RALEIGH — Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean reached the highest point of his presidential candidacy so far in early December. While capped off by the endorsement from Al Gore, the period witnessed several other important achievements: the evident collapse of the John Kerry campaign, Dean surges in Iowa and New Hampshire, and the apparent inability of Wesley Clark or John Edwards to organize a “get Dean” effort in South and Southwest.
But as I write on Sunday, Dec. 14, I get the sense that this Dean moment could be a fleeting one. Saddam Hussein has been captured, by the elements of the 4th Infantry Division, in an operation called “Red Dawn” near a suspected hideout called “Wolverine 2” (the obvious movie reference has me and no doubt well over a dozen other MSTies nationwide humming “Let’s Having a Patrick Swayze Christmas”.)
Snagging the “Ace-of-Spades-in-the-hole” will likely increase attacks on the coalition and Iraqi provision government in the short run in a fit of Ba’athist spite and then diminish the insurgency in the long run (because it no longer has a rationale, even for the irrational). Importantly, it came on the same day that the Daily Telegraph in London was reporting new revelations from the Iraqi provisional government that Saddam Hussein’s regime had a relationship with al Qaeda, that it helped to train the leader of the 9/11 hijacking, and that the Ba’athists did in fact try to import uranium to lay the groundwork for a renewed nuclear-weapons program.
I can’t predict how these events will unfold over the next few days, and in particular how Dean, Gephardt, Edwards, and the other candidates will react to them. Nor am I confident that the Telegraph disclosures will prove valid and persuasive to critics, given that their appearance in a single captured memo is so convenient as to invite initial skepticism even from a hawk like me. Still, my sense is that if the war in Iraq receives a surge of public support — and such support was already growing before the Hussein capture and new al Qaeda-Iraq reporting — the Dean candidacy will lose its momentum. It is, let’s face it, based around an appeal to leftist Democrats who hate Bush for his warmongering policies. It is not the product of Democratic leaders, donors, and activists picking the most competitive candidate. It does not have a convincing message on fiscal policy, where it offers middle-class voters a tax increase, or on health care, where it offers the usual big-government “solution.”
Just speculating here, but I still see three scenarios for other Democrats to displace Dean as the presidential nominee:
1. Gephardt rebounds strongly in Iowa, thanks to grassroots Democrats coming home to a Midwesterner who they think can match foreign-policy stature with a resurgent Bush. He defeats Dean easily, rides the next week’s wave of publicity to a respectable showing in New Hampshire (even a strong third will do), and then wins a couple of the next wave of states (Missouri, of course, plus North Dakota, maybe South Carolina and Oklahoma). His coffers fill up, the other anti-Dean candidates give in.
2. Gephardt rebounds enough in Iowa to beat Dean but not by much. The latter then falters a little in New Hampshire, with fellow New Englanders Kerry and Lieberman recovering some lost ground. But a surprise strong third by Wesley Clark rejuvenates his campaign, and he then wins South Carolina, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and becomes the anti-war but more salable sub for Dean.
3. Gephardt narrowly beats Dean in Iowa but gets no traction elsewhere. Dean crushes Kerry and Lieberman in New Hampshire, ending their chances. A surprisingly strong third by Edwards in Iowa, slipping past Kerry, and then again in New Hampshire, slipping past Clark and Lieberman, wins him some buzz that helps him snag not only his native South Carolina the following week but perhaps Oklahoma and one or two others. The other anti-Dean candidates give in.
It may be too late for one of these scenarios to play out. Here’s a prediction I’m much more confident about, though: the most cherished gift most Democrats in North Carolina could envision for Christmas this year would be for one of them to come true. While Republicans are divided between those who think Dean is easy prey and those who are moderately nervous about his break-the-mold candidacy, most Democrats I know are convinced that a Dean nomination would be extremely costly for them in North Carolina.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.