The Political Assassination of Howard Dean

rbrussell

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Wed Jan-21-04 06:11 PM
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The Political Assassination of Howard Dean

Those of us looking for a true new era for America would be foolish to believe that a candidate supported by Bill Clinton will bring it. For all of our fond memories now, Bill Clinton repeatedly bombed (and maintained the sanctions against) Iraq, destroyed a medicine factory in the Sudan, bombed Afghanistan, attacked Serbia (without UN permission), intervened in the Somali Civil War (resulting in the loss of eighteen Americans and the deaths of thousands of Somalian civilians), and launched countless other actions all across the world. He may have signed the Kyoto Treaty and the Rome Statute: but he never pressed or fought for them. Kyoto, we ought to remember, was signed in 1997. Unless my memory fails me, Bill Clinton still had three years in office to go at that point. He never submitted it to the Senate, and he never had any intention of doing so.

Had September 11th happened on the watch of Bill Clinton or Al Gore, they would have done exactly the same things that George W. Bush has done. We would have invaded Afghanistan and, because a short war there would not have satisfied the primal thirst for blood of so many Americans, we would have gone to war elsewhere as well. In fact, were this war being waged with a Democrat at the helm, half of you would be screaming at the Republicans who would (though probably not as vehemently as some Democrats) oppose the war.

I do not say any of this to praise the foreign policy of George W. Bush. But neither do I say it to support the foreign policy of Bill Clinton and the mainstream of the Democratic Party. While the rhetoric is different, the message is the same: deep down, virtually every major, mainstream politician in America, of either party, supports the agenda of American Empire and world domination. Now they may make theatre of opposing it- but I see no candidate who makes serious proposals for a real effort at disarmament or at creating the true world-spanning institutions which can bring us real peace.

The closest any candidate comes to doing this (any candidate who can win, at least) is Dr. Howard Dean. While he too, in the interests of maintaining his electability, mouths the platitudes of American superiority, it is very clear to me (as comes through from some of his statements) that, deep down, he understands that we will only have peace in this world when America gives up its delusions of superiority and special prerogative.

We are no different from any other nation and we have no right to tell any other nation what to do. We are not (or, at least, should not be) a Superpower or even the “first among equals”, but rather merely an equal. A Dean Presidency would take us in the right direction.

This is not, as some will charge, a prescription for national decline, far from it. Rather, it is a prescription for national greatness. It is a silly game, mostly that of white, heterosexual men, to measure our power by the number of guns we have, bombs we possess, people we can kill. It is only a greedy capitalist who would define the measure of greatness by the number of dollars we produce.

The power of the Dean campaign is not derived from Howard Dean himself. Who was Howard Dean before we chose him? The above-average Governor of a tiny state. Someone who, in terms of the difficulty of their last job, is probably outranked by nearly every other Governor as well as all one hundred members of the Senate and about fifty big city mayors.

Why is everyone ganging up on Howard Dean? Not because they fear him. Because they fear us. We are a body of Americans who have come to see the folly of American exceptionalism. We are people who see the futility of an economy which produces hundreds of billionaires but cannot afford health care for the poorest Americans.

The Washington Democrats aren’t out to solve any of these problems because they are the ones who benefit the most from them. Republicans do nothing to ameliorate the present conditions because they believe that eventually, when things get bad enough, we’ll turn to them and let them implement their whole agenda. Democrats do nothing because they are the ones who made and live well off the status quo.

We’re the one campaign with the power to shake off the shackles of the present reality. That’s why they’re after us.

Until Iowa, I was for anyone-but-Bush. That isn’t true anymore. Does anyone think that there would be a substantive difference between the way a second-term Bush, looking to elect a Republican successor in 2008, and John Kerry, looking to get re-elected in 2008, would govern? The differences would be matters of style, and not substance. The same goes for John Edwards, Wesley Clark, and all the rest.

With us, his supporters, Howard Dean can work against the Washington establishment. We are not in politics to sit for a career; we are in it to revolutionize America. This is bad news for those whose jobs depend on complacency and the status quo.

That is why I say that, if Dean loses as a result of the unfair tactics and smears of the Clinton machine, he must run as a third party candidate and he must follow up that campaign.

Perhaps it is time for us to consider that, if the Democrats love the status quo so much, we ought to have a real third party in America. Never mind a third party, we need a new second party! One that will truly represent progressive values.

It isn’t as crazy as it sounds. That’s how the Republicans came to be. As the Whigs fell apart, various factions came together to establish a true free soil party.

We won’t win in 2004, but we might strike a fatal blow to the Democratic Party, giving us room to overtake them in the 2006 Congressional elections and win in 2008. It isn’t that progressivism is unpopular among the American people, it’s that the Democrats are widely (and correctly, I might add) viewed as an unwieldy collection of special interest groups, all in this for themselves.

Well, that’s how I feel. What do you think?