Dean regrets slighting Graham

Under the media spotlight, simple mistakes by normal human beings are often inflated to epic proportions. Given that the Democratic nomination race is so competitive, there is even more pressure - and Dean still labors under the burden of the (false, inverted) conventional wisdom that he was "mean" to Kerry. So it's entirely understandable why Dean publicly retracted and apologized for his dismissal of Graham's campaign - even though this throws oil on the fire to some degree:

Dean said, "Bob Graham is a wonderful, decent human being, but at this time he's in single digits in all the states you can't be in single digits in. I have enormous respect for Bob Graham, but at this point he's not one of the top-tier candidates. I think that's widely recognized."

He added, "That's not to say he couldn't get to be one."
...
Later in the day, in a telephone call to The Associated Press, Dean said, "I regret having made the remark, and I regard Bob Graham a good friend. My remark was not intended to be dismissive of his chances."


Naturally the Graham campaign issued a defensive retort, "With all due respect, Bob Graham created twice as many jobs when he was governor of Florida than there are people in the state of Vermont." Fair enough. This is a grueling race and there are just some hits we are going to take. The alternative is to try and monitor/pre-vet every utterance of Dean, but that would sap the vitality out of his speeches. Our candidate is a straight-talker - and the occassional black mark is a small price to pay for the benefits that brings us.

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