"Howard is not a liberal. He's a pro-business, Rockefeller Republican."
International Socialist Review Issue 32,
November-December 2003
The Dean Deception
By KEITH ROSENTHAL
We must face the appalling fact that we have been
betrayed by both the Democratic and Republican
Parties. -- Martin Luther King, Jr., in Facing the
Challenge of a New Age, 1957
WITH more than a year remaining before the
presidential election of 2004, the former Vermont
governor, Howard Dean, has stolen national attention
for his criticisms of the recent unilateral war on
Iraq by confidently arguing on the campaign trail:
"We’re gonna’ beat George Bush!"
He has called for universal health care, environmental
protection, the shredding of the "Bush Doctrine" of
preemptive attack, a reversal of the tax cuts and has
even called out the leadership of the Democratic Party
for cowering before Bush’s right-wing onslaught.
But Dean has done much more than simply grab the
attention of the national media. He also has many
antiwar activists, progressives and former Ralph Nader
voters excited about his campaign. Gary Younge
described Dean in the Guardian (UK) as "the great red
hope."1 In the Nation, Katha Pollit recently wrote,
"My fingers itch to write Dean another check." She
continued, "Howard Dean is Ralph Nader’s gift to the
Democratic Party."2
An even broader number of people on the American left
-- those who are weary of some of Dean’s proclamations
in favor of Israel’s targeted assassinations of
Palestinians, the occupation of Iraq, welfare reform
and the death penalty (to name a few) -- have simply
concluded that Dean has the best chance to win the
election.
Others have been driven so far by their hatred of Bush
that they are launching preemptive strikes against any
third-party candidacy. "A third party presidential
challenge from the left would be reactionary and
traitorous in the 2004 election," wrote Vermont
liberal Marty Jezer.3
It is easy to understand why progressives want to
eliminate George W. Bush after three years of attacks
that included a war on Afghanistan and Iraq, massive
tax cuts for the rich, racist scapegoating of
Arab-Americans, the invocation of Taft-Hartley against
West Coast dockworkers and billions of dollars poured
into the colonial occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq
while the number of people in poverty in America has
steadily risen. For many, "Anybody but Bush" appears
to be the only alternative.
With Howard Dean currently leading in the polls in the
key election primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire,
the choice for voters in 2004 could very well be
between the man from Vermont and the man from Texas.
The question is: Does Dean deserve your vote and your
hope? His record as governor of Vermont holds some
clues.
"The pain for Vermonters will be real"
Though he has been dubbed a "raging liberal" by
admirers and critics alike, Howard Dean governed
Vermont strictly within the framework of the
conservative Democratic Leadership Council.
Many people on the Vermont left see Dean’s current
posture as politically motivated. "The notion that he
is a liberal is ludicrous to those of us who worked
with him in Vermont," said Terrill Bouricius, a former
state representative.4 Dean admits that he recognized
early on that the popular anger at Bush is "a raw
energy, an energy that I know could be channeled."5
Back in February 2003, Dean candidly admitted to Salon
magazine that if he were to win the nomination of his
party he would "probably dispense with some of the
more rhetorical flourishes. One time I said the
Supreme Court is so far right you couldn’t see it
anymore. Next summer I won’t be talking like that.
It’s true and I’m not ashamed to have said it, but it
doesn’t sound very presidential."6
But such political maneuvering is nothing new for
Dean. Upon becoming governor of Vermont in 1991, after
the sudden death of then-Republican Governor Richard
Snelling, Dean made a sharp turn to the right and
pursued that course ever since. In his 11 years as
governor, Dean would shift rightward on one position
after another, all the while claiming to be concerned
for the needy and less-fortunate, and disappointing
all who thought they were getting someone who would
govern from the liberal end of the political spectrum.
