Dependable Character

The Chairman of the Democratic National Committee:

Between a speech he delivered without notes and a question-answer session, [Howard] Dean regaled an appreciative audience for nearly 90 minutes without once raising his voice, as he did after last year's Iowa primary election. But he did draw howls of laughter by mimicking a drug-snorting Rush Limbaugh.

"I'm not very dignified," he said. "But I'm not running for president anymore."


From bottom to top: if you haven't got an argument, you've lost the debate. Had Ed Gillespie worked a crowd with a suggestive pantomime about the foibles of leftist commentator Jerry Springer, waving a personal check, he'd be assigned a custodial cart and asked to enter his old chairman's office at the Republican National Committee only to vacuum and empty the wastebaskets. Senator Hillary Clinton may or may not be pleased that Dean would work towards earning his ouster from party leadership so soon before 2006, for while Clinton intends Dean to remove himself from politics, it can only be accomplished fully if the chairman demonstrates an incapacity not for dignity but gaining what matters to the Democratic Party — Washington and the federal government. On television last night, political analyst Dick Morris spoke briefly about the chairmanship that is worth most to one man's rivals. More on that subject in time.

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