Nation-Building >> Dean: Kicking Some Serious Butt | return to front page

I love this article in today's Boston Globe. First of all, it indicates that what Dean is really doing is taking a page out of the GOP's campaign playbook - using 'moral outrage' as a campaign tactic to create stark differences between his positions and those of George W. Bush. What the article also points out, however, is that there is a difference between expressing anger and expressing moral outrage. The first is simply an emotional response. The second is based on moral values, and says not only am I going to express myself on this issue, but I am going to do something about it. An excerpt:

"By campaigning more on values than facts, Dean is running a Republican-style campaign. By some measures, he's skewing the issues. By other measures, he's the most honest candidate.

When, in the '80s, Ronald Reagan spoke of welfare queens driving Cadillacs, voters presumably knew the poor weren't making out that well -- but they understood Reagan's position on welfare perfectly. When George W. Bush spoke of bringing troops home from Haiti, voters were undisturbed to learn that there was not a serious number of troops in Haiti. They knew, or thought they knew, what Bush meant: He wasn't going to waste American lives trying to do good in places where conditions are intractable.

Now, when Dean declares he won't "go to war for Halliburton," voters seem to understand that the Iraq war was about much more than that. But they also know where Dean stands on the war and the awarding of postwar contracts.


The raw meatiness of Dean's rhetoric is, in a large part, the substance of his campaign. It separates him from both the peace-and-love left of the '60s and '70s and the huggy Clinton years. He wants to help, but to do that he needs to take action.

When Dean stares down at a crowd, his chin buried in his neck, his finger punching the air, he's saying to voters: Daddy still wants to take care of you, but first he is going to have to kick some serious butt."