What's so Funny About Peace, Love and Howard Dean

How did the comparatively unknown governor of a tiny New England state energize tens of thousands of supporters at the neighborhood level--supporters who will talk to their friends, distribute campaign literature and write small checks from now until the 2004 nomination is decided? How did Howard Dean manage to capture front-runner status long before the traditional date for declaring one's candidacy? And how is it that his own party has tagged him as too liberal to win it all?

I think Governor Dean has come this far in considerable part because his listeners get straight talk from him, with no baloney. Dean speaks without a lot of oratorical gyrations, table pounding or yelling. And he exudes common sense and an old-fashioned honesty. When Dean tells his audience that Bush's tax cut is largely for the rich, that it will lead to a higher national debt burden and less funding for education, health care and the environment, people believe him. Why? Because it is the truth. How do they know it is the truth? Because truth telling is not a political strategy; it is the habit of a lifetime.

Yet Dean's conservative to moderately liberal record has not kept the Democratic Leadership Council from issuing grave warnings that Dean is too far to the left to make it to the White House. The council is happier with a candidate who mimics Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush than with a Ted Kennedy, Dianne Fein-stein, John Lewis, Nancy Pelosi--or Howard Dean. The DLC will never oppose a war, no matter how ill-advised and self-defeating it may be. The DLC regards the Pentagon budget as too sacred to touch, no matter how wasteful it may be. DLCers have never seen an arms buildup they didn't like or welfare assistance they did. They would have been arrayed in all their righteousness against Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, Harry Truman's Fair Deal, John Kennedy's New Frontier and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. Needless to say, they regard my views as too radical even to mention except to curse them.

Howard Dean doesn't need any advice from me, although he is the only presidential contender who has sought it. I have been present only once to see and hear the Democratic aspirants for the presidential nomination, at the State Democratic Rural Conference in Lake Placid, New York. In terms of stage presence and audience reaction at this one event, I would have to give the nod to Senator John Kerry. But Dean also came across well. When he finished, Dean asked me to meet with him privately. He plied me with questions about how I thought he was doing. I told him he seemed to be doing fine and offered only one real bit of advice: Beware of excessive fatigue. That's sometimes the cause of political gaffes. The late senator Barry Goldwater once told me he came out against Social Security in St. Petersburg, Florida late in his 1964 campaign against President Lyndon Johnson because he was furious with his staff for scheduling a late-night rally when he was at the point of exhaustion. In a doubtful display of logic, Goldwater told me he was trying to punish his "damn staff" with this shocking attack on the program.

If I had felt qualified to advise Governor Dean, I would have urged him to stay with his current strategy: The way to beat George Bush is not to be like him. Dean should also hang on to his effective tagline, "I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party."

Some critics have warned that although Dean has emerged as a potential winner of the nomination, he has left the mainstream to court liberal activists and will thus lose heavily in the general election against President Bush, just as I did against President Richard Nixon 31 years ago. My first thought is to hope that such comparisons don't damage Dean's chances for the nomination. Governor, if you decide to disown me I'll understand. My own take is that similarities exist between Howard Dean and me as public figures and in the nature of our campaigns--but there are differences. Major ones.

Muddle in the Middle

In 1972 I won the nomination, something that almost no one thought possible, from a field of 17 candidates that included Ed Muskie, Hubert Humphrey, Henry Jackson and George Wallace. President Nixon then snowed me under in the fall in an election I now think no one but he could have won. The conventional wisdom is that my opposition to the Vietnam war, along with other "radical" views, may have won the nomination but sealed my fate against Nixon. And so, the thinking goes, Howard Dean's opposition to the invasion of Iraq and to the Bush tax cut for the rich would seal his fate in a contest with George W.

If Dean wins the nomination, he will do so because he represents the views of rank-and-file Democrats voting in caucuses and primaries. Just as most Democrats would not have supported a Democratic presidential candidate in 1972 who was not forcefully against the foolish and tragic war in Vietnam, we could not support a Democrat for the 2004 nomination who is not opposed to our equally foolish invasion of Iraq. In my opinion Dean's steadfast resistance to the invasion is his most telling campaign weapon in the nomination effort. To Dean campaigners who face criticism of his opposition to the Iraq war, I can only say: You know that your candidate has a position paper on all the issues. But giving first priority to the great issues of war and peace is not a mark against anyone who aspires to the Oval Office.

