Runaway trainHoward Dean gets caught lying about his brother's military service. In response to a question on a survey sent to all the candidates from the Quad City Times, "My closest living relative in the armed services is...?", Dean answered "... my brother is a POW/MIA in Laos, but is almost certainly dead." His brother, however, was not in the military, but was a tourist when he was captured in Southeast China. In what seems to be an emerging pattern, Dean blames the media, calling it "one of the greatest cheap shots I've ever seen in journalism" because the paper pointed out the discrepancy. This would usually hurt a candidate, but at this point I don't think anything could get his fans to reconsider their support. This, of course, is the kind of thing that will hurt him in the general elections against Bush, and it further underscores his unelectability. His supporters however remain undeterred in their view that the American people would vote for Dean if only they could make us see how dumb and crooked Bush is. Jonathan Chait points us to the latest example, an article in the Village Voice arguing that Dean is electable. Their first argument that Dean is electable is, believe it not, that the foreign policy advisors he unveiled last week are centrists. That'll get out the vote! I follow politics more closely than 95% of the population, and I can't you who any of those people are. And I can't recall any of the names that were on Al Gore's or Bush's prospective foreign policy advisors list either. Chait says that the Dean advisors are more liberal than centrist, but I think he misses the point. Even if they were centrists, no one would know who they are, and it won't change the vote of anyone who perceive Dean to have dovish instincts because he has centrist advisors on his team. Also, on a related note, I'd have to say that Chait's Dean-O-Phobe blog has been excellent so far. |
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