E-mail a friendHoward Dean
original airdate April 9, 2008
During his run for the '04 Democratic nomination for president, Howard Dean's feisty criticism of the Bush administration and use of the Internet for grassroots fund-raising attracted attention. Dean ended his bid in February '04 and included his experience on the campaign trail in his book, You Have the Power: How to Take Back Our Country and Restore Democracy in America. He also founded Democracy for America to build on the new energy sweeping the party. In February '05, Dean was tapped to chair the DNC.
Democratic National Committee chair discusses the close race for the Democratic presidential nomination. (1:59)
Howard Dean
Tavis: Howard Dean is of course the chairman of the Democratic National Committee who is mounting - who mounted, I should say, his own bid for the presidency back in 2004. Four years later, he's trying to navigate his party through one of the most hotly contested presidential primaries in U.S. history. He joins us tonight from Washington. Dr. Dean, I almost put you in the race this year, did you hear that slip I made just then?
Howard Dean: Isn't it something? It's a close race, isn't it great? (Laughter)
Tavis: Yeah, it is a close race. I guess when you say is it great, do you really think it's great?
Dean: I do think it's great, for the most part. Look, we've had people in Texas and Ohio and Pennsylvania whose votes haven't mattered for 30 years. This is an extraordinary thing. More people voted in the primaries for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in Texas than voted in the general election for Democrats in 2004. That's extraordinary.
So yeah, this is doing us some good. It's tough, and the people who are on cable television all the time make their living saying how tough it is, but the fact of the matter, this has been a great process for the American people - 30 million voters.
Tavis: It is a great process and it's been good in terms of energizing your base. The flip side that the people you talked about on cable television, the flip point they keep making is that at some point, one of these persons has to win or lose.
Dean: Right.
Tavis: And what happens to the support base of the other? Will the base for one support the other?
Dean: They will, but they need some time to heal, whoever doesn't win this, and it's going to be a very close race. I have no idea who's going to win, but whoever doesn't is going to have about 49 percent of the vote. And so they need some time to heal, and that's one of the reasons I want this to be - the voters to have their conclusion by July 3rd and then make sure that the 330 unpledged delegates who haven't said who they're for yet, go ahead and say that by the end of June and then we'll know who the nominee is. We need that extra two months to heal.
Tavis: It's always - I love you to death but it's always strange talking to you because I know there are certain questions you're going to dance around because -
Dean: That's right.
Tavis: Because - (laughter) admittedly so because of the position that you hold. But let me ask these two questions anyway; see if I can get anything out of you. I wonder whether or not you are - I know you don't take sides as the chairman, but I wonder, as the chairman, whether or not you are concerned about these two issues. One, that if Mrs. Clinton becomes the nominee, that she might not be able to energize that base of so many new and young voters that Barack Obama brought to the table.
In the reverse, whether or not you're concerned that if Obama becomes the nominee he has not shown, as we sit here tonight, his capacity to win the big stakes that Democrats are going to have to win to take this thing in November.
Dean: Actually, that's a great question, and the truth is this campaign is not about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. This campaign's about the future of our country. I have absolutely zero doubt that whoever - which one of these candidates does not win, they will be there pulling for the other one.
We can't win unless this party's united, and the only way we unite is if the losing candidate says, "This is more important than me and my candidacy. We have got to change the country, and we're going to change the country." That's the only way this works.
Tavis: But there's been so much venom in this contest already. Are you really hopeful that that can happen, given how ugly this thing has gotten?
Dean: I know it can happen because this campaign's not nearly as ugly as the one I went through. (Laughter) When I went through - don't forget, I had five folks running against me. Four of them got their contributors to put in big dough to 527 that had me on an ad in Iowa with Osama bin Laden in it. Now that's tough politics. We haven't seen Osama bin Laden appear in this contest yet.
So look, politics is a tough business, but at the end of the day this is about the country. If you think for a minute John McCain is going to put anything other than right wing extremists on the Supreme Court, just as President Bush has done, you got another thought coming.
If you think for a minute John McCain is going to be more thoughtful or helpful if God forbid another Katrina happens, you've got another think coming. John McCain is four more years of George W. Bush. The public doesn't want that. And certainly our Democratic base doesn't want that, whether they're white, working class folks, whether they're African Americans, whether they're young people - nobody wants that. We don't want another four years of George Bush, and we've really got to stick with whoever the Democrats nominate.
