From the NY Times:
Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean sought to redefine and broaden his liberal, anti-war campaign in formally announcing his candidacy Monday, telling disenchanted American voters, “You have the power!” to oust President Bush and rid Washington of special interests.
With at least 2,500 supporters crammed into a brick-lined town square, the steeple of a Unitarian church behind him, the former Vermont governor pledged to speak “for a new American century and a new generation of Americans.”
Dean pledged to fight conservative Republicans, docile Democrats and the rest of the Washington establishment — all of whom he holds responsible for turning Americans away from the political system.
Talk about a bad day to announce your candidacy for President, and it will get little or no attention because of the SCOTUS rulings. Regardless, I thought he had already announced months ago. At any rate, does anyone know how he fared yesterday on Meet the Press? I took the day off.
*** Update ***
Here is the transcript.
*** Update #2 ***
William Jefferson Dean?:
Russert: Well, in 1995, when you were advocating that position, you were asked how would you balance the budget if we had a constitutional amendment…
Dean: Yeah.
Russert: …calling for that, and this is what Howard Dean said.
Terry
Today’s NYT has a story on his appearance. They didn’t think it went well for him; in fact, atrios did a post on the NYT piece implying that it was the result of a nasty cat’s (female reporter) hit piece. The comment thread was a veritable sewer of nasty comments about the “new” Lelyveld Time’s. ABC’s The Note also weighed in at length and also didn’t think it went too well, at least by conventional Washington standards.
Jeff
That appearance was a disaster for Dean. I saw the portion of his interview when Russert confronted Dean on avoiding the Vietnam war due to a back injury and thereafter enjoying 80 days of skiing in Aspen. Dean’s total ignorance on the military was also nice:
John Cole
oh my.
Moe Lane
“Dean on avoiding the Vietnam war due to a back injury and thereafter enjoying 80 days of skiing in Aspen”
Whoa.
Dean
Serious question here:
Why do we expect ANY Presidential candidate to know the actual number of personnel in the active duty armed forces?
Where Dean left himself open is that he insisted that we don’t have enough troops in particular locations—and then couldn’t specify what the right number should be. THAT is open to criticism, and he was dumb to go down that path.
But whether it’s a total of 1M or 1.4M (I believe it’s actually ~1.2M) in the armed forces is not the issue, IMHO.
Spending comes a lot closer—and even there, I’d expect it to be to the closest billion or so.
Mind you, I think Dean’s spouting off opened himself to massive criticism. And if he wants more troops to do X, he should have some idea, in whatever units (# of men, # of division/CVBGs/air wings) to do it.
But trying to pound down whether he knows the precise number of personnel in uniform strikes me as “Gotcha” politics at its worst.
Jeff
All content aside, the tone of his remarks and his body language on Sunday came off as defensive and hardly Presidential.
JKC
Part of Dean’s problem may be his background as a physician. Doctors live in a world populated by shades of grey, and politics loves things in black & white. This seemed most apparent when Dean was trying to explain his position on abortion.
HH
Bush was AWOL! Vote Dean!
M. Scott Eiland
“but I don
Dean
M. Scott:
Yeah, the world politics leaders WAS “Gotcha!” And I hated that, too.
Keep in mind, I’m NOT a Dean supporter! Rather, I just think that trying to nail candidates (of either party) with trivia tells me little about them.
Now, as I said, Dean’s RESPONSE was telling—We don’t have enough, although I don’t know how much we have, just that it’s not enough. THAT is fair game. But the original question, I think, was looking for nitnoids.
And Russert’s observation that Dean had, in the past, called for military CUTS, IMO, is far more devastating than his apparent inability to call up the number of active-duty troops at the drop of a hat.
Moe Lane
“If he was really skiing after getting deferred for a back injury, though, he might want to muzzle any of the usual suspects who want to continue to make GWB’s Vietnam era activities an issue.”
Alas, that is precisely the one thing that he cannot do: you can only lead that pack by taking them in the direction that they already want to go. Not that it matters: Senator Kerry – hey, didn’t I hear that he served in Vietnam? – is going to use this little factoid to great effect in the primaries*. Admittedly, it’ll be at the cost of the election, but then I’m not really impressed with the political skills of the current Democratic slate anyway.
Moe
*I must remember to peruse Kos’ next Cattle Call: I’ve been wondering just how accurate and unbiased the whole thing is, and now I have something to check it against…
PG
Just out of curiosity, does anyone here know the number of official peacekeepers America has?
Moe Lane
“Just out of curiosity, does anyone here know the number of official peacekeepers America has?”
I dunno if you’re still reading this, but
un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/contributors/May2003Countrysummary.pdf
has the numbers as of May.
Dean
Moe,
I fear that you may have stepped into PG’s trap. Because PG never actually defines “official peacekeepers”.
After all, the US military has no such MOS as “peacekeeper,” nor such a type of unit. By US military definitions, there are NO peacekeepers, there are only troops on peacekeeping missions.
Moe Lane
“I fear that you may have stepped into PG’s trap.” ”
It would only be a trap if I actually ended up -caring- about whatever the point is…
“Because PG never actually defines “official peacekeepers”.”
…and I probably won’t. Care, that is. :)