Dean inherited a massive deficit in the state budget
from Snelling. Refusing to raise taxes on wealthier
Vermonters (and rendering the tax system more
regressive than previously), Dean declared in his
first State of the State address that it would be his
mission to balance the state budget with some "tough"
cuts. Even though Vermont has no law requiring a
balanced budget, Dean promised, "The pain for
Vermonters will be real."7
Dean slashed millions of dollars from all sorts of
social programs, from prescription drug benefits for
Medicare recipients and heating assistance for poorer
Vermonters to housing assistance funds. In defending
his cuts to social programs, Dean said, "I don’t think
I have to shy away from that just because I’m supposed
to be a liberal Democrat."8
Throughout the 1990s, Dean’s cuts in state aid to
education ( million), retirement funds for teachers
and state employees ( million), health care (
million), welfare programs earmarked for the aged,
blind and disabled ( million), Medicaid benefits
(.2 million) and more, amounted to roughly
million. Dean claimed that the cuts were necessary
because the state had no money and was burdened by a
million deficit.9
But during the same period, Dean found million for
a low-interest loan program for businesses,
million for a new prison in Springfield, VT, and he
cut the income tax by 8 percent (equivalent to
million) -- a move many in the legislature balked at
because they didn’t feel comfortable "cutting taxes in
a way that benefits the wealthiest taxpayers."10 By
2002, state investments in prisons increased by nearly
150 percent while investments in state colleges
increased by only 7 percent.11
Indeed, Dean’s mix of "fiscal conservatism and social
liberalism" seems to be not much different than Bush’s
so-called compassionate conservatism, and certainly
paralleled Clinton’s signature combination of liberal
"I-feel-your-pain" rhetoric with neoliberal policies.
"Move the retirement age to 70"
Politically, Dean moved into the outstretched arms of
the Republicans and the business community of Vermont.
As Elizabeth Ready, Vermont state auditor and former
legislator during the Dean administration said, "His
top advisers were all money people, brokers and
bankers."12 When Dean boasts on the campaign trail
that liberals "hated him" for his "fiscal
conservatism," he is not lying.
People on the left who think they will get a friend in
the White House if Dean were to be president are
sorely mistaken. As Sam Hemingway of the Burlington
Free Press recounts, "At times he loved to pick on the
extreme liberals in the state sort of as a foil, to
build allegiances as a moderate and to pull in
Republican supporters. He knew they’d have nowhere
else to go."13
Dean red-baited and smeared even those in his own
party who would criticize him for his conservative
policies. In 1992, when assailed by Democrats for
jettisoning his support for single-payer health care,
Dean responded: "The progressive wing [of the party]
needs to take a look at what works and to discard
ideas that in many cases have been discarded by
history, including the history of what happened in
Eastern Europe."14
Most of the Democrats in the legislature rebelled
against Dean over the budget cuts, and he ended up
depending on Republican votes to pass most of his
proposals. At the time, a local Vermont newspaper
wrote, "The biggest items on Dean’s agenda for next
year are likely to provoke more opposition from the
Democrats than the Republicans. Nevertheless, Dean
said he feels no particular pressure to deliver the
goods to his party or to promote the Democratic
agenda."15
In the mid-1990s, Dean even aligned himself with the
likes of Republican Newt Gingrich on his stance on
cutting Medicare. He opined at the time, "The way to
balance the [federal] budget is for Congress to cut
Social Security, move the retirement age to 70, cut
defense, Medicare and veterans pensions, while the
states cut everything else."16
On two separate occasions, once in 1993 and again in
1995, hundreds of welfare recipients, and elderly,
impoverished, disabled and progressive Vermonters
poured in to the capital, Montpelier, from all over
the state to protest Dean’s cuts, comparing him to
Newt Gingrich. In 1995, the protesters carried a
banner reading: "Dean/Newt Robbing Poor Kids to Spare
the Rich."
