Inviting Howard Dean to speak at this year's Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium was, according to the series' organizers, something of a Hail Mary pass.
The chairs of the symposium shot off a letter to Dean sometime in August, hoping it would make its way to the former Vermont governor, known as much for his maverick ascendancy to the height of political prominence as for his spectacular fall.
A month passed without word from Dean's office, and the chairs decided to move on - programs were printed in the thousands and posters were plastered on walls, and by Sept. 18 the series was under way. Dean's absence had been all but confirmed.
Then came word from his staff at the Democratic National Committee, where he has been chairman since 2005, in late September that not only would he be available to speak, but for free - and in a month.
It seemed fitting that Dean, the patented political outsider who turned to the Internet for support rather than the beltway, and who always seemed reluctant - with eyes rolling and face red - to indulge traditional political "wisdom," would be added to the MSE lineup too late to make the poster.
His speech Thursday night - in which he tried to convince young adults that the America of their youth, the Bush America, was "not normal," and that the Republican Party was "monolithic" - came on the heels of a rally in Prince George's County for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, cast as one of his party's most youthful and dynamic leaders. Obama, the self-described outsider of the Democratic field, trumpeting a vision for political change on a crest of anti-Bush resentment, may very well be the Howard Dean of 2008 - cursed as much as helped by his magnetic rebellious energy.
That same energy was on display Thursday night in Shriver Hall, where Dean issued a stinging rebuke of the Bush administration and how it has warped American culture, the theme of this year's symposium.
It prompted one audience member to hoist an old "Howard Dean for America" sign - an "antique," Dean called it, and sore reminder of his campaign's spectacular and, for his supporters, heart wrenching collapse.
For all his primal energy on the campaign trail, Dean looked older in person than on TV, save for his stark blue eyes - which, one can only imagine, are accentuated once his face turns characteristically red. He spoke with the News-Letter briefly before his speech.
News-Letter: On Wednesday, Oct. 10, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama came to Maryland and spoke at Prince George's Community College to a crowd of mostly young adults and students. The News-Letter covered that, and the feedback we got from that, for the most part, was that Obama talked about a lot of things that students really care about - his opposition to the Iraq war, his vision for political change - but left one thing out, which was college affordability. Do you think the candidates are talking enough about that? And why should the Democratic candidates be trusted to address this issue anymore than Republicans?
Howard Dean: Because we've already done something about it. You know, there's a lot of criticism, which I think is unfair, of the new Democratic majority, because they haven't gotten us out of Iraq, which is pretty hard to do when you have a determined minority filibustering and a president who wants to veto. But here's what they have done. They passed a universal health care bill, essentially, for [people] under 18, which was vetoed by the president. They raised the minimum wage, which has a big effect on students, especially those who work. They passed a real ethics bill, which matters a lot, and they increased college funding by $20 billion, and Bush signed that. And it was Pell grants and it was cutting the interest rate in half on student loans, which the Republicans have raised. So the Democrats have already delivered on college aid in a serious way, and undone a lot of the damage the Republicans did while they were in office for eight years. So I think you're right to say that you've got to show people, not just talk about it, but I think the Democrats have already demonstrated that they are serious about higher education.
N-L: Another thing we got from that rally was that - as the Baltimore Sun and other media outlets put it - this may have been the only chance Maryland voters, or people who are undecided about the candidates, will get to see the senator or any of the other candidates before the primary season starts, especially because it's so chaotic now and because a lot of states are moving their primaries. What would you say to either loyal Democratic voters in Maryland who have been voting for Democratic candidates for years, or people who are undecided, who feel that they may be left out of the process because of that?
HD: We need a system where we rotate the primaries. We put four states early, which are geographically and ethnically diverse. It's the first time we've ever done that, and that's a good thing and they're small states. But for states like Maryland, you need to be in a rotation where you're not always the first state and you're not always the last state.
