The Man to Beat Himself?
So far this week, we’ve looked at why Dick Gephardt and Joe Lieberman can’t get their presidential campaigns off the ground. Let’s do something different, and see how high-flyer Howard Dean could crash and burn.
In almost every nominating race, one candidate surges strong early, gets all the adoring media, poses a surprising challenge to the front-runner, and then self-destructs. In 1980, we had Ted Kennedy. What killed Ted? Two things: Chappaquiddick and failure to ask an important question. The question was, “Why do you want to be President?” Kennedy’s answer was an incoherent jumble.
Oops. But that was a small oops, compared to our other flame-outs.
That brings us to Gary Hart. Hart didn’t quite crash in the 1984 race. It’s just that, like Bob Dole in 1996, ’84 was Walter Mondale’s year. He was old, he’d been around longer than anyone else, and, uh, he was old and had been around longer than anyone else. So he got the nod. But Hart did well enough that 1988 should have been his year.
Then he got caught with a bikini girl on his lap in a yacht called Monkey Business, and we got stuck with Mike Dukakis. I’d say that’s the sort of spectacular idiocy you only ever see on TV, except that TV is where you saw it.
Four years later and another wide-open race for the chance to run against popular war President George H. W. Bush. Mario Cuomo and Gephardt both bowed out when Bush’s poll numbers were at record highs. Almost no one of any stature was willing to run. And so Bill Clinton looked likely to take it all
What timely coverage!
Today’s actually Chappaquiddick Day.
Remember to send the continuing senator your regards.
The scarier possibility is Dean didn’t know what unilateral meant in his initial response. He does seem to have an unusual knack for putting his foot in his mouth though…
Did you all know that John Kerry served in Vietnam?
In all, I suspect Dean’s major problem is more similar to Goldwater and McGovern — he is a true believer without enough true believer voters to win. Doesn’t make him wrong, mind you, but the average American voter seems to feel about true believer pols the way they feel about ture believer religious types: that’s fine in principle, but not anything I want to get too close to.
Additionally, true believers tend to fall rather quickly into groupthink to the exclusion of the necessary devil’s advocate. This may be particularly relevant in today’s rapidly changing circumstance campaigns. True believers don’t shift their balance fast enough. See Mickey Kaus Feiler (?) Faster Theorum. You need a slimy Dick Morris or old Snakehead or Lee Atwater. Someone who will not only kick the opponents in the groin, but know when to shift the target and kick an ally.
We’ll see. I thing Dean may well win the nomination, but if he falls prey to the above and makes a major mistake about halfway thru the primaries I wouldn’t be real surprises.
I think the Dean campaign began and ended when Russert skinned him alive that fateful Sunday morning.
Even ignoring Dean’s ideology, he just looked like a small man on a big stage, way out of his league. He didn’t look or act Presidential and presented no air of authority or confidence…dare I say, gravitas?
He just didn’t lack flair, he lacked basic factual knowledge that a serious candidate *has* to know…like at least being able to field a guess when asked how many people are in the US military. How the hell can you not know that in a post-9/11 USA?
Dean is the typical primary candidate, small guy out of nowhere who generates some excitement compared to the automatons he’s up against, gets some fringe support, but isn’t ready for prime time and cracks under the pressure. Look for him to score in New Hampshire and show in Iowa, but fade quickly after South Carolina.
If you think he stands a chance, you’ve probably watched one too many episodes of The West Wing…
Then there’s his “We don’t know if the Iraqi people are better off without Saddam” statement.
Dean may be capable of doing what Mondale missed by 1 state, that is, lose all 50. He’s angry, mean-spirited and has very large gaps in his working knowledge of something the voter will find most important in 2004: defense. But any Dems only hope would be a Perot-like candidate that could break the President’s insurmountable white male voter/ white married feemale voter landslide. Clinton won with just 43% of the vote in ’92 because of Perot. But, there are no such saviors on the horizon for the Dem party. They’ve lost before starting.
A fine synopsis. I think the rank & file dems are figuring they don’t have much to lose with Dean. And they’re probably right. In other words, chances are he’ll blow up at some point, but in the meantime he’s gonna give em a great time. Kind of a smarter, angrier, McGovern. Also, Dean’s style is leftwing angry but his content is not universally so, witness his budgets and position on guns. He does have room to maneuver right, unlike McGovern. So I wouldn’t buy into the Karl Rove idea that Dean=cakewalk. Regardless, better to have a reasonable, viable, opposition party, as opposed to the pre-Blair monstrosity our Democrats are becoming.
Hey Will (and Steve):
Going back to that Perot thing, I always thought he was the flame-out of 1992. If he’d had better minders (ANY minders), then we voters wouldn’t have got the impression that he was off his little rocker. As it was he ended up with 19% and no Electoral College votes; he was polling upper 30′s% before the Loon Factor kicked in.
I suspect it would have been a heavy Electoral College plurality for Clinton (Perot coming a distant third but with enough votes to hold the balance) and a less-heavy popular vote plurality for Perot.
That would have been fun. :^)
Gaps in knowledge can be compensated for if a leader knows how to delegate without micromanaging his subordinates to death. That’s why even if I were still a Democrat in the 2000 election, I would favor Bush over Gore. Someone who insists on doing everything himself is a prime candidate for burnout, and easy prey for enemies ready to take advantage of his weaknesses, because he doesn’t have loyal associates to watch his back.