Ganging Up on Howard Dean

Democratic Presidential hopeful Howard Dean is getting the treatment. The acerbic physician and former governor of Vermont has raised more money and gained more popularity than expected. As a result, the pundits who examine political candidates' viability have turned their gaze on him. In June, Tim Russert and a clique of Washington pundits and reporters who follow Russert's lead pronounced Dean unfit. According to a flurry of news stories and columns, Dean's appearance on Meet the Press with Russert on June 22 was an embarrassment for the candidate and a disaster for his campaign.

People who saw the show or read the transcript might well ask: What was the big deal?

The New York Times and The Washington Post pulled out the following "embarrassing" details: Russert quizzed Dean on the exact number of U.S. military personnel on active duty. Dean said there were between one and two million. The correct number is, in fact, right in the middle-1.4 million. Russert asked Dean how many troops are currently stationed in Iraq (a constantly fluctuating number). Dean said it was "in the neighborhood of 135,000 troops." The number is really 146,000, the Times pointed out.

How would President Bush do on a similar pop quiz? My guess is our current commander in chief couldn't answer those questions. But Russert made a big deal of Dean's failure to produce the precise figures from memory.

"For me to have to know right now, participating in the Democratic Party [primary], how many troops are actively on duty in the United States military-when that is actually a number that's composed both of people on duty today and people who are in the National Guard . . . it's silly," Dean said. "That's like asking me who the ambassador to Rwanda is."

"Oh, no, no, no. Not at all," Russert replied. "Not if you want to be commander in chief."

Russert planted a seed that grew into a tree, casting a big shadow of doubt on Dean as the Post, the Times, and the Sunday morning pundits asked, "Is Dean Presidential material?"

The New York Times called the show a "debacle."

Howard Kurtz, media critic for the Post, summed up a host of other bad reviews: New York Daily News columnist Zev Chafets called Dean's interview "perhaps the worst performance by a presidential candidate in the history of television." The Dallas Morning News quoted unnamed Democrats comparing Dean to Republican landslide victims George McGovern and Walter Mondale. ABCNews.com said "the politico-media establishment continues to look at him as an anti-war pipsqueak . . . decidedly not ready for prime time."

What's really going on here?

Certainly Tim Russert has a reputation for being a tough interviewer, and for not letting anyone off the hook.

But as comedian and media gadfly Bob Sommerby pointed out on his website The Daily Howler (www.dailyhowler.com), Russert's treatment of another governor who was running for President was completely different. In his first interview with candidate George W. Bush in 1999, Russert actually supplied some numbers:

Russert: "In your speech, you said that arms reductions are not our most pressing challenge. Right now, we have 7,200 nuclear weapons; the Russians have 6,000. What to you is an acceptable level?"

Bush: "That's going to depend upon the generals helping me make that decision, Tim. That's going to depend upon the people whose judgment I will rely upon to make sure that we have a peaceful world."

But if it was OK for Bush to fob off detailed policy discussions on a future team of advisers, for Dean the rules were different.

Before his combative interview with Dean, Russert went to Bush Administration officials at the Treasury Department to ask for budget data to attack Dean's plan to roll back the Bush tax cuts. Predictably, the Administration generated figures that showed a reversal of Bush tax policy would be a disaster for middle class Americans.