Gephardt did something right

[Rose Siding]

snip>
Pressed four times on CNN's "Late Edition" to say whether Dean, the former governor of Vermont, was qualified to be president, Gephardt declined to answer directly.

"I think I'm more qualified than he is," said Gephardt, who is locked in a must-win battle with Dean in Iowa. "I think he's going to have real trouble beating George Bush with the positions he's taken, and the statements that he's made."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040104/us_nm/campaign_dc_5

A week ago he would have taken the bait, imo, but he answered this well. He made a case for himself, took an adversarial position to Dean but avoided building Bush up in the process. This is how it should be done.

The piece goes on to nice response from Dean to the general critics:

snip>
"If you look at what they say carefully, 'Oh, Howard Dean, he can't be elected, after we caught Saddam Hussein he said it hadn't made us any safer.' Well, we're at Code Level Orange, we now have fighter pilots escorting commercial aircraft and we have lost 23 more American troops since Saddam was caught," Dean said. "It seems to me maybe I was right."

[Hep]

1. Something right?

I disagree. He was just more evasive. He still lacks the balls to say that Dean IS qualified.

[Rose Siding]

3. I didn't see the interview, like most of the public but

Dick could have grabbed some headlines for himself with a Dean/Dem battering zinger. Maybe he actually did something *wrong*, for himself anyway.

I'm for Dean and like Clinton says, when your opponent's drowning, throw him an anchor- but I've been getting too angry at the all the destructive tactics. I hoped this was maybe an acknowledgement that the slams had been over the top.

[deminflorida]

2. Let me say it for him....

Dean is qualified (highly in my opinion). But he's fast proving what critics have been saying all along, and that is that he's unelectable in the general election against George W. Bush. Not just because of his tax policy that will be interpreted as a hike on middle class America, but because of many of the recent statements, and back-tracks he's made on everything from Clinton supporters, Religion, and Safety following the Saddam capture.

To put it bluntly, I agree with James Carville Dean has "MAD MOUTH DISEASE".

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3869798/

[rock]

4. Qualified to be president

What a deep, penetrating, no-holds-barred grilling. Whew! no wonder these guys are professional reporters. (/sarcasm off)

[mot78]

5. It's good he avoided that question

Wolf was trying to set him up, and if he took the bait Rove would just get more material to attack Dean with.

[dfong63]

6. since when is refusing to give a straight answer the "right" way

... to handle a simple question?

Dean is eminently qualified, far more so than Bush was. Gep looks like a mealy-mouth fool with no balls when he refuses to acknowledge that he's not the "only" qualified person in the running.