Howard Dean’s Kulturkampf: Why culture may keep him out of the white house

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Written By Sean Scallon

Every four years it seems after every presidential election, media folks gather in great symposiums to lament, flog themselves and cry mea culpa for all the mistakes they made in covering the previous campaign and vow never to make such errors again. Yet, they commit the very same ones four years later.

The latest mistake the fourth estate is making is one called “the hot candidate” or the John McCain/Bill Bradley Syndrome. That’s when candidate gathers all sort of buzz and excitement whether its through name recognition, or in contrast to his lackluster opponents or in raising money or by exceeding expectations, etc. Whatever the reason, this candidate gains momentum, largely because the media gives him that momentum, through favorable press coverage.

So as former Vermont Governor Howard Dean becomes the latest “hot” candidate by having his face plastered on the cover of Time and Newsweek, an objective analysis of his candidacy shows that while Dean will be a major factor in next year’s primaries, his front runner status is largely artificial, as was McCain and Bradley’s in 2000 and his chances at winning the Democratic nomination is still murky at best. His chances at ousting President George W. Bush are virtually nil.

Why is this? In nutshell, it all comes down to culture.

Because Dean is from Vermont, a state that has rapidly changed from cantankerous, conservative Yankee to Ben and Jerry hippy and leftist, there will be those who will want to view Dean as the next generation of George McGovern. But in reality, Dean most closely resembles former Massachusetts governor and former Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis, who ran perhaps the worst modern presidential campaign back in 1988. In fact Dean also resembles previous Democratic nominees like Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and Adali Stevenson II. All three were governors when they were first nominated. They all had reputations for fiscal rectitude and personal honesty (with the exception of Clinton) while being socially liberal to offset their monetary conservatism. So it shouldn’t be a surprise in party made of largely now of upper middle class professionals, from lawyers, to doctors, to teachers and civil servants, that Dean would do so well. His candidacy is a manifestation of the managerial revolution and the New Class which began to transform American politics roughly at the same time Dean became politically active. One could also say, that if it wasn’t for Eugene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy or McGovern, Dean would be a Rockefeller liberal Republican as fellow Vermonter Jim Jeffords once was.

But where are the African-American voters, the Hispanics and other minority groups that are very important part of the Democratic Party primary electorate around the Dean campaign? There are none and it’s doubtful that they will flock around him any more than they Dukakis, who won the Democratic nomination because white Catholic and Jewish voters in the industrial Midwest and East could not stomach a Jesse Jackson presidential candidacy. It should be pointed out that recent Democratic nominees like Gore, Clinton, Carter, even Walter Mondale, have won largely because they carried significant shares of the black vote. Being from a haven for white liberals, its doubtful that Dean will be able to make the personal connection with such voters the way a Clinton or Carter could. I cannot see Howard Dean winning the Mississippi primary.

In mentioning Carter and Clinton, one should remember that being from the South, both men were able to build images that could reach out beyond the Democrats narrow voting constituencies. They could gain the support of many religious minded, traditional minded and low to middle economic groups in the South and Midwest with their backgrounds, occupations, church attendance and their accents. Carter, for example, was particularly good at this: He was a peanut farmer, Sunday school teacher, nuclear engineer and navy vet for traditional Democrats and an associate of Gregg Allman and Dr. Hunter S. Thompson and said he had “lust in his heart” for counterculture voters While such images may have been chimeras when both men reached the White House, they were powerful enough to get them elected which is all they really cared about.

Dean cannot do this. He is what he is, a militant New England secularist with all the charm and warmth that goes with it. With Dean as the Democratic nominee, the only states the party can hope to carry are along the northern rim of the country in the Upper Midwest, New England, California and New York. States like Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, which the Dems should have locked up, become toss-up states and states like Ohio, West Virginia and Missouri, which they need to carry become hopeless. It should be noted that the last two presidents from New England, George Bush pere and John F. Kennedy, hid their New England backgrounds. Kennedy behind his Irish immigrant and Catholic screen and Bush behind his Texas screen. The last authentic New Englander to be elected was Calvin Coolidge, born in Vermont and Massachusetts governor. Yet he was hardly the New England activist of a progressive or abolitionist or even Puritan view. His politics represented the old northern Democrats of New England, like former President Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire, before they party of “Rum, Romanism and Rebellion,” to use a popular GOP attack line, after the civil war.

There another cultural trend going against Dean. As was mentioned before, he has a reputation for personally honest and morally straight. As did previous Democratic nominees Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey, McGovern, Carter, Mondale and Dukakis. None of these men would have ever engaged in the kind of financial shenanigans, ethic violations, moral degeneracy to outright illegal activities that past Dem presidents Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Clinton allegedly or were proved to have engaged in. However, what do all of the former have in common? They have all lost by some of the largest landslides in presidential election history. The American people have made it clear over and over again they will not elect anyone who thinks he’s better than they are. They did so with Carter and to a lesser extent former President Bush and the results were not satisfying. It seems as if though Americans like to elect rouges to the Oval Office (Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Clinton, Bush II) you are not dreaming. In fact, it can be argued most commoners identified with President Bush and his swinging, frat boys ways among the Texas jet set in the 1970s compared to stiff Al Gore, who people most remember for trying to remove smutty lyrics from rock music. Probably because many voters actually lived like Bush in the 1970s and like him, went through their own therapeutic or come to Jesus moment in their lives at the end of a broken bottle or coke platter.

One thing Dean does have in his favor that Dukakis didn’t is that the Republicans will not declare cultural jihad against him nor will Bush allows his allies to do the same either lest they embarrass him. Having surrendered in the culture war in favor “compassionate conservatism,” they will not do what they did to Dukakis and attack Dean on issues such as the homosexual civil unions he helped create in Vermont or whether or not he did abortions while he was a doctor, whether legitimate issues or not. And Dean’s position in favor of 2nd Amendment rights, assuming he holds fast to them during the primary season, also makes him more immune to cultural attacks. But Bush doesn’t need to win the same way his father did. He has the White House, the Rose Garden, Air Force One, all the trappings of the modern presidency now suddenly made relevant again after 9-11. With his common touch, his favorite philosopher Jesus and few photo-ops at the ranch in Texas (perhaps with even a 10-gallon hat thrown in) Bush has all he needs culturally to win against any of the Democrats running for president. All that a Dean candidacy means is that he won’t have to work up much of a sweat.

 

Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”

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