The Rutland Herald described how one protestor,
Henrietta Jordan of the Vermont Center for Independent
Living, "said it would be much fairer to raise taxes
on people with expensive homes and cars, children in
private school and a housekeeper at home than to cut
programs that helped the 66,000 Vermonters living with
disabilities."17 Dean responded callously, brushing
off the pleas of Vermont’s most vulnerable by saying,
"This seems like sort of the last gasp of the left
here."18
Dean went above and beyond a "fiscally conservative"
agenda when it came to welfare reform. He proudly
boasts on his Web site that Vermont was the first
state to implement a workfare program, which includes
mandatory work requirements for welfare recipients.
Dean complained at the time that people on welfare
"don’t have any self-esteem. If they did they’d be
working."19 After the first three years of Dr. Dean’s
treatment, demand for food stamps and emergency food
aid in the state reached record levels.20
Moreover, Dean was the most devout business advocate
in Montpelier, always supporting corporate interests
regardless of the cost to workers or the environment.
For IBM, the state’s biggest employer, Dean bent over
backwards. The manager of government relations at the
Essex plant commented how "[Dean’s] secretary of
commerce would call me once a week just to see how
things were going."21
IBM in Vermont is notorious for slimming a workforce
that has been trying to unionize with the
Communication Workers of America for some time.
Nonetheless, IBM never got anything but "kid-gloves
treatment" from Dean.22 IBM also happens to be one of
the state’s biggest polluters, but receives consistent
environmental praise from Dean.
Few people in the labor movement in Vermont would be
willing to characterize him as a friend of labor. The
Vermont section of the National Education Association
(V-NEA) endorsed Dean only once in 11 years.
Dean did support the union drive of nurses at Fletcher
Allen Hospital in Burlington in 2002 (though, this was
only after he had announced that he would run for the
presidency). But he is more memorable for his actions
during the 1998 strike of nurses at Copley Hospital in
Morrisville, VT, when he repeatedly refused to talk
with the union, agreeing only to meet with management.
When Dean was governor, he was a staunch supporter of
NAFTA, the WTO, the IMF and World Bank. While he is
now distancing himself somewhat from certain aspects
of these institutions (most likely a calculated move
to win in the primaries), he still fundamentally
supports their spirit -- free trade, open markets and
the pursuit of profits. And he still maintains that
NAFTA was good for Vermont even though the state
suffered 6,000 trade-related job losses in the
1990s.23
Dean openly admits that he was a conservative
budget-cutter and that he governed in Vermont as a
"centrist." But there is much on the campaign trail
that he is simply not being honest about. For all his
talk about Bush lying to the American public, on issue
after issue Dean seems to be quite skilled at it
himself. Below are some examples.
Health care
Dean claims to have a health plan that will guarantee
insurance for all Americans modeled on the system he
set up in Vermont. In reality, according to his own
Web site, his plan would leave at least 10 million
Americans uninsured. And that is only if he actually
implements his plan -he is determined that "nothing
will happen on health care-until he works out a plan
to balance the budget."24 If he does model the
national health care system on Vermont’s system, it
won’t be pretty.
Vermont actually doesn’t have universal health care.
It is true that almost all children under the age of
18 are covered, but U.S. Census Bureau figures show
that 10-12 percent of Vermonters remain uninsured.
This is only a little better than the national average
of nearly 15 percent uninsured.
For those Vermonters who are insured under Dean’s
plan, their access is extremely limited. Dean’s plan
requires families to pay monthly premiums for
government-subsidized health care. Because services
are provided through private insurers, however,
premiums have been steadily increasing while care has
been steadily deteriorating. Over the past 10 years,
employee health insurance costs have increased by 400
percent.25
Dean has also cut basic services from the health plan
such as X-rays, dental services, physical therapy,
psychological care and cheap prescription drugs. As
Dean explained to the Rutland Herald in 1991, one of
the main assets of his health care plan is that "it
definitely keeps people out of the emergency room."26
It seems his main concern was not so much universal
coverage as cost-cutting. In his first State of the
State address he moaned:
We spend too much money in this country
and in this state for unnecessary medical
procedures. We must reduce the combined
pressures of professional liability,
consumer demand and reimbursement
mechanisms which encourage providers to
administer more care and to order more
tests.27
In other words, health care under Dr. Dean means
paying more for less.
