Howard Dean Gets Hot

All of you are surely wondering this morning: Who won the Democratic presidential bakeoff?

We were thinking the same thing as we sat in the press rows at the big DNC conclave here over the weekend, so we asked some fellow chattering-class members.

"I've never seen Gephardt that good, but Dean was on fire," said veteran analyst Charlie Cook.

"Dean kicked [butt]," another reporter declared.

Dean was the unofficial winner, and Joe Lieberman the unofficial loser (he's a great general election candidate, but his centrist approach doesn't provide much red meat for party carnivores).

Nearly all the candidates (other than the recuperating John Kerry and Bob Graham) were here to speechify before the DNC delegates and the assembled press corps. Which means the insiders were comparing notes and wondering who has the Right Stuff (or perhaps the left stuff) to knock off George W.

This is all about early buzz, of course. But early buzz can produce good media coverage. Just ask Howard Dean, who in the last week has gotten nice write-ups in Salon, New York magazine and the Baltimore Sun ("Vt. Democrat's anti-war stance could be ticket from obscurity"). Such stories can create a sense of momentum and attract supporters and fundraisers (Rob Reiner has now endorsed Dean).

Nationally, it's a different story. A Time-CNN poll gives Lieberman 16 percent, Dick Gephardt 13, Kerry 8, John Edwards 7, Al Sharpton 7, Carol Moseley-Braun 4, Dean 3, Graham 3 and Dennis Kucinich 2 (not bad for a guy who announced 12 minutes ago).

Kerry, meanwhile, gets first-class treatment in Vogue, with the cover line: "Can a Blue-Blooded Mega-Millionaire Win the Heartland?" (Hey, why not? Bush did it.)

These cattle calls can be a bit demeaning, with all the potential presidents and assorted egomaniacs waiting in the wings for their allotted few minutes. But they are the opening innings of a very long game – and a great opportunity for those don't have a national profile.

Like a certain doctor.

Just check out the headlines:

Chicago Tribune: "Dean takes Democrats to task over Iraq stance"

Washington Times: "'Gutsy' Dean rouses Democrats with call to arms"

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "Dean Scores a Home Run at Democratic Party Powwow"

Here's the New York Times take:

"Former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont and Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri drew the day's warmest receptions by far.

"Dr. Dean moved to distinguish himself sharply from his rivals. Taking advantage of the fact that he is not a sitting member of Congress, he criticized Democrats who had supported White House policies for the past two years, starting with the Iraq resolution last year. Dr. Dean did not even bother to warm up his crowd, starting his attack immediately after walking to his microphone.

"'What I want to know is why in the world the Democratic Party leadership is supporting the president's unilateral attack on Iraq?' he asked, to applause from most of his audience. 'What I want to know is why are Democratic leaders supporting tax cuts? The question is not how big the tax cut should be; the question should be, Can we afford a tax cut at all, with the largest deficit in the history of this country?'

"'I'm Howard Dean, and I'm here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,' he said. . . .

"In interviews, Democrats spoke highly of Dr. Dean, saying he had with his speech provided a sense of ideology and passion that many said had been absent among Democrats in last year's Congressional elections.

"But Mr. Gephardt – who as the former House minority leader took much of the blame for last year's defeats – drew reviews that were almost as warm. . . . Indeed, in many ways, the day might prove to be especially beneficial for Mr. Gephardt, who is a regular and perhaps overly familiar figure to many Democrats here looking for a fresh face."

The Boston Globe also likes the doctor:

"Howard Dean, a former governor of Vermont, had the crowd buzzing with a speech that attacked his own party nearly as viciously as he castigated Bush. . . . The audience was far more reserved for its first speaker, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut."

Says Newsweek: "So far, the boat rising fastest on the antiwar tide belongs to Howard Dean."

The Washington Post delivers a similar verdict:

"Dean's fiery and unabashedly liberal message drew the most enthusiastic response from an audience demoralized by Democratic losses in the 2002 elections. . . .

"Gephardt, who formally announced his candidacy this week, also drew strong applause with a speech that used personal and family experiences to promote an agenda to provide health care to all Americans, establish a pension system that would ensure workers a more secure retirement, create incentives to make it easier for young people to become teachers and work for a variable, international minimum wage. . . .

