Dick Meyer echoes my view: that Dean's scream was nothing to be ashamed of, and that he shouldn't have backed down from it. Backing down from yourself is a major mistake in presidential politics. You can shift and spin and remake, but you should not try and pretend that something that is you is not you.
Dean could have spun his Iowa speech into something positive, and could have turned the tables on the media's effort to spin it negative. Instead he folded to the pressure of the nervous mainstream, and in doing so, turned his back on the revolution he's been riding.
He also trotted out his wife when he said he wasn't going to, and I was very disappointed to see that. I have no problem with candidates trotting out spouses, or any other family members that are willing to be trotted, but to hold that principle only until the pressure of pre-Iowa drives you to break it (and then to break it repeatedly in post-Iowa damage control) is a whole other thing. Most pundits and people seem to agree that Judy Dean was an asset to Dean's campaign in her appearances this past ten days, and that she seems to be a charming and lovely woman...but it's not a good sign for the future. If Dean was to stay in the race until the end, imagine how many emergency trots Judy Dean will be asked to do. My guess is that she would reluctantly find herself taking on the traditional campaign support role more and more. Which again is fine, but not so much when you've been saying how you need to stay home for your school-age son and your patients. I just sense a crack in the plan around Judy Dean's involvement. I guess it's a question of whether the campaign spouse thing can be just a weekend job-- and whether the female Dr. Dean is willing to shift her personality from private and shy to public and gregarious.
Who knows-- maybe she'll get into it, and she'll be hooting and screaming right alongside Howard. ;-)
CBS News | Defending Dean's Scream | January 28, 2004 17:06:51
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