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Who the heck is Howard Dean Part II

Back in July I wrote a post about Howard Dean. It was about that time that I had first heard his name, and I wanted to post some of his stances on the issues based on a David Broder Op-Ed piece. I am still getting comments on that post today. When I look at that post, however, I am struck by both its age and its general lack of information.

So, I surfed over to CSPAN.org to see if I could find any new video of Dean and flesh out some of his stances. I found this video (Real Media) of Dean, Kerry and Gephardt giving speeches at A Linn County Iowa Democratic Fundraising Dinner on January 18th.

Dean’s speech covers the first 25 minutes of the video, and it is probably worth watching.

Here are some highlights from my notes (not in the order he gave them and mostly paraphrased):

Affirmative Action–Dean claimed it was wrong for the President to use a racially divisive term such as “quotas” when discussing the U of M points system. Dean does not believe Michigan uses a quota system and supports affirmative action.

Campaign Reform–He is for public financing of campaigns with instant runoffs (“so Nader can’t steal an election for Gore—even though we all know it was the Supreme Court”. He is also for recognition by amendment or by the courts that campaign donations are not the same as free speech.

Education–Chastised Bush for passing the “Largest unfunded mandate in the history of education”. Dean mocked Bush’s plan by calling it the “Every School Board Left Behind Act” and the “No Teacher Left Standing Act”. He claimed that if he had run and been re-elected Governor of Vermont, he would have turned down the testing -based money on principle. He said that if he were President he would make sure that Special Education was fully funded. Dean claimed that doing so would take the burden off of school boards and allow districts to lower property taxes without squeezing school budgets. He claimed that funding Special Ed. would allow real tax relief for Middle Americans.

Economy–Pointed out that he is the only candidate for the Democratic nomination that did not support Bush’s tax cut. Claimed that if he were elected he would get rid of Bush’s cuts and use the money to balance the budget and use whatever was left for Health Care reform. Kept repeating that he was a fiscal conservative. He said he was proud that under his leadership Vermont isn’t facing the budget shortfalls and Medicaid cuts that many other states are dealing with now. Said Bill Clinton balanced the budget in 1993 without a single Republican vote and in only 2 and a half years the Bush Administration found a way to return us to the largest deficit in the history of the United States.

Health Care–Said that as governor he made sure that every child under 18 had health insurance and he would do the same as president. Said neither the Democrat’s nor the Republican’s proposals for a Patient’s bill of Rights were worth anything (”Republicans don’t want you to sue your HMO and Democrats do”). He is for Universal Health Care and said it was not some “loony liberal idea” but something that Harry Truman put in the party platform back in the 40’s.

Energy–We need to become less dependent on the Saudis who he was very tough on for funding terrorism. Wants to raise mileage standards for all vehicles and does not want to take SUVs and Trucks away. Wants 10% ethanol in all fuel. Wants to develop alternative energy sources to bring us closer to the EU who have been working on this successfully for some time. Wants to promote basic conservation.

Foreign Policy–Wants to be “multilateral” (used this word a lot) and not make policy decisions in the go it alone way the current President does. Used Kyoto as an example. Said that it was flawed, but he would not have “spit” on it and walk away the way the President has. He would have worked with the other nations to make the treaty stronger (especially in regard to Third World nations). Said he is the only current Democratic candidate that did not support the Iraq resolution.

Equal Rights under the law–said he was for same-sex Civil Unions (but not marriage which is a church function) so all people can have equal rights on inheritance, insurance and hospitalization. Said he was not willing to sell out a whole group of people (gays and lesbians) just because it was politically risky to pass the Vermont Civil Unions act. Said he hopes to get to debate Bush so he can ask him to explain why he feels everyone is not entitled to equal rights under the law.

Dean closed the speech saying that if he were the nominee he would make us proud to be Democrats again. He would be willing to stand up for what Democrats believe in and not worry what people like Rush Limbaugh says about it.

It was a good speech. Sometimes he jumped around a little bit and he is not the most polished speaker in the world, He has this odd habit of raising and lowing his tone at odd places. In all, I was still impressed by what he had to say. Of course it was all very high-level stuff (he was sharing the stage with Gephardt and Kerry), but he left me wanting to hear more, which is a good thing for a candidate. I liked that he was not afraid to criticize the president and he was fairly harsh in his criticism. I am still interested in Howard Dean.

January 23rd, 2003 Posted by Rob | Politics | 3 comments