Abstract

Washington Goes to War (with Howard Dean)

The author comments on attacks by media pundits on U.S. presidential candidate Howard Dean. Saddam Hussein may be out of his spider hole, but Washington's real enemy is still at large. His name: "Howard Dean"---and nobody in America poses a bigger threat to the city's sense of its own importance. Expressing editorial shock and awe over Dean's unarguably accurate observation that Saddam Hussein's capture left the United States no safer than before, "Washington Post" editors termed the candidate's views to be "not just unfounded but ludicrous" and complained of his "departure from the Democratic mainstream." While the "Washington Post" editors and David Brooks speak for hard-line neocons, Dean receives no less abuse at the hands of many genuine liberals. Another part of the problem is that punditocracy poster boy Joe Lieberman is currently more likely to get the Republican nomination than the Democratic one--and more deserving as well. Howard Kurtz speaks for fellow Lieberman lovers when he insists, sans evidence that "Dean and the war's opponents have not yet come up with a convincing argument that the status quo would have been preferable." Dean has some problems, no doubt, but the pundits hardly seem to notice that George W. ("You can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror") Bush cannot pretend to defend deceiving the nation into war anymore.