Praising Dr. Dean

Dr. Potomac must thank the Ombudsman for raising the important point of Dr. Howard Dean, erstwhile presidential candidate and governor of Vermont, and soon to be Chairman of the oldest political party in human history. The reason for Dr. Potomac's silence on this topic is simply that he is of two minds.

In one mind, he's sees the logic of it perfectly. Dean is the closest thing that exists to a genuine populist figure in the Democratic Party -- if one can imagine a a popular base made up entirely of the academic, environmental and feminist elites of the country. He was able to raise $40 million dollars for his presidential bid (not since John Connally has so much political money been spent to so little political effect) through innovative use of Web-based campaigning. That is the kind of political entrepreneurship that has been entirely missing among the Democrats for 30 years or so and which was starkly missing in the John Kerry campaign. (John Kerry, true to his parsimonious New England heritage, managed to save $9 million of the funds he raised, and boy does he has some 'splainin to do.) From the rank-in-file standpoint, Howard Dean might not be a good candidate but he could very well be an excellent chairman.

The above explanation assumes, of course, that the Democratic party is still on the rails of reason. A second, more plausible, explanation is that they really are just batty. Dean, as he did on the campaign trail, is the chairman of those reduced to spittle-flecked rage by the Bush presidency. Peter Beinart's call to purge the Dean/Michael Moore wing of the party, brings to mind the famous Leninist formulation, "Kto, kovo?" Translated into our context this means roughly, "Just who's going to purge whom around here?" The reason Dean has waltzed into the chairmanship is that the Deniacs are the permanent Democratic party as opposed to the Democratic party that assembles quadrenially in the cold, Iowa night to launch a frontrunner. One expects the owner to mind the store. It is Howard Dean's party. Everyone else just has to live in it.