It may be dangerous to seek a Democratic presidential nomination as a liberal; it is fatal to do so as a non-liberal centrist. Any candidate coveting the Democratic nomination had better not be caught dawdling in the middle of the road--unless he is as nimble, attractive, charismatic and articulate as Bill Clinton or John Kennedy. Democrats who take the time to vote in state caucuses and primary elections want raw meat: full employment, tax justice, a clean environment, quality schools, health care for all, no more Vietnams and, above all, a strong Social Security system. That is the liberal platform. Any aspirant to the Democratic presidential nomination who ducks or straddles that liberal agenda will not be nominated.

It was strenuously argued in 1984 that the Democratic Party lost the 1972 and 1980 elections (Jimmy Carter's up-set win in 1976 notwithstanding) because the Reform Commission, which I chaired, came up with guidelines that favored women, young people and minorities, who tended to support more liberal candidates than those the party bosses and elected officials had previously selected. After the rules were changed again in 1984 to give party officials and elected Democrats a greater voice, my friend Walter Mondale was nominated--the clear choice of governors, representatives, senators, state legislators and party officials. But his autumn results were similar to mine in 1972: 49 states for Reagan and only Minnesota and the District of Columbia for Mondale. I never let Fritz forget that I got four more electoral votes than he did, since Minnesota had only 10 electoral votes whereas Massachusetts had 14.

Still, the middle-of-the-road Democratic Leadership Council, which has held sway in the party for the past decade, maintains that a candidate such as Howard Dean (or George McGovern) is too radical to win the general election. Neither Dean nor I am a radical--especially Dean. As the five-term governor of the conservative state of Vermont, Dean sought and achieved a balanced budget, converted an inherited deficit into a surplus, followed a restrained approach to environmental issues, favored a moderate incremental formula for health care, stayed close to business interests, substituted workfare for welfare whenever possible and opposed gun-control measures. These are the earmarks of a far-out liberal? Dean's record is almost too conservative for my taste, but it's not conservative enough for those who believe that no liberal can be elected.

Conservative Nonsense

Why does the Republican attack team get away with branding as a radical any person who questions the wisdom of military ventures into the Vietnam jungle or the Arabian desert? I don't know anyone who now thinks the American war in Vietnam was a good idea. Even Robert McNamara, one of the key directors of that war, now says it was a "tragic mistake." As for the invasion of Iraq, I expect our troops will still be there suffering daily casualties long after I am gone from this earthly life. I also expect that most Americans now backing the war will conclude that it was a mistake.

Today, store windows across the land carry posters reading Support Our Troops. The best way to support our troops is to stop them from being killed in needless and ill-advised wars. I wish the political warmongers now sniping at Howard Dean because of his opposition to the invasion of Iraq--a country that poses no threat to the United States and had nothing to do with the September 11 attacks--would ponder the words of British conservative Edmund Burke: "A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood."

It has always struck me as ironic that some of our leaders who seem to glory in war, including our current president and vice president, have never been in combat. It has also struck me as ironic that President Dwight Eisenhower, the highest-ranking U.S. general in World War II, refused to let the military budget go up one dollar during his eight years as president, even though he served at the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union and China. In contrast, Ronald Reagan, who had no military experience, let the Pentagon have everything it wanted as well as some things it had not requested, including the Star Wars fantasy that proposed to put weapons in outer space.

Conservatives are not behaving as true conservatives when they suggest that pushing our troops into needless wars and running up military spending in overkill is good conservative doctrine. It is not. It is a form of extremism--military extremism. Nor is the person who opposes doubtful wars and reckless arms spending an extreme liberal or a dangerous radical.

At stake here is nonsense versus common sense.

I don't despise conservatives or Republicans, the lifetime traditions of my dear mother and father. We need both conservatives and liberals. But we don't need two conservative parties--both feeding at the same money trough while competing over which party can deliver the most to big business and the military-industrial complex. The genius of U.S. politics is the creative tension and stimulating competition between genuine conservatives and genuine liberals. I scorn the muddleheaded centrists who don't know whose side they are on.

