So, basically, David Brooks, a writer for the notoriously right-wing, neo-conservative Weekly Standard, former editor of the notoriously right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial page, and program director for the RIDICULOUSLY right-wing Olin Foundation is slamming Dean, who governed a largely rural state since 1982 (when he was elected to the state House, and then to the Governorship in 1991) and lived there for even longer, for saying "Us rural people."
Allll righty then.
Let's leave aside Brooks' own dubious "rural folk" credentials and questionable motives for writing such an attack piece, the likes of which hamstrung Gore's candidacy in 2000.
[Editorial aside: These people really have no creativity - they just use whatever spurious things they can to brand their opponents as untruthful ("Gore said he invented the internet! He said his dog's medicine was cheaper than his mom's and his mom takes a different drug! He never really kisses his wife, that was a set-up! He's stiff, which proves he's not one of the common people! Liar liar pants on fire!") They love to use little things to brand Democrats as liars, whether the little things are even slightly accurate or not, and even though their own candidate cough*DUBYA*cough deserves the "liar" title a whole lot more. I mean, look at the promises he campaigned on and his subsequent actions as president. They're worlds apart.]
Anyway, let's look at the article.
Brooks, predictably, uses a wobbly thing like the "he's not rural, that son of a gun" canard as a base to attack all of Dean's positions, which, when you examine them, are mostly just as wobbly. He does have a point or two, but we'll get to that. Let's go through his arguments one by one.
- "When he began running for president, he left his past behind, along with the encumbrances that go with it." Excuse me, but that's utter bullshit. Dean has always run on his record as Governor of Vermont - fiscal conservative; deficit hawk; somewhat more liberal on social issues; pro-business; pro state's rights when it comes to gun laws. He can't help it if David Brooks and his ilk decided the best way to slam him in the past was to call him "too liberal." Yes, Dean has been angry, but it's hardly because he's liberal. He's angry because there's plenty of reason to be, and not just for liberals - for centrists and even conservatives, too.
- "The old Dean was a free trader. The new Dean is not." Well, Brooks has somewhat of a point: Dean's policies could be construed as somewhat protectionist. But that's not the whole story.
Dean is in favor of the creation and strengthening of middle classes throughout the developing world. To do this, he hopes to encourage and reward countries that respect labor rights and environmental standards. This will help to achieve the goal of creating middle classes in developing countries (and the existence of middle classes greatly stabilize countries) as well as helping to level the playing field and hopefully stop the hemorrhaging of American manufacturing jobs overseas. As he has said, we can't compete for manufacturing jobs with countries that have no environmental standards and who pay their workers 27 cents a day.
I don't know where Brooks got that Dean has changed on this issue; he's always struck a balance between the interests of business, labor and environmental causes in Vermont. (Not as much as radical environmentalists wanted, but to my mind, that just goes to show even more that he's a moderate.) More
here.
Dean is also well known as a strong supporter of NAFTA (although he wants to re-negotiate it and "fix" the problems it has) and he was strongly in favor of admitting China into the WTO.
- "The old Dean was open to Medicare reform. The new Dean says Medicare is off the table." Uh, again, this is total, ridiculous BS. Brooks has completely misquoted Dean and twisted his words altogether. Read more here and here.
- "The old Dean courted the N.R.A.; the new Dean has swung in favor of gun control." What? Could Brooks please put the crack pipe down? Read the truth here.
- "The old Dean was a pro-business fiscal moderate; the new Dean, sounding like Ralph Nader, declares, 'We've allowed our lives to become slaves to the bottom line of multinational corporations all over the world.'" Once again, Brooks has twisted Dean's policies and meaning. Dean says on his Web site, "The truth is that large corporate interests have taken over the Bush White House. Multi-national corporations -- not ordinary Americans -- are the principal beneficiaries of the Bush legislative agenda." Which, to my mind, is completely true. I don't know where the heck Brooks got the quote he cited; I did a Google search for it and couldn't find anything like it. Once again, I'm a lot more willing to believe what Dean says than what Brooks says. Brooks is a highly partisan and suspect person to be commenting on Dean's record.
- Dean did say he would teach Bush a little about defense, as you can read here. But as far as I could see, Dean's points about Bush's defense record were extremely valid. I agree strongly that Bush's record on defense has not been exactly stellar or even effective. I think he could use a few lessons from someone like Dean; at least Dean reads the newspapers. I also have to say that I agree with Dean that a lot of Congress people are cockroaches, although it might not have been the most politic thing to say publicly. But once again, I think most Americans would agree with him as well. Both things were definitely ill-considered, off the cuff remarks from Dean, but so what. Whatever. Let's compare his slips of the tongue to Dubya's. No contest.
- After this, Brooks goes into the territory of pure stupidity/mendacity. I think that most people with a little bit of integrity and ability to grasp reasonable arguments can say that yes, we can't pull out of Iraq responsibly right now, and yes, our troops need to come home as soon as possible, and the way to do that would be to repair our relations with our allies and convince them to help us. I think many of our allies would be willing to do just that if a different, less arrogant president was asking. Just an opinion.
In closing, I'd like to say that it's a good thing to consider the source when you read Dean-slamming Op-Eds. David brooks is hardly an uninterested and unbiased commentator.