MY OWN PERSONAL PRIMARY:


Being a political junky, and demonstrating a masochistic side, I have been following the Democratic presidential primary closely for most of the past year. Yet, with Iowa and New Hampshire just weeks away I find myself unable to figure out which candidate to support for the nomination. Here are my brief thoughts about the frontrunner, Dean, and the pack that is chasing him.


HOWARD DEAN:
Domestic: Dean has a proven record on health care, has shown courage on civil unions, and has a commitment to fiscal conservatism that shows a willingness to buck the worst habits of certain left-leaning interest groups. While any of the candidates would be a major improvement over the disaster that is Bush's domestic policy, Dean in particular would do an excellent job on domestic issues.


Foreign: There are reasons to believe that Dean will not be a complete disaster in foreign policy. He supported the first Gulf War, he has not endorsed a Kucinichesque immediate pull-out from Iraq, Robert Kagan seems to think his idea are mainstream, but still there is no getting around the fact that Dean's candidacy is built upon his full-throated opposition to the Iraq war. Dean resonated with much of the grass-roots cultural left by sounding Jeffersonian themes of rejecting intervention as corrupting and immoral, and invoked the globalist elite's embrace of multilateralism for multilateralism's sake. While Dean has consistently been more radical in his tone than in his proposed policies, these instincts remain - as noted by his pandering statement that the U.S. should act "even-handed" between Israel and the Palestinians despite the latter's embrace of rejectionism and terror. To pull the lever for Dean for me would be to vote for a candidate I believe would do a worse job than Bush in protecting America's short-term and long-term national security.


Nomination Chances: He's the front-runner, having converted grass-roots support among culturally liberal professionals into Union endorsements. However, he will face a challenge when the party's establishment settles on an alternative candidate.


Electibility: No other candidate will mobilize the Democratic base to the extent Dean will - and if the paradigm has shifted as radically in favor of turnout (as opposed to swing appeal) as certain analysts believe, he has a fighting chance. Dean also has the tenacity to fight back against GOP mudslinging, and will not cede the framing of his character and issues without a fight. In truth, however, Dean is the dream candidate for the GOP. He is the easiest candidate for Bush to square off against for the culturally right-of-center working class voter, as Bush can paint Dean as soft on terror, play the homophobic card (alas) and send the party into four more years of political exile.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE ITS NOT A FOREIGN POLICY" ISN'T GOING TO CUT IT


The uptick in the U.S. economy, coming in spite of the Bushies disastrous fiscal policy, has blunted the edge of the Dems domestic attacks against Bush, and as a result makes the need to close the national security gap between the president and the Dems all the more important.


Unfortunately, over 2 years after 9/11, and over 1 year from the debacle of the 2002 elections, the Democrats have failed to seriously address the problem. The party is still dominated by three camps. First, there are the Jeffersonian isolationists (dominant among the grassroots partisans of the cultural left) who view the whole Iraq project through the lens of oil and Vietnam. Second, there are the globalists (dominant among the party's foreign policy elite) who view the success of U.S. foreign policy through the lens of world opinions. Finally, and most strongly, there are the agnostic partisans (dominant among the party leadership) who continue to see foreign policy as a distraction from domestic issues and view Iraq solely through the lens of its impact on Bush's reelection.


The result has been for the Democrats to treat foreign policy and national security issues primarily as a political problem to be managed. Thus, while the true believers of the cultural left have latched on Dean, the party elite, rather than attempting to formulate a coherent foreign policy alternative to Bush, has sought out a candidate - first Kerry, and now Clark - that through their personal biography appears to present a foreign policy alternative. Both, however have been plagued by positions on Iraq that are consistent only in their criticism of Bush.


At the end of the day, the mirage of a foreign policy agenda will not substitute for the real thing....