Co-opting a crusade
A candidate morphs from maverick to mainstream in the space of a single endorsement. Pompous pundits who pronounced him unelectable one day call him unstoppable the next. Conspiracy theorists spy the silent strings of the Clintonistas at play.
There is nothing quite so depressing as watching this country's permanent presidential campaign pull a nascent political crusade up by its grass roots.
Maybe Donna Brazile and the rest of the Democratic quote machine are right, and the endorsement by Al Gore is an immunizing shot in the arm for Howard Dean. Why, then, does it feel more like a self-inflicted shot to the head?
How many true believers will bolt the bus to make room for Al Gore and all his baggage? Why, when a Web-linked network of the freshly politicized was poised to deliver Iowa and New Hampshire, would Howard Dean choose this moment to embrace the political establishment he has been running against?
Pragmatism, say some supporters. Gore's nod will reassure the skittish and attract the moneyed, who have been convinced, until now, that Dean is unelectable. But wasn't the whole point to prove that a candidate of conviction could circumvent the permanent campaign by taking his case directly to the people? What happened to all that self-congratulatory chest thumping about those average contributions of $77?
This is not the first chink in Dean's populist armor, of course. Those small checks cannot erase the fact that the former Vermont governor chose to spit in the eye of campaign finance reformers in order to spend as much money as he deemed necessary to win. Gore's endorsement has to force supporters who forgave him that serious lapse in judgment to ask what other accommodations Dean will be willing to make to secure the Democratic nomination.
It was hard to choose yesterday which man was the more disingenuous at the endorsement announcement in Harlem.
Gore: "We need to remake the Democratic Party; we need to remake America. We need to take it back on behalf of the people of this country." Take it back from whom, Mr. Vice President? Weren't you the Democrats' standard bearer in 2000? Wasn't it the centrist political philosophy of Clinton, Gore, and the Democratic Leadership Council that spawned the insurgent Dean campaign in the first place?
Dean: "I thank Al Gore for his extraordinary leadership in this party in the last couple of years." What leadership was that exactly, Dr. Dean? The mushy kind that you have been decrying on the campaign stump for months, the kind that rendered Democrats indistinguishable from Republicans?
On Monday, the Democratic Leadership Council issued its latest patronizing press release about Dean, this one chiding the front-runner for insisting that he intends to wage his campaign on the crucial economic issues of "jobs, education, and health care," not the divisive social issues of "guns, Gods, and gays."
"We're not sure which is more doomed to fail -- the naive hope that if we just change the subject, divisive issues will go away, or the condescending idea that Americans who care passionately about `all this controversial social stuff' should move on and care about something else," read the release.
And here I thought the candidate was just saying, "It's the economy, stupid!"
Maybe the DLC and the Dean Generation will find common ground, although it is hard to imagine. The press tends to trivialize the zeal of those college students tramping through the snows of New Hampshire and the cold of Iowa on Dean's behalf. It is not possible to read about their organizational efforts without catching the suggestion that they are in it more for the dating opportunities than the political experience.
Not Howard Dean. He tells his young volunteers: "You are not the foot soldiers of my campaign. You're driving my campaign." Yesterday, I swear I heard the sound of that bus backfiring.
Eileen McNamara is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at mcnamara@globe.com.
