Expats4Dean

The Democratic candidates, the media and perhaps the Bush people seem to be ignoring what seems inarguable: Dean has been the candidate of change from the onset, and their attacks add emphasis to that status. He staked out clear positions where the voters were most angry: the rush to war, a tin-eared imperial presidency, a faltering economy, corrupt cronyism and an overall feeling of powerlessness. He stood up for something. In a climate of powerful models of voter frustration — most notably Arnold Schwarzenegger's election as governor of California — Dean captured the mantle of change, and he's just tightened his grip since then.

From its derisive treatment of allies to its rejection of important global agreements, this administration has favored a go-it-alone approach and a determination to use force as its weapon of first resort. Its approach has alienated friends and bolstered foes. Its agenda isolates the United States, placing responsibility for all the world's problems in our hands, and runs counter to America's traditions as a republic.

By contrast, my national security policy reflects the best of our mainstream tradition. I believe the United States must exercise leadership by working with allies and partners to advance common interests, rather than advancing our power unilaterally.

I was in Seoul when Koizumi's summit was announced, a day or two after John Bolton (the so-called 'Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control' in an Administration that has wrecked arms control) arrived to denounce Kim Jong Il personally and his regime more generally as evil, a menace to peace, the greatest security threat in the region etc. He did this again in the summer of 2003, as six-party talks on the North Korean problem were about to be held in Beijing. A brutal tyrant had North Korea in the grip of 'a hellish nightmare', he said, causing Armitage publicly to distance himself from Bolton's rhetoric. When a reporter from the Times asked Bolton what the Bush policy was towards the North, 'he strode over to a bookshelf, pulled off a volume and slapped it on the table. It was called The End of North Korea, and was by an American Enterprise Institute colleague. 'That,' he said, 'is our policy.''

The whole basis for opposing the war is the argument that Hussein did not pose an imminent threat to America.

If that's your view, why would -- why should -- that change with Hussein's capture?

Wouldn't Dean's opposition to the war be far shakier and far less sensible if he suddenly agreed that the main objective of the war bolstered American security, yet he still opposed the war?

On Dec 30, at 7:30PM, we'll gather at my pad in Arlington for a conference call with Governor Dean, and a celebration of 311 days to victory.

The goal is to raise $5000 at our humble house party, so please contribute what you can afford.

Mr. Bush's team, taking full advantage of its control of the Republican Party apparatus, has a more audacious goal: creating a seamless national political machine that subsumes existing state and local party operations and infuses them with new recruits, money, technology and discipline.

Bush campaign officials say they envision tens of thousands of volunteers, many armed with palmtop computers with access to a database of voters' names and the issues that move them, fanning out through just about every neighborhood in the country in the weeks leading up to Election Day.

If the situation on the ground in Iraq stabilizes, isn't that bad news for your campaign?

Of course not. That would be good news for the Iraqi people and for the world. If Iraq is stabilized and does not blow up into an actual threat to our national security--and our troops can come home sooner rather than later--we will all be happy. My campaign isn't based on the outcome of the war in Iraq but on a hopeful and idealistic alternative to our current political reality--not as a protest against the Iraq war.

What would you do to restore relations with our allies?

If I win, I'm going to go, before I am inaugurated, on a world tour of the countries we desperately need to repair our relations with. And not just in Europe, but also in Asia and in Latin America. We're talking a little presumptuously here because the votes haven't been cast in one primary yet. But I've thought about this a lot.

The cramped headquarters, with its coterie of dressed-down young staffers, feels like the sort of Internet start-up that Trippi once worked for in Silicon Valley. The senior advisers are so overwhelmed that Trippi has to keep changing his cell-phone number to limit press calls, and Enright and her tiny staff admit they cannot keep up with the hundreds of daily inquiries. And that doesn't even count the waves of foreign journalists the campaign has basically had to ignore.

In a disclaimer, the Dean04Worldwide website says it is not authorized by or affiliated with the Dean for America campaign, but is 'totally independent and free.'

The website urges 'all visitors and users...to observe FEC laws and CFR Regulations at all times...' It includes links to the official Dean website, Moveon.org, and the Federal Election Commission, among other websites.

In a 'Countries4Dean' section, the website urges readers to clickon the link 'corresponding to your country of residence below to find other Dean supporters near you, get organized beyond the Meetups, obtain the latest news from the Dean campaign, and make sure US expat [expatriate] votes count in 2004.'

I haven't seen such certainty about an incumbent party keeping the White House since September 2000, when I called George W. Bush 'toast.' I was overconfident then for the same reason others are overconfident now: We forget how quickly people forget. Problems, once solved, disappear. Voters take for granted what has been accomplished. Each success, initially framed by the president as an end in itself, is reframed by the challenger as a means to a further, unfulfilled end. Bush ought to know that this can be done to him in 2004. It's what he did to Al Gore in 2000.

