perfidy

Man, won't he ever stop? Every time I think Howard Dean is about to lose control of his finely-modulated Jekyll and Hyde act and become the vituperative beast he is whenever Kerry baits him, he redeems himself mightily. If he keeps it up, he just might be the next Democratic candidate for Pars-dent. Besides which, the man's incredibly fun! Via Aziz Poonawalla comes this interview. Mr. Poonawalla pulls out the super-money quotes, but I'm going to highlight a few other sections as well that I find compelling.

# On education:" "The people I am running against have mostly voted for 'No Child Left Behind,' which most teachers think should be called 'No Behind Left.' Or 'No School Board Left Standing' from the school board members point of view. It's a huge unfunded mandate and there's an awful lot of bad educational policy in there."
# On Media Regulation: "The media has clearly abused their privilege, and it is hurting our democracy. Deregulation in many areas has simply proved to be bad for America, bad for the American economy, bad for the average working person, and bad for democracy. We need to take a different view. Some deregulation is a good thing. We went too far, and now we need to cut back."
# On Oil Policy and Terror: "We've taken our eye off the ball because of the President's obsession with Iraq. We need a new oil policy, something other than "Let's drill in the national parks," because our oil money is being used to fund terrorism in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria. I might also add that there are these fundamentalist schools set up to teach children to hate Americans, Christians and Jews. That's a real problem for terrorism down the line. "
# On the Patriot Act:" I would do two things. First of all, I would remove the parts of the Patriot Act that are clearly unconstitutional. It can't be constitutional to hold an American citizen without access to a lawyer. Secondly, it can't be constitutional for the FBI to be able to go through your files at the library or the local video store, to see what you've taken out in the last week, without a warrant. The other thing I would do is appoint judges that would uphold the constitution. . . .I hate to agree with anything Dick Nixon said, but Dick Nixon used to say that he wanted strict constructionists for the bench. This President is appointing right-wing judicial activists. We need strict constructionists that believe in the constitution and will uphold it as written."
Zing! Well, if nothing else, this guy always speaks his mind. Even though it scares me a little bit when he talks about gun control at the local level (not excerpted here), at the end of the day, it just means that the barbarians will take the Liberal East, leaving the well-armed people in the middle firmly in control of their destinies. Northeasterner I may be, I can't get too exercised about that. Also, I think he may be wrong about the FBI not needing a warrant to search your files... if I'm correct they just don't have to tell anyone about it. I'll have to check that. I have to say, although he does not have national leadership experience as some of the other Democratic candidates have, neither did Lincoln, Washington, or Reagan. I dig this guy.

But the best part of the interview comes at the end, where Dean is asked about foreign policy and nation-building.

What Bush is doing in Afghanistan is a huge problem, and bodes very ill for what is going to happen in Iraq. The President has taken his eye off the ball in Afghanistan. I supported the invasion of Afghanistan and the elimination of the Taliban. I thought that group was a clear and present danger to the United States, and I supported what the President did. However, there's no follow-up. The best defense policy we could have in this country is not just to have a strong military, but it is to build middle-class nations with strong democratic ideals, where women fully participate in the government. Those countries don't go to war with each other, and they don't harbor groups like al Qaeda.

We're not doing that in Afghanistan. We're making deals with corrupt and crooked and undemocratic warlords in order to pacify Afghanistan. That is exactly the mistake the United States always makes. The notion of 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend' is a huge mistake, and this administration is doing that. If they do that in Iraq, we're going to end up with an enormous problem, as we may well have in Afghanistan if the President doesn't add more peacekeeping people. The irony of this is that all the nations the President insulted before going to war in Iraq are the people we need now. We need more troops, which means we need NATO and the United Nations to get involved in rebuilding Afghanistan and Iraq in a meaningful way. It has nothing to do with being nice to the French and the Germans. It has to do with protecting our soldiers who are going to be seen more and more every day as an occupiers and less as liberators.

Damn straight. We tried the "enemy of my enemy" approach in the Cold War and we're still cleaning up that mess. Even if he doesn't win the election, he'll have a heck of a career as a talking head if he wants it. Who else besides me wants to see Dean and John McCain together on a show? Hot stuff, you bet!