I suppose most people think of me as a liberal. That's acceptable to me. I'm proud to be in the long historical tradition of liberalism stretching from Tom Paine and Thomas Jefferson to Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. Those are my political heroes. And I'm proud to have worked for two years in President John Kennedy's administration.

But recently a talk show host referred to me as a member of the "hard-core political left" and then asked me if Governor Dean could win following in my footsteps. I'm not sure I've ever met a hard-core leftist in the U.S. I assume it would have to be someone like Lenin or Mao Tse-tung. I have met Mikhail Gorbachev, but then so has Ronald Reagan, who made a deal with him. I never met Mao, but Richard Nixon did and made a deal with him.

I have met Fidel Castro, and if I had been president I would have made a deal with him--as would nearly every U.S. business executive. If that sentiment gets me branded a left-winger, so be it. To me it's just plain old South Dakota horse sense.

Let me assure you that neither Dean nor I would ever be given membership by the hard-core left--whatever that is.

The Road to Recognition

Both Dean and I come from conservative Republican parents. Both of us became somewhat more liberal Democrats when we studied the historical record of the two major parties. Dean and I are practical men who have borrowed from the two great American traditions--liberalism and conservatism. Both of us are against the Bush tax cut for the rich, with its runaway national debt and cutback in public services. Both of us are against the invasion of Iraq.

If Dean maintains his resistance to our current folly in Iraq, he will receive the thanks of many of our soldiers trying to survive in the Baghdad shooting gallery. My letter files and my chance encounters with thousands of Vietnam veterans are filled with thanks for a presidential campaign aimed at stopping the slaughter in Indochina 30 years ago.

The people of Vermont who elected Howard Dean five times as governor--like the South Dakotans who kept me in high office for nearly a quarter century--do not talk much about political labels. But they do listen, and they do think. They will often say, "I'm a registered Republican, but I vote for the man, and you make sense to me." I know Governor Dean has heard such expressions from Vermont voters countless times, and he is doubtless hearing similar words now in Iowa, New Hampshire and Wisconsin. After all, Dean is a practicing family doctor. There aren't many hard-core leftists in the medical profession--or for that matter in the Vermont statehouse.

Dean has campaigned quietly and largely unnoticed for the past year and a half. Iowa and New Hampshire are now familiar territory for him. He has recruited a grassroots army of working supporters who think of themselves as insiders and who have a proprietary concern for their candidate. He has used the Internet to gain a multitude of small contributors. There was no Internet in 1972, but I was able to use direct mail more effectively than my competitors to raise $20 million in small contributions.

Governor Dean and I each got into the quest for the presidential nomination before anyone else. He has discovered, as I did, that it's lonely on the campaign trail when you start early with little national press attention, which has advantages as well as discouragements. I recall at the end of that first year, the polls said that only about five percent of all Democrats wanted me to be their party's nominee. One day late that year, when I was scheduled to speak to the City Club of Cleveland, Gordon Weil, my assistant, shook me awake as our plane taxied to the terminal. "Wake up, wake up. Senator," he said. "It looks like we're finally being noticed. There's a crowd waiting for you and half a dozen television cameras." I quickly ran a comb through my tousled hair, straightened my tie and stood up to meet the press and the crowd. At this point the stewardess put a cautioning hand on my shoulder and said, "Sir, would you mind staying seated for a moment? Chubby Checker is leaving first because there's a crowd and television cameras waiting for him." I resumed my seat and then walked unnoticed to the terminal, where a lone man was waiting to take me to the City Club. I was grateful that he recognized me--though he confessed on the drive to the club that he was backing Hubert Humphrey for the nomination. But it was not all hopeless. On the way back to the airport after my speech, my host told me he had switched from Humphrey to me and that six other people at his table were also supporting me, including Howard Metzenbaum, later to become a notable senator from Ohio. This kind of experience is now familiar to Howard Dean.

