Giving Iowa a try: Gephardt vs. Dean, amid the corn

National Review, Jan 26, 2004 by Byron York

When Dean pitches his health-care plan--like Gephardt, he wants to repeal the Bush tax cuts and provide universal insurance--it's from an entirely different perspective. Gephardt's supporters like the plan because they need help, and they respond to Gephardt's it's-money-in-your-pocket appeal. Dean's supporters like universal health insurance because they want the U.S. to join the rest of the enlightened world. One of Dean's best applause lines comes when he tells crowds, "Surely the most powerful and wealthy society on the face of the earth can join the British, the French, the Germans, the Japanese, the Irish, the Italians, the Danes, the Dutch, the Greeks, the Israelis, the Canadians--even in Costa Rica they have health insurance for all their people, and SO SHOULD WE!"

Dean's message on foreign policy is similar. Yes, he's angry about Iraq, but his real point is that as president, he won't act without the rest of the world's permission. He promises the Ames audience that he will "restore the honor and the dignity and the respect that this country deserves around the rest of the world by embarking on a foreign policy that is principally based on cooperation and not confrontation."

It's a true-blue blue-state message, and it's what the audience--bearded professors, clog-wearing women in big sweaters, a guy in a City College of New York sweatshirt--comes to here. Even in non-academic settings, like the Des Moines suburbs, the crowds eat it up. And it is made all the more appealing by the almost palpable sense of momentum at Dean events. His rallies feature lots of signs, lots of noise, and lots of staff running around with earpieces. The candidate might not be presidential, but the campaign certainly is.

Howard Dean, again ignoring the rules

SODA JERK

As Dean and Gephardt fight it out in the final days before the caucuses, it has become more and more clear that Gephardt's hope is that Dean will blow himself up. In recent weeks, Dean has made a number of false, or outrageous, or both, statements that would have done grievous damage to other campaigns. His description of a "rumor" that the Saudis tipped the United States off in advance about the September 11 attacks, his refusal to pass judgment on the guilt or innocence of Osama bin Laden, his declaration that the capture of Saddam Hussein did not make Americans any safer--all have given Gephardt hope that Dean will fall apart.

"People out here are reading all this, they're seeing it, they're listening to it," Gephardt told reporters after speaking in Creston, "so who's to say that this ... is not going to have a toll on his candidacy when we actually get down to the voting? Let's see what happens."

But Gephardt's bigger hope is that his older, unionized supporters will come through in a way that Dean's younger, more upscale fans won't. Gephardt's people can be counted on to vote for him, while Dean's supporters, many of them first-time participants in politics, are not such sure bets. "I think Gephardt has a lot of loyalty," says Peverill Squire, a political scientist at the University of Iowa. "I'm not sure he has a lot of passion, but the trick is to make sure they show up on caucus night. Maybe Gephardt doesn't have to lean on passion as much as Dean."