"Lieberman, the party's 2000 vice presidential nominee, drew a polite but reserved response as he presented himself as a hawk on foreign and defense policy and a centrist on domestic policy."

ABC's Note, before the cattle call, likes the man who wasn't there. Democrats are "looking for an experienced fresh face with a military background and an anti-war stance. Barring that, they're looking for the candidate with the best shot at beating George W. Bush.

"Right now, that candidate would seem to be Senator John Kerry, who, in fact, will be the only one of the current eight presidential candidates not addressing the DNC's winter meeting because he is still recovering from prostate cancer surgery.

"Kerry's top-notch staff's ability to daisy-chain one advantage into another, in the vein of 'good buzz leading to good clips leading to good staff hires leading to fundraising gains, and so on,' is no small part of why Kerry appears to be the frontrunner today. But the primary reason is his Vietnam/military credentials, which would seem, at least on the surface, to solve Democrats' biggest weakness – national security bona fides – for which they suffered badly in the 2002 elections."

In the Note's handicapping, "the Senator from Massachusetts places first. In second: Senator John Edwards, followed by Senator Joe Lieberman at third, Rep. Dick Gephardt quite close behind in fourth, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean at fifth, and the Rev. Al Sharpton in sixth place."

The speakers also included the newest candidates, Dennis Kucinich and Carol Moseley-Braun (who, despite brain-lock on our part Friday, is not the first serious female candidate in a generation. We somehow forgot about Elizabeth Dole's short-lived effort).

The Philadelphia Inquirer sees trouble ahead for whoever emerges:

"As they ponder the next presidential race, Democrats are plagued by a recurring nightmare.

"In the spring of 2004, fresh from a bloody and expensive primary season, their candidate could be strapped for cash – while the Republican candidate, who lives in the White House, is rolling in dough.

"In fact, President Bush is expected to run his reelection race with the fattest campaign war chest in history, maybe $300 million, totally financed by private contributors – defying the spirit of federal reform law that, since the Watergate era, has sought to curb the dominance of private dollars in presidential campaigns. No Democrat has a prayer of matching the Bush money juggernaut.

"As national chairman Terry McAuliffe said here at the party's annual winter meeting, Democrats face 'a tremendous gap' in the competition with Republicans to raise campaign money."

There are hints that Kerry and Lieberman could dispense with public financing.

The New Republic is pining for a big strong military man:

"Mickey Kaus is probably right to think we're on the verge of a Wesley Clark boomlet. Clark came off as serious and uncalculating on 'Meet the Press' last Sunday--at least as uncalculating as you can be when you're on national television testing the waters for a presidential run. (The 'All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kosovo' routine did wear a little thin after a while.) . . . There aren't many Democrats who have the former Supreme Allied Commander's credibility on national security, which seems to be the party's biggest vulnerability going forward. The problem is that, for all his credibility, Clark's foreign policy vision isn't very compelling. . . .

"Wesley Clark's thoughts on the use of force sound disturbingly Powell Doctrine-esque. Then again, Colin Powell is one of the most popular people in the country these days."

But Kaus himself sees the retired general leaving himself plenty of wiggle room: "His ultimate Iraq stand – we have to go to war now, but a year ago Bush should have 'set Iraq aside' and avoided war – also happens to be a perfect straddle of the issue. If war goes well, he was for it. If it goes badly, he was against it!"

Mike Murphy, the GOP strategist who now opines for Hotline, goes online and asks: "Who has the longest bio listed on any announced candidate's website? Teresa Heinz Kerry with an impressive 1,143 words, nearly twice her husband John Kerry's 635 words. I had no idea Ms. Heinz-Kerry was 'heralded by the Utne Reader in 1995 as one of 100 American visionaries.' I'd extract more but her bio is almost twice as long as this column. . . .

"Fragile front-runner John Kerry's website is a bundle of tells. Beyond Ms. H-K's epic bio, the Kerry website reveals both the strength and the weakness of the Kerry campaign; an ocean of words yielding a puddle of message. The site is admirably thick – the most elaborate of any Dem contender – but the actual content is weak."

The Orlando Sentinel finds its home-state candidate less than forthcoming on his medical treatment:

"Sen. Bob Graham, who will begin raising money for a presidential campaign next week, said Thursday that his Jan. 31 heart surgery was much more serious that he had previously disclosed.