For all Dean's talk about wanting to represent the truly 'Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,' the paradox is that he is a third-party candidate using modern technology to achieve a takeover of the Democratic Party. Other candidates -- Joseph Lieberman , John Kerry, John Edwards -- are competing to take control of the party's fundraising, organizational and media assets. But Dean is not interested in taking control of those depreciating assets. He is creating his own party, his own lists, his own money, his own organization. What he wants is the Democratic brand name and legacy, its last remaining asset of value, as part of his marketing strategy. Perhaps that's why former vice president Al Gore's endorsement of Dean last week felt so strange -- less like the traditional benediction of a fellow member of the party 'club' than a senior executive welcoming the successful leveraged buyout specialist. And if Dean can do it this time around, so can others in future campaigns.

Al Gore was in Tokyo on Friday and Howard Dean was in a van in Iowa, and for 45 minutes, their cellphone conversation was not particularly extraordinary, people close to both politicians said.

Dr. Dean had sent Mr. Gore a draft of a foreign policy speech that Dr. Dean was to deliver next week in California, and Mr. Gore was calling with a few suggestions. Then, at the end of their chat, Mr. Gore dropped the bombshell: "I've decided I want to endorse you," he told Dr. Dean.

All year the elves at his law firm, Baker Botts of Texas, have been working day and night to prevent the families of the victims of the 9/11 attack from seeking information from Saudi Arabia on the Kingdom's funding of Al Qaeda fronts.

It's tough work, but this week came the payoff when President Bush appointed Baker, the firm's senior partner, to restructure the debts of the nation of Iraq.

And who will net the big bucks under Jim Baker's plan? Answer: his client, Saudi Arabia, which claims $30.7 billion due from Iraq plus $12 billion in reparations from the First Gulf war.

Howard Dean's initial appeal has been to those Americans who always knew they were on the margins of George Bush's America. Not the socioeconomic margins, not the African American and Latino communities, but the political, cultural and existential margins -- the young, urban, white middle class in particular. Dean's are the people who were bowling alone -- not churchgoers, not union members. They shared a set of beliefs on which they'd never before had an opportunity to act collectively.

The secret of Dean's success has been twofold. Alone among the serious Democratic candidates he understood that the party was shirking its obligation to oppose -- indeed, that the grass roots was furious at the failure of its leaders to realize this. Second, his campaign became the real Meetup for millions of Americans who'd had no place to go to affect politics in the age of Bush. Dean's edge is that his campaign has provided thousands of young Deaniacs with a dimension of meaning that their hitherto disaggregated lives may have lacked. No other candidate is within light-years of offering that.

"'He was the only major candidate who made the correct judgment about the Iraq war,' Gore said. 'And he had the insight and the courage to say and do the right thing. And that's important because those judgments -- that basic common sense -- is what you want in a president.'

'Whether it is inspiring enthusiasm at the grassroots, and promising to remake the Democratic Party as a force for justice and progress and good in America, whether it is a domestic agenda that gets our nation back on track, or whether it is protecting us against terrorists and strengthening our nation in the world, I have come to the conclusion that one candidate clearly now stands out,' Gore said.

The Arab-American and the Pakistani communities which voted overwhelmingly for Bush in the last election, because it considered Al Gore too pro-Israel and was put off by his choice of an orthodox Jewish running mate, has now realised that it made a mistake. In the next election, both Arabs and Muslims are expected to vote for Democratic party candidate who, it is increasingly likely, is going to be Howard Dean. Some months ago, Dean triggered a storm of protest among America’s Jews when all he had said was that the United States should follow an “evenhanded policy” in the Middle East...

The chairman of Dean’s presidential campaign. Steve Grossman, is a Jew and a former president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful Jewish and Israeli lobbying organisation in America. Grossman has said, “Even if the Jewish elites aren’t supporting Dean, the grassroots has been passionate about Howard Dean, and many are Jews.”

According to pollster John Zogby, an Arab-American, the majority of Jews is with the Democratic party, as is the majority of Arabs.

Dean seems in many ways to be the first Teflon-coated Democrat. Unable to make any charge stick, the other Democratic contenders and the press keep searching for that secret vulnerability. But there is no consistent theme to these challenges. One week Dean is portrayed as a dangerous left-winger who will lead the Democrats to McGovern-like defeat. The next week he is depicted as an insensitive Northerner who does not understand the hateful imagery embodied by the Confederate flag. The attacks are all over the ideological map, as critics can't decide whether Dean is a states-rights ally of the gun lobby or a kamikaze liberal.