Nixon and the Buffalo Bills

Once I came in a strong second to front-runner Ed Muskie in Iowa and New Hampshire in 1972 and then defeated him in Wisconsin, I emerged as the candidate to beat. By then Humphrey was in the running. He and Alabama governor George Wallace were my closest challengers until the nomination was finally decided in my favor at the Democratic National Convention. Since the subsequent election resulted in a tremendous Nixon victory, critics are now telling Dean not to run to lose to President Bush in the general election. I disagree with this analysis.

Liberalism was not the problem in 1972. Several nonideological factors contributed more to the Nixon landslide. The Republican Party got a scare in 1968 when Wallace ran for president as an independent and got 10 million votes--mostly at Nixon's expense. During the next four years, the Nixon White House developed what was called the Southern Strategy, a series of moves designed to capture the Wallace vote. In 1972 Wallace was stronger than ever and boldly entered most of the Democratic Party primary elections. He knew he could not win the nomination, but he intended to come to the national convention and then run as an independent. I am certain he would have garnered 20 million to 25 million votes.

But a month before the convention, Wallace was shot and left handicapped for the rest of his life. Nixon was now home free. The Wallace vote merged with the author of the Southern Strategy. Thus the presidential race became Nixon voters plus Wallace voters against the votes for a junior senator from South Dakota. It wouldn't have mattered whether I stood left, right or in the middle.

A second blow to my campaign came in the confusion over my selection of a running mate. I chose Missouri senator Tom Eagleton--a bright and winsome man--only to discover that he had undergone treatment for a mental disorder. After initially staying with my choice, I decided after listening to the advice of doctors and others to ask Tom to step down, which he did. I now think that was a mistake--a costly one from which the campaign never recovered. My change of mind on Eagleton seemed to shock the press more than any other campaign incident, including the Watergate break-in.

A third blow to my presidential run--again, one that had nothing to do with my stance on the issues--was permitting trivial convention-floor activity to delay my acceptance speech until 2:30 a.m., after nearly all of the nation's voters had gone to (continued on page 154)Howard Dean(continued from page 118) sleep. I missed the opportunity to address the entire nation on my terms and with my agenda for America. Instead, the first time the country saw the new Democratic nominee was when I was floundering with my vice presidential selection.

I don't see any Wallace factor in 2004, nor do I expect any confusion over the vice presidential selection. And I don't foresee the mistiming of the acceptance address at our 2004 convention in Boston. They do things right in Massachusetts. And they vote right in presidential elections--even in 1972.

When someone asks me if it's humiliating to lose an election to a president such as Nixon, who was forced to resign to avoid certain impeachment, I tell the story of Buffalo Bills football coach Marv Levy. Some years ago the Bills made it to four successive Super Bowls and went down to defeat all four times. When a sports reporter asked Coach Levy if it was painful to lose four straight Super Bowls, Levy said, "Yes, it's painful. Do you want to know how to avoid such pain? Just don't be good enough to get to the Super Bowl."

I love that line for obvious reasons. As a come-from behind candidate with limited funds and no big-name endorsements, from a little, rural home state with four electoral votes, I bested 16 other contenders--half of them formidable opponents--to win the nomination.

I believe that what Gary Hart has called "the McGovern army" of 1972 was the finest group of Americans ever assembled in a presidential campaign. I benefited from hundreds of the most brilliant and dedicated aides' work, paid and unpaid. I had a fund-raising effort that collected $35 million with an average contribution of $19. Like Dean's campaign, ours had no special-interest money (and we had no debt at the end). The morale and high enthusiasm, from the early snows in Iowa and New Hampshire to the final Nixon landslide two years later, had to be witnessed to be believed.

But a sadness about the campaign struck my workers, aides and contributors: the crushing defeat at the hands of a man who probably never should have been allowed near the White House. In the days after the defeat, several of my workers committed suicide, a number of others turned to the heavy use of alcohol and other drugs, some dropped out of the political process entirely, and still others became disillusioned with liberalism and turned to political alternatives, such as the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.

This latter band--some of whom played key roles in the 1972 campaign, including Bill Clinton, who, along with then-girlfriend Hillary Rodham, was my Texas campaign coordinator--has concluded that liberalism cannot be sold to the American electorate. They are proud of having tried to make such a sale in 1972, but they are not eager to take on this "lost cause" again.