Tavis: Since George Bush is obviously from Texas, let me throw one of those Texas-isms at you and say to you or ask you whether or not that dog will hunt. Will that dog hunt, and what I mean to ask or suggest by that is this: whether or not that line will sell, that John McCain is a third term of George W. Bush. And I ask whether or not that line will sell and whether or not that dog will hunt because John McCain has distinguished himself, like him or loathe him, throughout his career as being a maverick. He has not been George Bush's guy, so to speak.
Dean: Look, we respect John McCain's military record deeply. He was a war hero 40 years ago. But this is 40 years later. He said he was against President Bush's tax cuts, then he voted for them. He said he was for immigration, for reform, now he's against it. He said that he thought it was great that George Bush vetoed the children's healthcare plan. He thinks we ought to stay in Iraq for up to 100 years, if necessary.
This guy is a guy who's completely out of step with where the American people are, both on issues and on the fact that he's wishy-washy about core ideas that I - if you have a guy who's wiling to denounce the Christian right and then go see Jerry Falwell the next time he runs a campaign, that's a guy who'll say what it takes to get elected to president. I think the American people are sick of that. They've had that for eight years; they don't want it for another four.
Tavis: Again, like or loathe the guy, tell me, if you were running, how you'd run against what are going to be as I see it the twin tracks that his train is going to run on - experience and patriotism.
Dean: Well, to borrow one of the lines from one of our campaigns, experience doesn't do any good if you've got bad judgment, and John McCain has terrible judgment. He thought getting into Iraq was great, and he thinks staying in Iraq is great. And he said himself, "If we have to stay for 100 years, we'll have to stay for 100 years."
Now that is not good judgment. That doesn't make any sense. We've spent trillions of dollars in Iraq; look what our folks at home are putting up with. I just don't think that makes any sense. He has no compassion or feeling for ordinary working human beings. To support the president's cruelest veto when he vetoed the bill that would extend healthcare benefits to our children, there's something wrong with that.
That's not really in the American tradition to do that. So you know, on these issues that people really care about, John McCain's not with them. He's old fashioned, he's out of step. He's a patriot, there's no question he's a patriot, we're all patriots. But the fact is, we need a real leader to president of the United States. John McCain has not been that leader.
Tavis: While the Democrats figure out whether it's Hillary or Barack, what do you make, honestly, of how he is spending this time right about now?
Dean: I don't try to second-guess campaigns. Our job is to make sure that our best nominee has got their best foot forward. We think the voters will do that between now and the end of June, or end of June and maybe even sooner. So I'm not going to criticize McCain's particular campaign. I will say, though, that he hasn't gotten himself off to a good start.
He said he was going to take public financing, and he's trying to wishy-washy his way out of that. This is not - this is a maverick when it doesn't affect him. Said he's against earmarks, but he had a couple of his own, one of which the Pentagon really objected to.
So this is not a reformer. This is a guy who just really wants to be president badly, and he'll say what he has to do to get to be president. I don't think that's what we need. We've had enough of that.
Tavis: You referenced when you think this thing might be decided. I've read pretty much most of what you've had to say and you've given a couple dates - late June, maybe early July. Now tonight you say maybe sooner. What's your sense of when this thing will be over, and what's your sense of when this thing has to be over - two different questions - if you're going to win in November?
Dean: Well, I'd like this thing to be over by the first of July. I've said that before. I want - of course then we're going to go through the primary system. There's 10 more primaries and the voters will have their say. There are about 800 unpledged delegates, they haven't - about maybe two-thirds of them roughly have said who they're for.
I'd like the other third to do their duty for their country and their party and say who they're for. Not wait till the convention to do it, but do it sooner so that we know. I don't want to go into Denver divided. If we do, it's very hard to come out together. I want that healing to go on before the convention, so we can come together at the convention and really work hard and win the campaign.
Tavis: I've not talked to you since this story broke a couple weeks ago. It's pretty much dead now - well I shouldn't say dead, it's really not dead now, but certainly a couple weeks ago it caught fire, and again, I know you don't take sides in the race between Obama and Clinton, but what did you make of the talk of people urging her to get out of the Democratic primary?