Women’s rights
Dean has positioned himself as a friend of the women’s
rights movement because of his support for abortion --
even late-term abortions. But Dean’s "fiscal
conservatism" often got in the way of his "social
liberalism." When cutting the budget in the mid-1990s,
Dean’s axe managed to find itself aimed at battered
women’s services.28 And his welfare reform forced
single mothers into mandatory jobs, hurting both the
mother and the child. Moreover, although Dean himself
is pro-choice, he has stated that he wouldn’t accept
Dennis Kucinich’s challenge to make Roe v. Wade a
"litmus test" for appointing federal judges.29
Gay rights
While it is true that Dean signed a civil union bill
into law while governor of Vermont, it is not
something for which he can claim any credit. In 1999,
the state Supreme Court unanimously ruled that gay
couples were due the same legal rights of marriage as
heterosexuals, and ordered the legislature to pass a
law codifying that right. During his 1998 reelection
campaign, Dean refused to talk about the issue
publicly, saying he was waiting for the Supreme
Court’s decision.
When the legislature began to formulate a bill, Dean
made it clear that he would not sign anything
permitting gay marriage. The compromise was the civil
union legislation, which Dean signed "in the closet,"
privately, away from the cameras. At the time of
signing, Dean "was going around the state telling
folks he was only doing it because the Vermont Supreme
Court made him."30
Dean says he will not push for national civil unions,
but will let the states themselves decide (in other
words, he shares the same position as many
Republicans). This is like being opposed to Jim Crow
laws but willing to let the states decide whether or
not to impose segregation.
Education
Dean has lambasted Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act as
a fraudulent misnomer. But Dean is no champion of
sweeping education guarantees. When he was making his
budget cuts, financial aid for higher education was
first on the chopping block. According to Ellen David
Friedman, organizer with the Vermont National
Education Association, Dean was not necessarily
sympathetic to teachers. Friedman recalled in an
interview with the ISR how during contract
negotiations, "Dean would make public statements
encouraging school boards to shift more of the cost of
health care onto teachers."31
While Vermont’s school system is funded relatively
equitably through a general fund set up under the Act
60 legislation, this, like the civil unions, has
little to do with Dean’s efforts. It too was born of a
Supreme Court ruling that had virtually no previous
support from Howard Dean.
According to information released by the Vermont State
Colleges office, during Dean’s tenure, from 1991-2000,
state funding per Vermont student decreased by 13
percent.32
Environment
As president, Dean promises to "bring [his] commitment
to our environment to the White House."33 Many
environmentalists in Vermont simply ask: What
commitment? Dean boasts that he preserved over 400,000
acres of forests and farmlands while promoting
renewable energy. But aside from those 400,000 acres,
the rest of Vermont seemed to be fair game for
development.
"Dean’s attempts to run for president as an
environmentalist is nothing but a fraud," said Annette
Smith, director of Vermonters for a Clean Environment.
"He’s destroyed the Agency of Natural Resources, he’s
refused to meet with environmentalists while
constantly meeting with the development community, and
he’s made the permitting process one, big
dysfunctional joke."34 Tom Elliot, the former
political director of the Vermont Sierra Club said
that "Howard Dean’s environmental record in Vermont is
toxic."35 The club has never endorsed Howard Dean in
his five campaigns for governor.
Dean supported major mining operations by the
Swiss-based company OMYA, despite the protests of
environmental grassroots organizations; he stood by
the massive pesticide use of Vermont’s mega-farms; and
he awarded major energy contracts to two highly
questionable endeavors: the Vermont Yankee nuclear
power plant and the Hydro-Quebec electric company,
which had been damming up and flooding the James Bay,
threatening the livelihoods of the indigenous Cree
people who live there.
