Saletan wowed by Dean

From a review of the Iowa picnic by Slate's William Saletan:

Dean is far and away the most interesting player in the race. Not since Clinton have Democrats seen a talent like this. Here's Dean on the federal budget:

When Ronald Reagan came into office, he cut taxes, we had big deficits, and we lost 2 million jobs. When Bill Clinton came into office, he raised taxes without a single Republican vote; we balanced the budget; we gained 6 and a half million jobs. George Bush has already lost 2 and a half million. I want a balanced budget because that's how you get jobs in this country is to balance the books. No Republican president has balanced the budget in 34 years. …You had better elect a Democrat, because the Republicans cannot handle money. … We're the party of responsibility, and they're not.

When you hear Dean talk like this, you wonder why no one else can make the party's case so simply. If more Democrats spoke this way, maybe they'd control a branch of government.

Success is beginning to warp Dean a bit. He told the Iowa crowd, "People inside the Beltway have said that because I told the truth early, that I'm unelectable. [But] it may be because I told the truth early, that I may be the only one who's electable. We have got to stand up for what we believe, regardless of the polls." Dean has been using that third sentence for months. But the first two are new. He's no longer speaking as freely, because he's become a major player. He's worrying not about the beginner's problem of getting attention but about the advanced problem of projecting electability. That kind of calculus is the opposite of what attracts people to Dean. A principle you advertise as an asset to your electability feels like no principle at all.

P.S.: No politician who's truly foreign to the Beltway talks about "the Beltway."