Taking Back theLWord

I have tried in this essay to point out that the Nixon landslide was not based on ideology. Yet so savage has been the attack on liberalism that some Democratic politicians won't even use the word. To demonstrate how odious the term is, some Republicans have taken to calling it "the l word." Conservatives would be astounded and offended if Democrats started calling conservatism "the c word." The truth is that both liberalism and conservatism describe highly respected and enduring political traditions. I wouldn't mind an epitaph that read: George McGovern, Liberal, Who Borrowed the Best from Both Liberalism and Conservatism.

Here are some of the things liberals have created: Social Security, Medicare, guaranteed bank deposits, rural electrification, the minimum wage and collective bargaining, the federal school-lunch program, food stamps, WIC, aid to education (including the National Defense Student Loan program), the women's movement, the civil rights movement, the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, the gay rights movement, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the graduated income tax and, of course, the opposition to America's war in Vietnam, which finally forced our government to withdraw from that nightmare.

These are just a few liberal initiatives. Which of these components do its opponents want to terminate? Are you really against Social Security and Medicare? Do you oppose electricity for the farm families of America? Do you want to send our troops back into Vietnam for another 20 years? If you read the list of liberal achievements and answer yes or no about the items you support or oppose, we could then tell whether you really despise liberalism or are just spreading political bullshit because you have no alternative to liberalism.

There are some aspects of politics no one can be sure about. But of one fact I am certain: If I had campaigned in the middle of the road in 1971 and 1972, I would not have been nominated. A second fact I'm sure of is that while the Nixon blitz hammered me as an extremist, there was nothing extreme in any of my positions.

My opponents labeled me as weak on national security because I pledged an immediate end to the Vietnam war, to be accompanied by a modest Pentagon budget reduction. Those were commonsense positions, not extremism. The extremists were the policy makers responsible for the deaths of 58,000 young Americans, the killing of more than 3 million Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians and the waste of $150 billion in a foolish war.

One of the reasons I mourned the deaths of all those people--especially our own brave young soldiers--is that I know war firsthand, while Mr. Nixon's World War II role was quite limited. I'm proud of my service as a bomber pilot in World War II--a war I believed in then and still do. In a long public career, I have never advocated any course except what I regarded to be in America's best interest.

Dean is already seeing his record distorted in the press--this notion that he's out of the mainstream, that he's too liberal. The press knows it's not true. It's silly, but that's going to go on. The press is always looking for simplicity and certainty.

I was accused in 1972 of being the "triple-A candidate--amnesty, acid and abortion." This phony smear was carried in the media and by countless hack politicians and rumormongers across the country. What were my positions on these three issues?

Amnesty: I was against amnesty while the war was being waged. Once the war had ended, which I would have done immediately, I would have proclaimed an amnesty both for those who planned and directed the war and for those who refused to participate.

Drugs: I was against legalizing hard drugs, but I advocated that the penalty for a first marijuana possession should be changed from a felony to a misdemeanor.

Abortion: I was against amending the U.S. Constitution to make abortion (concluded on page 186)Howard Dean(continued from page 154) a constitutional crime. Rather, I favored leaving the matter up to the states--the same position advocated by Georgia senator Sam Nunn.

May I suggest that anyone who regarded those positions as extreme, radical or super liberal in 1972 was not living in the real world.

I don't expect to erase all the distortions and twisted images that came out of my years spent challenging not only President Nixon but also many of my own party's leaders. I long ago accepted the fact that in the Democratic Party a presidential loser is sometimes considered an untouchable.

Until his death, Barry Goldwater--with whom I enjoyed a warm friendship, partly because we had landslide defeats in common--was repeatedly welcomed and cheered at Republican national conventions. By contrast, especially since the DLC influence has dominated Democratic conventions, my wife, Eleanor, and I have sat through these events unnoticed, unrecognized and, I suspect, unwanted. At the 1992 convention Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale and their wives, but not Eleanor and I, were introduced and cheered as former standard bearers. That led to Eleanor's declaration: No more national conventions. I still attend out of party loyalty, even if no one notices I'm there. I'll be in Boston in 2004. Theoretically I should not notice such slights. But keep in mind that anyone who runs for president has a huge ego. And we egotistical characters like to be noticed even if we've lost an election to the likes of Richard Nixon. We even think it's an honor just to have won a nomination.

