The New York Times theory of the Dean collapse

Jodi Wilgoren and Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times offer a bunch of fancy explanations for the Phaethon-like fall of Howard Dean’s once high-flying presidential campaign, ranging from its strategic political decisions to its spending habits. But it’s all Times spin. In the world of reality, the reason Dean careened so rapidly downward from the heights was simple and plain to see: the non-stop series of staggeringly stupid, ignorant, immature, maladroit, and hostile remarks he made during the month of December, at the very moment when the attention of the whole world was focused on him as the presumptive Democratic nominee. Yet the Times article (“Missteps Pulled a Surging Dean Back to Earth,” February 1, 2004) barely mentions Dean’s own statements and demeanor. Instead, it blames his troubles on such factors as these:

• “Endorsements from the establishment muddled his outsider’s message.”

• “The feuding Vermont- and Washington-based factions in the staff never reached détente.”

• “the campaign catapulted forward by billing itself as a broad movement for change, but failed to adequately define and sell its leader …”

• “The campaign failed to respond consistently to intensifying attacks, just as people began to tune in.”

That last point about the “intensifying attacks” on Dean is particularly rich, as it begs the question why everyone began to criticize the poor fellow so much. And the reason, of course, was Dean’s own behavior by which he had shown himself to be spectacularly unsuited to be the presidential nominee of a major party. This was what turned off many voters who had previously supported him, as well as deeply alarming many Democratic opinion makers who began to turn on him.

Dean lost not because of “strategic mistakes” or “media attacks.” He lost because of his own character. But that’s the kind of causation that modern liberals can never admit.

The “media attacks did him in” theory reminds me of a Times article years ago on why sub-Saharan Africans are so far behind Asians in educational attainment. The differential between the two continents was especially puzzling, the Times pointed out, since both Asia and Africa had been colonized by Europeans in the past, which would presumably have crippled both peoples equally, and they both had been decolonized around the same time, which would have given both continents the same chance to recover from white dominance. How, then, could Africa’s extreme educational backwardness relative to Asia’s extraordinary educational successes be explained? And the Times’ answer was: Africa has poor infrastructure. But this of course begged the question why black Africa has so much worse infrastructure than Asia. Isn’t it likely that the same factors underlie both Africa’s poor infrastructure and its lack of educational progress?

The reader will see where I’m heading with this. For liberals, the failures and inadequacies of a person or group whom the liberals favor, such as a liberal presidential candidate or an underachieving racial group, can never be attributed to some inherent quality of that person or group. There must be some external or non-essential cause that is responsible for his or their troubles. Indeed, a major part of the liberal enterprise consists precisely in the ongoing, never-to-be-abandoned search for such causes.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 04, 2004 05:00 PM | Send