Dean: That, I do comment on. I've done this, and I don't think you ought to be telling people they ought to get out of the race. That's a very personal decision, and if either one of these candidates ends up in a position where they have to make that decision, then they have to make the decision. That's not up to me to make, and it's certainly not up to anybody else to make.
Tavis: Let me ask you, since you mentioned Iraq a couple times earlier in this conversation, we all have heard now from General Petraeus and there are a lot of headlines coming out of that, but the main one, I suspect, is that once we get to July he wants to put a stop, at least for a certain period of time. I'm not sure I understand what that is, but for a certain period of time he wants to put a hold on these draw-downs, these troops coming back home.
What's your sense of that particular comment and more broadly, where we are on this Iraq issue right now?
Dean: Well, that again draws out a central campaign difference. Both Senator Clinton and Senator Obama have a plan for getting out of Iraq, and they both said what their plan is. Senator McCain seems to have no plan whatsoever except stay there 100 years, like we might in Korea.
Now that's really not a plan, and if he's going to be the commander-in-chief of the United States, you ought to have a plan for how we're going to deal with Iraq. What General Petraeus is saying, essentially, is we've got to say. He didn't say how long we have to stay.
Do you know how much money that we could be putting into our roads and our schools and our kids' college education if we weren't in Iraq? And John McCain has no plan.
We've already run up, since George Bush has been president, the largest deficit in the history of America. John McCain's not telling us how we're going to pay to stay in Iraq for 100 years. So again, there's such a clear difference between the two sides here, the two parties. Our candidates are on one side; I happen to think it's the American people's side.
The other candidate wants to continue this war that he got us into for 100 years, if necessary. I just don't think that makes any sense.
Tavis: It may not be for 100 years, but what happens when your nominee becomes president in January, he or she gets into the Oval Office and realizes that on this issue they cannot deliver what they promised, they cannot do what they said, getting troops out of Iraq would in fact crash and burn that country, all hell would break loose in the Middle East.
What happens if you say that now and you get in and you can't deliver it, even if it ain't 100 years?
Dean: You can deliver it, Tavis. We heard these same arguments in Vietnam and we spent an extra five or six years in Vietnam because Richard Nixon wouldn't admit that it was time to leave. It cost us thousands of American lives and there was chaos when we left. There was no change. It doesn't make any difference, frankly.
Now I don't believe we can get out tomorrow; first of all, you couldn't move 140,000 people and their equipment that fast. But both campaigns have given something between a 12 and 18-month timetable to get out. That seems very reasonable to me. The outcome is not going to be different whether we stay there for 18 months or for 18 years or for 100 years, as Senator McCain seems to think is perfectly find with the American people.
I don't think that's personally fine, the American people don't think it's perfectly fine, and our two candidates for president don't think it's perfectly fine, and I agree with our candidates.
Tavis: Let me offer this as an exit question. I wonder whether or not, with all that you've said in this conversation tonight, whether or not it might not do the Democratic Party some good to go into Denver? We'll be there covering the convention, it will certainly be fun for us, as TV people, to go to Denver and to have some suspense in this thing. And I say it might be good for you because the ratings would be off the chain.
Dean: Yes, they would.
Tavis: A lot more people tuned in, that's got to bode well for your party if you go there with a little bit of suspense around this race.
Dean: Yes. Yeah, but we put the convention very late because four years ago, our candidate was a significant disadvantage financially because our convention was earlier. So when you come out of that convention, you need time to heal. One of these candidates is going to lose this race with 49 percent of the vote. Now that's going to be a really tough pill to swallow, no matter who it is that loses.
We need to be together, we cannot beat - I think John McCain's a weak candidate. As far as the American people are concerned he's wrong on Iraq, he's wrong on the economy, and he's wrong on healthcare. Those are the three biggest issues out there. And also, he's wishy-washy on the issues. He's willing to be for the president's tax cuts before he was against it and vice-versa, for immigration reform, before he was against it, all these kinds of things.
People don't like that. But he can win. He can win if we're divided, and so we need to be united. Now you want some suspense? Maybe there'll be some, but I hope it's not who our nominee is.
Tavis: (Laughs) From your mouth to God's ears. Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, who we will see when this show broadcasts live for the full week from Denver, of course. We'll be with the Republicans in Minnesota, as well. Mr. Chairman, nice to have you on, all the best to you.
Dean: Thanks, Tavis.
Tavis: My pleasure.
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