What I would like more than public notice, however, is the recognition that I waged an honest and decent campaign in 1972 against the only man in American history forced to resign the presidency in disgrace. I've always thought that while we all want to win, some things are worse than losing an election. Dishonesty, deception and cowardice are all worse than losing. Am I the one who should be embarrassed about 1972?

George W. Bush is seriously flawed, just as Nixon was 31 years ago. I have not yet decided which of the Democratic presidential contenders to support, but as of this writing Howard Dean is doing just fine. He's been tromping around the villages, byways and back-streets of Iowa and New Hampshire for over a year and a half. He's got an excellent organization set up; he has more grassroots workers than anybody else. He knows their names and addresses. He's going to be tough because of that. And if he is nominated, he'll be running against a guy who has never worked hard in his life.

The Long shot Hall of Fame

With all the Jockeying in presidential Elections, sometimes the Dark Horse Wins. But at what cost?

President: Franklin Pierce

Elected: 1852

Underwhelming Qualification: A former senator from New Hampshire. Pierce resigns his Senate seat because of alcoholism. His wife claims he ran for ' the presidency without her knowledge.

The Scenario: With the Democratic convention split along a North-South fault line, Pierce becomes a compromise candidate acceptable to Southern Democrats.

Legacy: His Southern supporters are redeemed when j President Pierce signs the Kansas-Nebraska Act, permitting Kansas residents to determine whether they will be a I slave state. The resultant bloodshed there, as pro- and anti-slavery forces jostle for control, foreshadows the Civil War.

President: Abraham Lincoln

Elected: 1860

Underwhelming Qualification: After serving one term as a Whig congressman from Illinois, he loses the seat in his first reelection bid. Lincoln wants only to be land commissioner for Illinois, but President Zachary Taylor is so upset at him for losing his congressional seat that he refuses to appoint him.

The Scenario: Lincoln isn't even on the ballot in the South, and he gets the second lowest percentage of the popular vote in presidential history. But the electoral votes in the North, which Lincoln carries, outnumber those in the South, which are split among two Democrats and a Constitutional Unionist.

Legacy: Lincoln refuses to sanction the secession of the Southern states (led by South Carolina, which secedes upon Lincoln's victory), catalyzing the Civil War. He issues the Emancipation Proclamation and wins the war.

President: Harry S. Truman

Elected: 1948

Underwhelming Qualification: Selected as vice president in 1945, he serves for only 82 days before FDR dies and he inherits the job. Truman hasn't even been briefed on the nuclear weapons program yet

The Scenario: Though Democrats feel he has little I chance against Thomas Dewey in 1948, as the sitting president he is given a shot to run in the race, which also in- I eludes segregationist candidate Strom Thurmond.

Legacy: The Marshall Plan--the engine behind Europe's spectacular post-World War II growth--is named for his secretary of state. With the Korean War and the Truman Doctrine, and his approval of the use of the atom bomb on Japan, Truman initiates the Cold War and the nuclear age.

President: Jimmy Carter

Elected:1976

Underwhelming Qualification: When then-governor Carter appears on the TV show What's My Line?, the contestants fail to guess his occupation--perhaps because his biggest accomplishment to that point is the purchase of a peanut-shelling plant.

The Scenario: Carter senses--correctly, it turns out--that the country is so outraged with Washington in the wake of the Watergate scandal and Vietnam that an outsider candidate might carry the day.

Legacy: He sells the presidential yacht and other trappings of what he calls the "imperial presidency." But inflation hits double digits, U.S. embassy personnel in Iran are held hostage and a creeping malaise grips the country.

If Dean maintains his resistance to our current folly in Iraq, he will receive the thanks of many of our soldiers trying to survive that shooting gallery.

Bill and Hillary Clinton have liberalism cannot be sold to the American electorate.

While we all want to win, some things are worse than losing: dihonesty, deception and cowardice.