestly and has a proven record of doing what they say will beat Bush.
Because an ignorant chimpanzee can beat up an angry poodle every time.
Raphael Schweber-Koren is a senior Political Science and Computer Science major from Takoma Park, Md.