N-L: Another issue important to young adults is health care, and obviously it's important to everybody. The president of Johns Hopkins, William Brody, is a physician, and he comments a lot on this issue nationally. And he went to the National Press Club last month and basically said that neither the media nor the presidential candidates are asking the right questions or saying the right things about health care - they're talking mostly about tax deductions or cost and coverage but not patient care, for example. What do you think about that? Do you think the candidates are asking the right questions and, if so, what are the Democratic candidates talking about that the Republican candidates aren't?
HD: This is one of the problems, with due respect to Dr. Brody, about politics and campaigns. Campaigns are not for education. Those candidates who educate the public are not the candidates who win. This is an incredibly complex area, and I'd be happy to tell you what I personally believe is the right thing to do, although I'm sure it will be at some variance with the candidates. But the fact is that those kinds of discussions are expert discussions, and people do not vote for candidates based on the length of their complicated position papers. What they vote on is their set of values. So it's important to remember that these candidates are trying to convey their values to voters, which is how the Republicans have managed to beat us, because we haven't done a very good job of that for the last 30 years. We've unloaded long position papers - that's not something that helps you win elections. What helps you win elections is telling people where you are, and making sure that folks can understand what you're talking about. Most people are not going to understand the complexity of health care, including people like me, who spent a lifetime in health care. It's very difficult and complex stuff. So I understand the frustration from somebody who's most likely an expert in the field, but that's not what campaigns are about. Campaigns are about broad-brush debates.
N-L: A study by The Commonwealth Fund, which studies trends in health care, said that in 2005 there were 13.3 million young adults ages 19-29 without health care. That represents about 30 percent of the total number of non-elderly uninsured Americans in 2005. And when young working adults in that age range go without healthcare, they usually do things like skip medical tests and go undiagnosed when they have serious conditions. And yet you don't really hear things like that come from the presidential candidates, or students and young adults in general, at least, don't feel like they hear that. Are young adults being left out of the health care debate?
HD: No. My own view is that we ought to make everybody under 30 eligible for Medicaid, regardless of means. And the reason for that is that it is dirt cheap to insure people under 30 years old. One of two things happen: Either something awful happens or, most of the time, nothing happens. So it's all preventive care and stuff like that. It's cheap - we've made health care essentially universal in my state for everybody under 18 and we didn't have to raise taxes to do it. Now, in fairness, we've gotten a lot of money out of the federal Medicaid program. But the first group of people that we should insure when we get into power is people under 30, because you are right about the statistics.
And this business of co-payments and tax deductions, that's right-wing nonsense, I mean that's Milton Friedman dribble. The fact of the matter is that you can't use the tax code on a group of people who would preferentially buy a Harley Davidson instead of buy health insurance. So it's so cheap, just let people under 30 have it, it'll help employers to employ people under 30 because they won't have a health care expense to do it. See how it works, I think it'll work fine. And I think you have to do it as a universal entitlement like Social Security, not like Medicaid, where it's just means-tested, because every program that is a universal entitlement has defenders in the middle class. Programs that don't have a universal entitlement become "poor people's programs," and they never have defenders and when the Republicans take over they cut them. So it has to be a universal program for everybody under 30. The next thing we ought to do is lower the eligibility for Medicare to 55 - that gives us a steel industry and a car industry back in America again.
Now, what I would advocate, since Americans never want quite as much change as they say they want at the polls, is to do that first. You're using the system you already have, so nobody has to be befuddled by Harry and Louise ads, nobody can call it socialized medicine. This is stuff we've had in this country since 1964, despite the Republicans' opposition. And you get to see how it works ... then we can make further adjustments after that. We're not going to do universal health care all at once. Americans are going to want changes but they're going to want to see how it works. What Americans like is their quality of care - what they don't like is the incredible cost and the incredible uncertainty of what may happen to them if they lose their jobs. We need to preserve the quality of care while we're fixing the access problem, and I think we can do that, and I think it has to be done in a very simple way. And by extending two systems that we already have, I think that's the most simple way you can do it.
