Under the hot TV lights, surrounded by hundreds of cheering Harvard students and professors, Howard Dean flashed a tense grin as a wave of impatient, nervous energy seemed to grip his whole body. Pummelled by the cable TV interviewer about the power of the media, and Rupert Murdoch's Fox network in particular, Dean just opened his mouth and said what he thought.
"Yes, we're going to break up giant media enterprises," blurted out the Democratic candidate who wants to be president of the United States. Before the hacks in the audience could suck in their collective breath, Dean's brain switched gear and he quickly began backtracking. "What we're going to do is say that media enterprises can't be as big as they are today. I don't think we actually have to break them up."
But goaded by the interviewer, a few seconds later Dean was back on the attack. "If the state has an interest, which it does, in preserving democracy, then there has to be a limitation on how deeply the media companies can penetrate every single community," he said bluntly.
That is Howard Dean "unscripted". In an age when politicians rarely utter a word that hasn't been tested on a focus group, Dean every few days will drop his well-worn lines and just say what he thinks. When he's talking live with the Washington media, it's like watching a tightrope artist on a bicycle balancing a stack of plates on a long pole.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/12/12/1071125653072.html
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