Nominating Kerry has not made us safer

By Aziz P. -
sorry for the obligatory jab at Kerry, but Matthew Yglesias' piece revisiting Dean's then-infamous and now-prophetic statement that "capturing Saddam Hussein has not made America any safer" really brought up some serious feelings of loss here. Go read the piece in full, it deserves full attention rather than selective quotation.

However, in another way, the article does highlight just how disastrous in the political sense it was for Dean's most attractive quality, his plain-spoken bluntness, was as a liability. Dean would have been chewed to pieces by the Bush campaign by now in a way that Kerry has weathered remarkabbly well, and I grudgingly concede that Kerry's war record gravitas has been far more of an asset given teh instability in Iraq than I had previously thought.

All this leaves me wishing more for Dean to be active as Kerry's proxy, saying what can't be said by teh candidate proper, but still making the blunt statements of fact that get noticed. Dean probably hasn't been tapped by the Kerry campaign for fear of sclipsing the candidate, and that's a shame because Dean is raw ammunition just waiting to be used. I misshis presence on teh stage and I think his value as an asset is likely underestimated by Kerry. Especially now that they are allies rather than opponents.

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