Friday, January 09, 2004, 12:07 A.M. Pacific

Editorial

Dean and the world: the nonradical candidate

Howard Dean has won the hearts of Democratic liberals by opposing the war in Iraq and by slamming his Washington, D.C., rivals as compromisers. It is a fine strategy for the man from Montpelier, Vt., the smallest state capital in America, but it does not mean what many of his followers seem to think.

Dean is not a peace candidate in the George McGovern mold. In 1972, McGovern's stand against the Vietnam War signaled an attitude about foreign intervention generally. In Dean's case, it does not. He supported the first Gulf War and the interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

In foreign policy, Dean compares himself to Harry Truman, the president who authorized the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan and who sent troops to South Korea without a declaration of war. Those are not the things he cites about Truman, of course, but they are part of the Truman toughness.

Consider, also, Dean's advisers. Advisers are important; in 2000, the foreign policy of George W. Bush could be discerned more from his advisers than from Bush, who (like Dean today) had no experience. Dean recently appointed a group of 14 advisers on foreign policy. One, Clyde Prestowitz, worked for Ronald Reagan, and another, Adm. Stansfield Turner, was CIA director under Jimmy Carter. Four are retired generals. Most of the rest are former civilian officials from the Clinton administration.

Dean's identity as the against-the-Iraq-war candidate energizes the Democratic base. It may even keep Ralph Nader at bay as a third-party candidate. It also pleases Bush, because against a flatly anti-war candidate, Bush wins in the latest polling.

But Dean is not Dennis Kucinich, and the Democrats, as James Traub of The New York Times writes, "are not really a peace party."

The real Dean, judging by his prepared speeches rather than his oral flubs, offers something much more like the bipartisan, Cold War, leader-of-the-free-world policy Americans know and remember.

Whether that is the best policy for the post-9-11 world is another question. But at least let us stop pretending that in foreign policy, Dean is something radical. He is not.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company