Sunday, December 07, 2003

By Maeve Reston, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. --The conservative Washington-based Club for Growth became the first Republican group last week to release an ad attacking Democratic presidential front-runner Howard Dean in Iowa and New Hampshire.

	Maeve Reston is the Post-Gazette's New Hampshire-based political correspondent. She can be reached at mreston@post-gazette.com. If you have questions about the 2004 presidential campaign, send Reston an e-mail to politics@post-gazette.com. We will post selected questions and Maeve's answers online in the coming weeks.

The ad links Dean to past Democratic presidential candidates George S. McGovern (1972), Walter F. Mondale (1984) and Michael S. Dukakis(1988), who are described as supporting "huge tax increases." It claims Dean will raise taxes on the average family by more than $1,900 a year -- explicitly naming marriage, capital gains, dividend and death taxes -- a reference to Dean's call to repeal all Bush administration tax cuts.

In a conference call with reporters, Dean's campaign manager, Joe Trippi, called the ad a "bald-faced lie," pointing to Dean's record as a fiscal conservative who cut income taxes in Vermont. Trippi also used the ad to defend the campaign's decision to opt out of public financing, saying that staying within public financing limits would have hamstrung the campaign's ability to respond to ads like the one by Club for Growth.

The Dean campaign plans to air a rebuttal that claims President George W. Bush's "economic policies created the largest deficit in history" and accuses Bush of "hiding behind negative ads that attack Howard Dean." The Club for Growth ad can be viewed at www.clubforgrowth.org.

Clark defends military record

EXETER, N.H. -- General Wesley K. Clark has taken a lot of heat about his quarrels with military colleagues during his 44 years as an Army officer. A series of recent stories have raised questions about Clark's ability to get along with his superiors, and about the circumstances of Clark's firing in 1999 from his post as Supreme Allied Commander, Europe,reportedly because of clashes with Pentagon officials over the war in Kosovo. An unflattering portrayal in the Nov. 17 issue of The New Yorker (www.newyorker.com) quoted defense officials who felt Clark was too showy and too ambitious, and reported that he repeatedly went around his superiors at the Pentagon straight to the White House to pursue his agenda in Kosovo.

The Clark campaign did damage control last week by organizing a conference call with reporters and defense officials who portrayed Clark's service in glowing terms. After a town hall meeting in Exeter, N.H. Wednesday night, Clark defended his record and his firing when asked by an earnest young man how he could "know in his heart" that Clark, more than any of the other candidates, "really, really cares about the country."

"The human heart is probably unknowable," Clark replied. "But John Kerry is still in the Senate, Howard Dean finished his tour as governor. I'm not still in the military. You know why? Because I cared enough about stopping ethnic cleansing or I cared more about the performance of my duties than I did about continuation in uniform. That's why I'm not longer in uniform. And that's your best guarantee of who I am."

80 women vie for Kucinich's heart

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. -- In early Nov., presidential hopeful and bachelor Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio joked in a debate that a television network should host a national contest to help him find a First Lady. The criteria: "a dynamic, outspoken woman who was fearless in her desire for peace in the world."

Two websites have paired up to help Kucinich: www.politicsnh.com and a liberal dating site, www.liberalhearts.com, whose slogan is, "Somewhere out there is your politically correct match." Readers narrowed the field from 80 entrants to four, one of whom was Dean's first cousin, and then to two.

The winner?: 33-year old Gina Marie of New Jersey, a "confidential aide to the sheriff" who believes she can "make a positive contribution to our nation by providing the support and partnership that our president deserves."

To view the 80 entrants and the finalists, go to: www.politicsnh.com/mrskucinich.html.

Vets like Clark's stance on the flag

MANCHESTER, N.H. -
For Democratic veterans, a major sticking point in the potential choice between four-star Ret. Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark and highly decorated Vietnam Veteran Sen. John F. Kerry seems to be the flag desecration amendment. When asked about it in a recent visit to a Manchester veterans post, Clark responded that he was "absolutely in favor of anything that strengthens the American flag." Independent voter and Army veteran Paul W. Porter, who is still undecided, was one of a number of New Hampshire veterans at the event who said they would support Clark and would never consider Kerry because he opposes the flag desecration amendment.

The amendment would allow Congress to prohibit the physical desecration of the American flag. Numerous attempts to pass a similar amendment have failed over the past decade. In January Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, and Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., introduced new legislation to prohibit flag desecration. The amendment may also be a focus in South Carolina, which has a heavy concentration of veterans.

Lieberman rents N.H. apartment

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. -- The Lieberman campaign announced last week that the senator will spend nearly the entire month of January in New Hampshire and that his family will rent a two-bedroom Manchester, N.H., apartment to serve as a "home base during the final stretch" before the Jan. 27 primary. Lieberman has been locked in the middle of the pack in recent New Hampshire polls behind Sen. John F. Kerry and Dean, and even some of his supporters say he will have to finish in third place to remain competitive in other primary contests.

Trippi's bookshelf

BURLINGTON, Vt. -- At Dean headquarters, the campaign staff sometimes refers to Campaign Manager Joe Trippi's office as "the cave." Papers and reports cover the floor. A curiously pink 1970s couch is slumped against the wall with a framed picture of the White House above it on the radiator. There is also a relic from Walter M. Mondale's 1984 campaign encased in glass: a red leather boxing glove that was given to Trippi, a Mondale campaign aide, on which is scrawled almost illegibly, "To Rocky Trippi, Much Thanks, Mondale."

And what's on the bookshelf of the chief strategist who helped rocket Dean from longshot to Democratic frontrunner?:

Lincoln on Democracy: His Own Words with Essays by America's Foremost Historians by Harold Holzer; A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present by Howard Zinn; Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich by Kevin Phillips; Sidney Blumenthal's The Clinton Wars; The Soul of Capitalism by William Greider: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy; The Rise of Neoconservatism: Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs 1945 by John Ehrman; Winning Campaigns Online by Emilienne M. Ireland and Phil Tajitsu Nash, and The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century by economist Paul Krugman.

No word yet on which of these poly sci classics had the biggest impact on Dean's message.

Pollwatch

Dean continues to shoot ahead of his rivals in New Hampshire in two recent polls by American Research Group Inc. and Zogby International. About 45 percent of likely Democratic voters in New Hampshire say they would support him in the American Research Group poll released Thursday. Click here to view some of the latest national polls for the race to the White House as well as those from the key primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

E-mail this story   Print this story