In 1998, Dean pushed for a natural gas plant and
pipeline project that would have required large-scale
clear-cutting. It took a two-year fight with a
grassroots citizens’ group to force Dean to back off.
During that same year, Dean had struck a deal with
George Bush, then-governor of Texas, to ship Vermont’s
nuclear waste to a poor, mostly Hispanic community in
Sierra Blanca.36
Dean’s administration did adopt strict air pollution
guidelines, but according to Marilyn Miller, the
executive director of the Vermont Auto Dealers
Association, the rules were never actually enforced.37
At one point, the Dean administration even petitioned
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to increase
the amount of air pollution that can be released by
Vermont industry.38
Mark Sinclair, director of the Vermont office of the
Conservation Law Foundation, noted, "the governor’s
willing to be an environmentalist only when he thinks
it’s politically important for his re-election
campaign."39
Civil rights
Howard Dean criticizes Attorney General John
Ashcroft’s shredding of the Constitution with his USA
Patriot Act and has even compared Ashcroft to the
notorious Joseph McCarthy. But Dean’s record and
stances on the justice system and civil rights are not
very good.
Shortly after September 11, Dean said that the U.S.
"needs a reevaluation of the importance of some of our
specific civil liberties."40 He currently does not
oppose the Patriot Act, but says he only opposes the
expansion of the Patriot Act and certain specific
items in it. Dean also wants to repeal a portion of
the Bush tax cuts in order to increase spending on
homeland security.
Howard Dean thinks that the justice system is flawed,
but not because it is racist or targets the poor. He
says it doesn’t work because "it bends over backwards
to help defendants and is totally unfair to
victims."41 In 1994, Dean stated, "I am one of those
people who believe that 95 percent of the time that
police arrest somebody they are guilty." He went on to
say that "the criminal justice system should deal more
rapidly with people who are arrested, and convicted
criminals should only be given one chance before being
incarcerated for life." Dean has also said that it is
acceptable for police to lie to the public during the
course of their investigations.42
In 1997, Dean changed his stance on the death penalty
and declared that he now favored capital punishment.
His reasoning was that, "Until life without parole
means life without parole, the public is not safe
without a death penalty. Until we have a judicial
system that can adequately protect us, the only thing
that will is the death penalty."43
In keeping with Dean’s position that the legal system
is unfairly weighted in favor of defendants, during
his tenure he made major cuts to the Vermont Legal Aid
budget and even refused to accept a federal grant
offered by then-U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno to
assist defendants in Vermont who have mental
disabilities.44
Dean also had a penchant for favoring judges who had
little respect for the technicalities of civil
liberties. Several of his judicial appointments are
now awaiting hearings before the U.S. Second Circuit
Court in New York City for violating the first
amendment, right to counsel, double jeopardy and due
process.45
By the time Dean had left office in 2000, Vermont had
experienced its fastest rising rate of youth
incarceration, and according to the Drug Enforcement
Agency, the imprisonment of women had increased by
over 140 percent.46
Although Dean proclaims on the campaign trail that he
is very sensitive to racial issues because he lived in
a Yale dorm with two African-American roommates, his
stance on racism and discrimination in Vermont was, at
best, negligent. In 1999, the Vermont Advisory
Committee to the United States Commission on Civil
Rights released a report concerning racial harassment
in Vermont public schools in which it described
widespread acts of racist violence, including
instances of a 13-year-old African-American boy being
"beaten with a baseball bat," and parents testifying
that, in Vermont (one of the whitest states in the
country), "Racism is not a problem or an issue; it’s a
way of life."47 The report ruled that:
Racial harassment appears pervasive in
and around the state’s public schools.
