(dave e)

dean among the deans

so, i went to the howard dean rally on campus tonight. platitudes and aphorisms, for sure, but an american political phrasebook that's much more my own than "bring 'em on."

it felt odd to be there. weird to figure out which comments i wanted to applaud. strange to think to myself, "wait a minute! things aren't that simple," and then remember that i went in cynical and that no rally ever explains anything. group clapping and chanting, i worry, does very little beyond reminding your antagonists that you're out there (contra the alleged majoritarian "silence," i guess). but i still clapped a few times. i'm a sucker for the "take america back" rhetoric, as i'm sick of hearing about how "anti-american" perfectly american people are. my stomach turns at this insistence that criticism and hatred are synonymous.

after watching every televised presidential address and press conference over the past two years, i feel like someone else merited one of my weekday evenings.

highlights (in all likelihood, this exercise serves me more than any wandering reader, because i'll say nothing that others haven't already said better) (jeez, dave, did dr. dean say something mean? you're all self-deprecating? what gives?):

bush was bashed, but every instance was bookended with assurances that bush-bashing is only necessary, not sufficient. an alternative was promised.

education and health care got the most time. you want your kids to have good, funded schools. you want reasonable healthcare. "how much did your tuition go up this year?"

also jobs. unemployment sucks.

bush gave all of your money to "ken lay and the boys down in texas." (i think that phrase was used four times.) the middle class (that's your parents, young college people) need tax cuts, but we'd all happily pay clinton-era taxes, so long as we have a clinton-era economy (honestly, the principles with which that economy will reappear weren't provided at the rally...) (i haven't really heard anyone dumb it down enough for me, though).

a fair number of infiltrators booed and hissed and chanted a lot. dean was, at first, gracious: "let them have their say." then he was funny: "when they've lost their jobs and 401k's by next november, half of them will be voting for me, anyway." then he was funnier: "let's give them a moment of silence for the gop." okay. maybe that's just cheap. but they were just yelling, for chrissakes.

"restoring the dignity and honor of the united states with the world" got much applause. even the cynical threesome standing behind me cheered for that one.

i think some people groaned when he compared "your generation" with "my generation." i'm reading (very slowly) neil sheehan's a bright shining lie, at the moment, so i'm a pretty sympathetic ear for someone who wants to reflect on the abstract parallels between the early 1960s and the present state of affairs (they are, simply put, uncanny), but i think he misfired with that one. his simple declaration that the war was a bad idea got spirited applause. campus activism's death knoll has rung at umd, so dean's flower power imaginary failed to register.

um. this is the first political thing i've gone to since a very small rally for pat buchanan in the early nineties. if i recall correctly, that north-mississippi vfw hall event (maybe it was another venue, but the small room with the small stage with the big flag sure seems like a vfw hall in my memory) had about fifty attendees. tonight, the emcee-ish speaker said there were 3,000. the doctor said 3,700. overestimates, i suppose, but not by much.

the above illustrates adequately why i'm not a reporter.

here's the dirty secret, the moral of my story, without caveat. it was unspeakably good to hear a mass of people cheer for things i believe. even if i don't buy everything dean said -- and i don't -- and even if the mass-as-such leaves me skeptical, i feel a little better than i did after the president's address last night.

Posted by dave at September 8, 2003 8:52 PM | TrackBack