Tuesday Oct 21, 2003 Yesterday, the Bush administration announced the largest annual deficit in American history--$374 billion. This deficit has been caused by a President and a Congress that gave unprecedented tax cuts to a small wealthy elite and placed us in an unnecessary war based on deception.
This President and Congress are placing the very financial security of our nation in jeopardy. They are “borrowing” hundreds of billions from the Social Security Trust Fund and placing $52,000 of new debt on every family of four over the next six years.
Tuesday Oct 14, 2003 A new public opinion poll suggests a rising number of US voters would
replace US President George W. Bush in the 2004 elections. The poll
put Mr. Bush is in a statistical dead heat with Democratic hopeful
Wesley Clark. According to the Newsweek survey, 50 per cent of voters
would replace Mr. Bush--up three percentage points from 47 percent in
a similar poll conducted at the end of September. Mr. Clark was
preferred by 44 per cent of registered voters and Mr. Bush by 47 per
cent -- a dead heat in a poll with a three-percentage-point margin of
error. Mr. Clark topped the list of Democratic challengers, followed
by Joseph Lieberman with 13 per cent support, John Kerry with 11 per
cent, Howard Dean with 10 per cent and Richard Gephardt with eight
per cent.
Monday Sep 29, 2003 Former Vermont governor Howard Dean, a leading Democratic candidate
for the US presidency, Sunday delivered his harshest criticism yet of
the Bush administration. Dr. Dean said US Defence Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz either deliberately lied about
Iraq or didn't do their work properly. Dr. Dean said neither man
should remain in government. In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair
said he had no regrets about taking Britain into the war against
Iraq. Mr. Blair's popularity has plummeted in the wake of the war,
principally over allegations that his government misled the British
public about the danger faced from Mr. Hussein's weapons of mass
destruction.
The Cool Passion of Dr. Dean
The ex-Vermont Governor is a Park Avenue rebel and an unlikely spokesman for the anti-Bush Left
Dean honed his skills in Montreal
Presidential aspirant was a frequent visitor to this city while, as Democratic governor of Vermont, he appeared regularly on the televised discussion show The Editors
Sunday, August 03, 2003
Few Canadians likely know his name, but former Vermont governor Howard Dean's uphill U.S. presidential campaign has roots here.
For years, the would-be Democratic presidential candidate made the hour-long drive north to hone his media skills as a television political commentator.
"Gov. Dean owes a great deal - not necessarily to the exposure he received in Canada - but to the experience of having to be a regular talking head on Canadian television," said Garrison Nelson, a political science professor at the University of Vermont.
The Editors, a show about U.S. and Canadian politics, is filmed in an old mansion at Montreal's McGill University and is broadcast on PBS and CBC. Dean's participation reinforced his standing as an articulate, knowledgeable governor of a small state on the Canadian border, said Nelson.
In the many years he appeared on the show, Dean displayed an impressive interest in and knowledge about Canada, said David Johnston, the show's host before he left McGill to become president of Ontario's University of Waterloo.
"I was quite struck by how deeply informed and deeply interested he was in Canadian matters generally and Canadian medicine in particular," the former McGill principal said in an interview.
Attending regional conferences of New England governors and Canadian premiers during his 11-year governorship provided Dean, 54, with his initial executive-level international experience.
Former Canadian foreign affairs minister Barbara McDougall, who frequently appeared on the show alongside Dean, said the former physician understood the significance of a very positive bilateral relationship with Canada.
"Yes, he would be good, but that doesn't mean he would be better than the others," she said of the other candidates vying for the Democratic Party's nomination next July, ahead of the November 2004 presidential election.
"I think it's important that they know the significance of the relationship. It's helpful."
Familiarity with Canada also runs in the Dean family. His wife, Dr. Judith Steinberg, completed a fellowship in hematology at the Royal Victoria Hospital before joining Dean's medical practice in 1985.
Steinberg rarely speaks about public issues and declined to be interviewed.
It's unclear whether her exposure to Canada's universal health-care system has influenced Dean. The five-term governor advocates near-universal access to health-care coverage but not a government-run system like Canada's.
Vermont is known more as a granola state comprised of liberals and organic farmers than as a political bellwether.
Many conservatives view Vermont as "some weird social laboratory, if not some place that we should have let Canada have long ago," Gregory Sanford, a Vermont archivist and historian, was quoted as saying in a recent Washington Post article.
As a transplanted New Yorker, Dean has however fought his party by being fiscally conservative, opposing national gun control and favouring the death penalty in some circumstances.
Dean's support for abortion and gay civil unions and his opposition to the war in Iraq would make many Canadians feel more comfortable with him as president than with some of his opponents, including incumbent George W. Bush, said Harold Waller, a professor of political science at McGill University.
"His own orientation is probably closest to where most Canadians would stand on those issues than any of the other major candidates."
But Waller warns that another candidate's proposals that boost the Canadian economy could be better for Canada than presidential empathy, he said.
While Canadians may look favourably at Dean, Republican supporters south of the border have disparaged his links with Canada.
"If you like Canada, you'll love Howard Dean," said a headline in the GOPUSA, a conservative online publication.
The column says those wishing for Dean to defeat Bush "can always move to Canada and pretend their guy won."
This type of attack isn't likely to be very successful, said Daniel Drezner, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Chicago.
"Blasting someone in the U.S. by saying they tend to sympathize with Canada won't really sell that well," he said in an interview.
"On the other hand, labelling Dean as a typical northeastern Democrat will probably work, or at least that'll pack a stronger punch."
© Copyright 2003Â Montreal Gazette
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