The elimination of this harassment
is not a priority among school
administrators, school boards, elected
officials and state agencies charged
with civil rights enforcement. In some
instances, administrators and government
leaders have denied the existence of
the problem and do not acknowledge
the need for improvements in overall
race relations within the state.48
Dean didn’t follow through with any of the
recommendations advised in the report, and instead
offered the tepid solution in his next State of the
State speech -- Vermonters simply need to listen to
each other more.
War and occupation
Perhaps the deception runs deepest concerning Dean’s
stance on the war on Iraq and the current occupation.
The evolution of Dean’s position over the past year
reveals a foreign policy conceptualization that is not
fundamentally different from Bush’s, though there are
some tactical disagreements.
Dean is by no means a "dove." He supported the war on
Afghanistan and the first Gulf War in 1991. On
February 21, at the winter meeting of the Democratic
National Committee, Dean drew headlines by asking,
"What I want to know is why in the world the
Democratic Party leadership is supporting the
president’s unilateral attack on Iraq."49 But just
four days prior to this condemnation, Dean sang a
different tune at a Drake University speech:
Now, I am not among those who say that
America should never use its armed forces
unilaterally. In some circumstances, we
have no choice. In Iraq, I would be
prepared to go ahead without further [UN]
Security Council backing if it were clear
the threat posed to us by Saddam Hussein
was imminent, and could neither be contained
nor deterred [author’s italics].50
In the end, Dean’s main criticism of the war was that
the U.S. did not work hard enough to get the other
major allies on board -- but he never disagreed with
the general premises of the "regime change" dogma.
Presumably, Dean would have fully supported a UN or
NATO-backed war on Iraq.
And he is as hawkish as Bush about the occupation. He
wants to send 30,000 - 40,000 more troops to
Afghanistan and 50,000 troops -- albeit foreign troops
-- to Iraq. Defending a long-term occupation under
U.S. control, Dean warned in the Washington Post,
bringing democracy to Iraq is not a two-year
proposition. Having elections alone doesn’t guarantee
democracy. You’ve got to have institutions and the
rule of law, and in a country that hasn’t had that in
3,000 years, it’s unlikely to suddenly develop by
having elections and getting the heck out". [the
constitution] would be American with Iraqi, Arab
characteristics. Iraqis have to play a major role in
drafting this, but the Americans have to have the
final say.51
Beyond Iraq, Dean’s perspective on the Middle East is
outright belligerent. Dean supports Israel’s policy of
targeted assassinations of Palestinians, and supports
the current construction of the apartheid wall that
will separate Israel from Gaza and the West Bank. At
times he claims we need an "even-handed" approach to
the conflict, and at others declares that there will
be no negotiations until Palestinians stop the
terrorist attacks. He has never uttered a critical
word in public against Israel’s attacks on the
Palestinians.52
Dean has also shown himself to be a staunch supporter
of Bush’s "war on terror," leveled strong criticism at
Bush for failing to confront other Middle Eastern
nations that he says support terrorism around the
world: "We must have a president who is willing to
confront the Iranians, the Syrians, the Saudis and
others who send money to Hamas, and finance a
worldwide network of fundamentalist schools which
teach small children to hate Americans, Christians and
Jews."53
Towards an alternative
In 2000, Anthony Pollina ran on the Progressive Party
ticket against Dean in the gubernatorial race getting
close to 10 percent of the vote -- clearly tapping
into a broader feeling among ordinary people that
there was a need for a real alternative to the twin
parties of the status quo. Far from being the
lesser-evil in Vermont, Dean was the evil that many
working and poor people in Vermont felt very tangibly.
Illusions in Dean and the Democrats as a lesser-evil
to the Republicans only served to mute the necessary
struggles that were needed to fight against his
right-wing policies.
In the end, that’s what the debate between the
Democrats and Republicans comes down to. We
automatically lose every time if we accept a framework
for this debate that says we must, to be "realistic,"
always vote for the lesser of two evils -- the least
awful of two pro-business candidates.