"Graham, in his first interview with reporters since open-heart surgery, said that despite the health troubles he will open a presidential campaign committee next week. And if his doctors say he can withstand the rigors of a national campaign, he said, he will announce his candidacy in four to eight weeks.

"But the more serious nature of Graham's health problems, and the fact that he did not disclose the extent of the problem until Thursday, could hurt his campaign, political analysts said. . . .

"Surgeons performed a double-bypass on Graham after finding he suffers from coronary artery disease. They also repaired a congenital hole between the upper chambers of his heart."

There may be more GOP governors than Democrats, but they are suddenly on the defensive, says the Washington Times:

"A threatened exodus of Republican governors from the National Governors Association was slowed yesterday when the organization's executive committee managed to kill a resolution that would have opposed tax cuts favored by President Bush.

"The resolution would have put the nation's governors on record as saying the best stimulus to the economy would be more federal tax dollars for the states, rather than the tax cuts supported by Mr. Bush and most Republicans in Congress.

"Rebellious Republicans led by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Colorado Gov. Bill Owens managed to thwart the resolution. The victory came a day after Republican governors met privately and resolved to work together to gain control over an NGA staff they say is dominated by liberals and Democrats."

Tired of Democrats and Republicans? This might be coming soon to a state near you, says the Baltimore Sun:

"Plans are underway for an invasion of New Hampshire. Or Wyoming. Or maybe Delaware, Montana or Alaska. Sparsely populated and independent in spirit, they're all attractive targets for a certain bloodless coup in the making.

"Within the next several years, according to the plan, 20,000 Libertarians would move to a single state and begin infiltrating. They would get jobs, join civic groups, get elected and take a hatchet to taxes and laws. In this utopia called the Free State Project, schools would be severed from the state, gun-control laws abolished, drugs legalized, health and social services privatized, most federal aid rejected. Government's only job would be to protect against 'force and fraud.'

"'The Libertarian movement has existed for decades and produced leading intellectuals and Nobel Prize winners, but despite all that it hasn't had much influence on a national level,' says Free State Project founder Jason Sorens. 'I think it's time we concentrate our resources in a place where we have a shot at actually winning.' . . .

"Once 20,000 have signed on – Sorens expects this by about 2005 – the migration begins."

The abortion issue may be popping up in an unexpected place:

"Advocates for women's health are usually delighted when the government spends time and money to explore the causes of breast cancer," says the Los Angeles Times. "But some of them are charging that abortion politics, not science, is behind a conference starting Monday at the National Cancer Institute that will consider whether women who terminate a pregnancy also face a higher risk of breast cancer.

"The critics say the conference is the latest case of the Bush administration's skewing the nation's medical research agenda to please its conservative allies.

"There is hardly a breast cancer activist group around that can say that they're happy this conference is happening, or that this is a high priority, or that they've called on the NCI to do more on this topic,' said Cynthia Pearson, executive director of the National Women's Health Network, a Washington-based watchdog group."

Sandy Koufax has struck out Rupert Murdoch. As we told you Friday, the baseball legend disassociated himself from the Murdoch-owned Los Angeles Dodgers after a seamy gossip item in the Murdoch-owned New York Post, which has now apologized:

"A two-sentence blind item we ran here Dec. 19 about a 'Hall of Fame baseball hero' has sparked a series of unfortunate consequences for which we are very sorry. The item said the sports hero 'cooperated with a best-selling biography only because the author promised to keep secret that he is gay.'

"Two weeks later, the Daily News' Michael Gross, after finding 'Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy' by Jane Leavy on the best-seller list, named Koufax as the player and ran a photo of him. Koufax himself, an intensely private man, was deeply offended by our item. The author has denied making any deal with Koufax and called our item 'erroneous.' We apologize to both Koufax and Leavy for getting it wrong."

Salon's Keith Olbermann rips the Murdoch forces:

"It is the New York Post, of course, that published another piece of homophobic baseball gossip last spring that led the New York Mets' Mike Piazza to feel he had to publicly announce he was not gay. Besides the Post, the News Corp. also owns Fox Television, Fox News Channel, and other companies that produce products structurally similar to 'news.' . . .

"I worked for News Corp. – for its Fox network and one of its cable sewers, Fox Sports Net, for three years. They were swine. Many companies are swine. But the Koufax episode is something extraordinary."

Tell us what you really think, Keith.