Last week, I received a copy of "Howard Dean: the Progressive Anti-War Candidate?" As you may be able to tell by the fact that the title includes a question mark, the authors (who style themselves as "The Editorial Collective of the Old North End RAG") come to the conclusion that Howard Dean is not a progressive at all. More than this, the central assertion of the "Editorial Collective" is that Howard Dean is nothing but a "Republicrat whose stances are not far from that of the current administration.... To see him as a potential savior from Bush & Co. is to delude ourselves, and, furthermore, those on whom many of our states residents urge him."

Within a day, my e-mail box was filled with reaction chatter from others who got the forwarded article too. Reactions were unanimously in the direction of one who wrote, "Thanks for sharing this important article. It was very thought-provoking. I had been in favor of Howard Dean, but I don't think I can say that now."

My own reaction was different, one of skepticism. The same Howard Dean that the other candidates have been tarring as too far to the left is actually a "Republicrat" who is too far to the right? I decided to look into the claims of the "Editorial Collective" a bit further.

Well, I'm glad I did. I'm especially glad because I've found that this article is getting a lot of play lately. Go ahead, search for the title on Google. You'll see that not only has the article been distributed by its original publisher, Counterpunch, but it has been copied by countless other online journals and blogs as well.

To get right to the point: this piece is dreck.

This "Editorial Collective" job is a sterling example of why we should try to get our information directly from the source and not filtered through others' editorial interpretations (Did you hear that, Mr. Bush?). So don't just buy wholesale what I'm going to say here, either. To verify for yourself the problems with the "Collective's" account, visit www.vote-smart.org, Howard Dean's own website, and the Washington Post's excellent archive of candidate information. But I'll cite my sources to give you a start.

The authors of the "Editorial Collective" piece not only have an agenda to begin with (don't vote Democrat), they execute that agenda poorly by writing things that aren't true. Most importantly, they never cite any sources, but instead rely on the reader to buy what they're selling. They write so much that it's tempting to step aside from the daunting task of assessing the veracity of their claims. But let me give you a few examples just from their first section, on Howard Dean's Foreign Policy:

1. The "Editorial Collective" writes: "Deans basic objection to the war was to the Bush administrations unilateral approach, without UN approval."
   
   Well, no, it wasn't. His objection was multifaceted, partly about unilateralism, but it was also because he thought President Bush had not made the substantive case. Dean states for the public record: "To this day, the President has not made a case that war against Iraq, now, is necessary to defend American territory, our citizens, our allies, or our essential interests.... I was impressed not by the vastness of evidence presented by the secretary [Powell] but rather by its sketchiness. He said there would be no smoking gun and there was none.... What can [Hussein] get away with as long as Iraq is inspected, under constant surveillance, surrounded, grounded because of no-fly zones, and barred from receiving weapons and other strategic materials?" (Source: Washington Post February 17, 2003)
   
   See also a copy of Howard Dean's "16 Questions" for a refutation of the Collective's claim.
   
   
2. The "Editorial Collective" writes: "Although he would likely be more sparing in its application, Dean has endorsed the Bush doctrine of preventive war..."
   
   Actually, no. Dean has made clear statements against the doctrine of pre-emptive war:
   
   "When Congress approved the President's authorization to go to war in Iraq, no matter how well-intentioned, it was giving the green light to the President to set his Doctrine of preemptive war in motion. It now appears that Iraq was just the first step. Already, the Bush Administration is apparently eyeing Syria and Iran as the next countries on its target list. The Bush Doctrine must be stopped here.
   
   Many in Congress who voted for this resolution should have known better. On September 23, 2002, Al Gore cautioned in his speech in San Francisco that "if the Congress approves the Iraq resolution just proposed by the Administration it is simultaneously creating the precedent for preemptive action anywhere, anytime this or any future president so decides." And that is why it was such a big mistake for Congress to allow the president to set this dangerous precedent."
   
   (Source: Howard Dean statement at CommonDreams.org on April 17, 2003)
   
   
3. The "Editorial Collective" writes: "When it comes to Israel and Palestine, Dean thinks the US should become more involved, but beyond that have no fundamental objections to the Bush administration policies in the region."
   
   Were these people napping when Dean caught flak for criticizing the Bush Administration, saying "if we are going to bargain by being in the middle of the negotiations then we are going to have to take an evenhanded role" and "it's not our place to take sides." That's a fundamental difference from the Bush policy, which is to disproportionately support Sharon. (Sources: San Diego Union-Tribune September 22, 2003 and New York Newsday September 10, 2003)
   
   
4. The "Editorial Collective" writes: "[Dean] has been silent concerning withdrawal from Israel's illegal settlements in the occupied territories"
   
   Demonstrably false. Dean's statement of principles on Israel and Palestine says "The Israeli government will have to work to improve the living conditions of the Palestinian people and ultimately will have to remove a number of existing settlements." (Source: Howard Dean Foreign Policy Statement on the Mideast)

And that's just in the "Foreign Policy" section. Some of what these folks are writing may be true, but because a great deal of it is clearly not, readers should remain skeptical and check the work of the "Editorial Collective" before accepting their claims (I do wonder why this work was not done by the "Editorial Collective's" editorial overseers at Counterpunch, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair).

If you read the article yourself, you'll notice that a large mass of the criticism amassed by the "Editorial Collective" is actually pointed speculation about Dean's motives. Motives are unobservable, and so haranguing about motives is handily irrefutable. Talk about motives is therefore cheap -- cheap in the sense of being a dirty trick, cheap in the sense of being easy, and cheap in the sense of being of little value in actually discovering the quality of a candidate.

Readers should be especially skeptical given what the members of the "Editorial Collective" write as a coda to their piece. The goal of the "Collective" is not to elect an alternative to Bush -- it is to elect an ideologically pure candidate. I know, I'm writing about motives, and I just said they're unverifiable. But in this case, the "Collective" has done us the service of laying their motivations on the line: they'd rather have Bush in office than vote for a better but imperfect alternative. It is important to ask yourself whether you share that very high standard of suitability.

Since I have just stooped to the questionable low of talking about motives, let me come clean: I'm not a Dean supporter. I'm an Anybody But Bush supporter. This means that I, unlike the "Editorial Collective," believe George W. Bush has done so much damage that the first priority is getting him and his cronies out of office, the second priority is just getting the country back to where we were in 2000, and a distant third priority is ideological purity. I don't have much patience for the kind of internecine squabbling the "Editorial Collective" traffics in, especially when it is so poorly executed and documented.

Let's keep our eyes on the prize: Beating Bush. Whoever can do that will mark an incredible improvement over the current resident of the Oval Office.

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