Thinking that the Democrats are any better for us than
the Republicans is like thinking that the bully who
pushes you down and steals your money is worse than
his friend who helps you up but shares in the bully’s
spoils.
What happens if Dean gets elected, puts all of his
electoral rhetoric aside and pours more money into
fighting terrorism, takes his axe to American social
programs and dispatches more troops to Iraq? Will the
left stand by its "antiwar" candidate and refrain from
fighting against cuts at home and war abroad because
"at least he’s better than Bush?"
That Dean will prove to be a conservative in office of
is frankly admitted by BusinessWeek, which assessed
Dean’s politics this way:
Dean had a knack for positioning himself and never
lost an election. Those who know him best believe Dean
is moving to the left to boost his chances of winning
the nomination. "But if he gets the nomination, he'll
run back to the center and be more mainstream,"
predicts [Vermont Republican businessman Bill] Stenger.
Says Garrison Nelson, a political science professor at
the University of Vermont: "Howard is not a liberal.
He's a pro-business, Rockefeller Republican."54
If Business Week can see Dean clearly, so should we.
Real change in America has always come when masses of
people take to the streets on their own initiative --
the civil rights movement, the women’s liberation
movement, the labor movement, the Vietnam antiwar
movement. The problem so far is that these kinds of
movements have never coalesced into a lasting
political party that could offer an alternative to the
twin parties of American capitalism. Rather than argue
for a vote for someone who is sure to repay our
support by cutting our living standards and promoting
American power abroad, progressives and socialists
would do better to argue for a break from the
Democrats, focus on building the struggles that make
all real progress possible -- and create the political
alternative that can embody them.
The sooner we break our illusions in the Democrats the
better. If Dean is attempting to transfer his policies
from Vermont to the entire nation, I would propose
that the example of the Progressive Party be
transferred too.
Keith Rosenthal is an activist in Burlington, Vermont.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Gary Younge, "Winners and losers," Guardian (UK),
May 5, 2003.
2 Katha Pollit, "Selling Dean short," Nation,
September 1, 2003.
3 Marty Jezer, "On Howard Dean," CommonDreams.org,
April 24, 2003.
4 Sarah Schweitzer and Tatsha Robertson, "A meteoric
rise in Vermont politics," Boston Globe, September 22,
2003.
5 Laura Blumenfeld, "Empower Play: The pitch that
works for Dean," Washington Post, October 1, 2003.
6 Jake Tapper, "On the campaign trail with the
un-Bush," Salon, February 19, 2003.
7 "Challenge of tough times," Rutland Herald, January
8, 1992.
8 Jack Hoffman, "Dean: Time for ‘serious cuts’,"
Rutland Herald, December 29, 1991.
9 All figures come from a collection of articles in
the Rutland Herald: see Christopher Graff, "Governor
set to cut spending," July 11, 1995. Also see, Chris
Graff, "Dean balancing act enters tough phase,"
December 17, 1995 and Diane Derby, "Hundreds protest
governor’s plan to cut Medicaid," November 2, 1993.
10 See Jack Hoffman, "Budget boosts housing; VIDA
funds," Rutland Herald, September 9, 1992; Frederick
Bever, "Dean wants larger cut in state tax," Rutland
Herald, December 23, 1998; Jack Hoffman, "Dean
outlines his case for cutting income tax," Rutland
Herald, January 9, 1999.
11 Interview with Anthony Pollina by Democracy In
Action at the Progressive Party offices in Montpelier,
Vermont, July 9, 2002. Anthony Pollina ran for
governor against Dean on the Progressive Party ticket
in 2000. Available at
www.gwu.edu/~action/2004/dean/dean0702/pollinaint.html.
12 Elizabeth Mehran and Mark Barabak, "State residents
see a new Dean in presidential race," Los Angeles
Times, July 13, 2003.
13 Tapper, "On the campaign trail."
14 John Dillon, "Dean to feel pressure from left at
convention," Rutland Herald, May 10, 1992.
