Dean perceives a turnaround in N.H.
NASHUA -- Howard Dean insisted repeatedly yesterday that his campaign had turned the corner after a run of bad days and delivered more of the straight talk -- including a rebuke of Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan -- that he said separates him from the rest of the Democratic presidential field.
Even before his campaign had received daily tracking numbers assessing whether his Thursday media blitz had been successful in stopping his fall in New Hampshire polls, Dean told a local meeting of the United Auto Workers: "I believe we've turned this around in New Hampshire. We've got a long way to go to catch up from the loss in Iowa. But I think we have turned it around. We've seen some indications of that, and I think we can win it, too."
But a turnaround was not evident in the latest Boston Globe/ WBZ-TV tracking poll of likely voters in New Hampshire, which showed Dean falling into a tie for second place with retired Army General Wesley K. Clark. The poll, conducted last night and Thursday, had Massachusetts Senator John F. Kerry at 35 percent, Dean and Clark at 15, and North Carolina Senator John Edwards at 12. The margin of error in the poll is plus or minus 5 percentage points.
Dean repeated his optimistic talk during four stops across what is expected to be among his strongest voting areas in the state, the southern and southwestern tiers. He also expanded his list of inside-the-Beltway targets to include Greenspan. More than 1,000 people attended a Dean rally last night at Keene Middle School.
Asked in Londonderry for his opinion on the Fed chief, Dean told an audience member: "Alan Greenspan has become too political. If he lacks the political courage to criticize the deficits, if he was foolish enough -- and he is not a foolish man -- to support the outrageous tax cuts that George Bush put through here, then he has become too political and we need a new chairman."
Later, picking through a barrel of McIntosh apples at nearby Mack's Apples, he told reporters: "I'm troubled by [Greenspan's] willingness to bend in political winds. That's something a Fed chief must never do. He's had a long, distinguished career, but in the last year or so, I've been disturbed by his willingness to accede to tax cuts that are irresponsible and a level of deficit which is deeply troubling."
Greenspan will finish his fourth four-year term in June. President Bush has said he plans to nominate him for a fifth term.
Dean said at several points during the day that he would not try to remove Greenspan from office if he is elected president, but his comments raised the specter of a president working with a monetary manager whom he has publicly denounced.
Such talk by a president usually roils financial markets. Dean later told reporters, "My comments as a presidential candidate are not going to move markets, certainly not before the nominating convention." The Fed had no response yesterday to Dean's remarks.
Dean's campaign eagerly awaited poll numbers for a signal about whether his Thursday prime-time television appearance with his wife and a taped segment on David Letterman's late-night comedy show had helped soften his image after his raucous and much lampooned concession speech in Iowa on Monday.
Continuing the media blitz, Dean told CNN's "Inside Politics" yesterday: "There's two things going on: First . . . I think a little ability to laugh at yourself is always a good thing, and that's what you need when you're not the front-runner anymore. And the other thing is that I think the American people have seen that tape so many times, they actually don't think it's as bad as the inside-the-Beltway people think it is. Some of them like it."
Dean said that regardless of his finish Tuesday in New Hampshire, he plans to continue vying for the nomination at least through Feb. 3, when seven states -- most in the South and Southwest -- vote. Dean hopes to run especially strong in Arizona and New Mexico.
"We'll be in South Carolina on the 29th of January for the debate down there, and then we're going to be going to New Mexico and Arizona," he told Judy Woodruff from CNN.
On the stump, Dean continued to use harsh rhetoric in talking about Bush and his Democratic rivals. "This president smiles while he has the knife or scissors in your back," he said in Londonderry. "This country is weaker than we found it when Bill Clinton left it, and any president who makes this country weaker ought to be a one-term president."
Turning the topic to his rivals, he said: "With all due respect to these folks, they've been in Washington for years and years and years. It's all, `You scratch your back and I'll scratch mine,' " he said, muddling an old saying, "and what happens? We all pay the bill. Ordinary taxpayers are the ones who get the short end of the stick."
Glen Johnson can be reached at johnson@globe.com.