15 Hoffman, "Dean: Time for ‘serious’ cuts."
16 Miles Benson, "And politicians wonder why they
aren’t trusted," Newhouse News Service, March 5, 1995.
17 Bryan Pfeiffer, "Advocates deride Dean," Rutland
Herald, July 11, 1995.
18 Ibid.
19 Diane Derby, "Dean sorry for remarks on welfare,"
Rutland Herald, January 23, 1993.
20 Robert Piasecki, "Hunger: A growing problem,"
Rutland Herald, June 16, 1994.
21 "Who’s the real Howard Dean," BusinessWeek, August
11, 2003, p. 58.
22 Ibid.
23 Economic Policy Institute, from U.S. Census, Bureau
of Labor Statistics data, available online at
www.bls.gov.
24 "The cool passion of Dr. Dean," Time, August 11,
2003.
25 Tracy Schmaler, "Pollina criticizes Dean for a lack
of college funding," Rutland Herald, September 28,
2000.
26 "Dean outlines his strategy for providing health
care," Rutland Herald, February 19, 1991.
27 "Challenge of tough times."
28 See "Advocates deride Dean."
29 See "Democratic presidential candidates continue to
reinforce pro-abortion positions," National Right to
Life News, June 2003.
30 Mark Steyn, "Democrats are turning to…this guy?"
Chicago Sun Times, July 6, 2003.
31 From an interview conducted by the author on
October 4, 2003.
32 Schmaler, "Pollina criticizes Dean."
33 See www.deanforamerica.org.
34 Michael Colby, "The Man from Vermont is not Green
(he’s not even a liberal)," available online at
www.Counterpunch.org, February 22, 2003.
35 Lisa Wangsness, "Dean green on trail but Vermont
knows better," Concord Monitor, August 22, 2003.
36 David Halbfinger, "National Briefing: Kerry attacks
Dean for Bush pact," New York Times, October 2, 2003.
37 Wangsness, "Dean green on trail."
38 John Dillon, "Dean and Pollina pitch ‘green’
records," Rutland Herald, March 19, 2000.
39 Ibid.
40 David Gram, "Dean’s comments on civil liberties
cause alarm," Rutland Herald, September 14, 2001.
41 Jack Hoffman, "Dean explains philosophy, plans,"
Rutland Herald, August 21, 1991.
42 Wilson Ring, "Governor wants to get tougher with
criminals," Associated Press, December 10, 1994.
43 Diane Derby, "Dean reignites talk of death
penalty," Rutland Herald, November 2, 1997.
44 Diane Derby, "Dean rejects federal grant," Rutland
Herald, May 10, 1999.
45 Josh Frank, "Howard Dean’s constitutional hang-up:
Dean would rather execute an innocent man, than let a
guilty one walk free," available online at
www.Counterpunch.org, August 12, 2003.
46 Anthony Pollina, from an interview conducted by the
author on October 6, 2003.
47 "Racial Harassment in Vermont Public Schools,"
Vermont Advisory Committee to the United States
Commission on Civil Rights, February 1999, p. 1.
48 Ibid., p. iii.
49 Available at www.deanforamerica.org.
50 "Defending American values -- protecting America’s
Interests," Drake University, Iowa, February 17, 2003,
available online at www.deanforamerica.org.
51 Fred Hiatt, "Defining Dean," Washington Post,
August 25, 2003.
52 See James D. Besser’s interview with Howard Dean,
Jewish Week, October 8, 2003.
53 "Restoring American leadership: A new direction for
American foreign policy," speech before the Council on
Foreign Relations, Washington, D.C., June 25, 2003,
available online at www.deanforamerica.org.
54 William C. Symonds, "Who’s the real Howard Dean,"
BusinessWeek, August 11, 2003, pp. 59.
www.isreview.org/issues/32/dean.shtml
Original: The Dean Deception