A dean of good conscience

Dr. Howard Dean poses for me an unanticipated moral dilemma. Throughout the 1990s, I debated him on a little-known public affairs show taped in Montreal — beautiful Montreal, I should add. It is a grand city with much of the elegance of France and the added asset of having almost no native-born French.

But to return to Dr. Howard Dean and my moral dilemma. Owing to his combative politics and my impatience with political hokum, we found ourselves going tete-a-tete often to the exclusion of anyone else on the show, which by the way is called “The Editors.” I was reminded of the dramatic nature of our confrontations on the show a couple of months back when a member of Dr. Howard Dean’s campaign team stopped me in public to introduce himself. He had just spent a week reviewing those tapes of our epic confrontations on “The Editors,” and naturally he had become very familiar with my face. Though we never met, he said: “Excuse me. You are R. Emmett Tyrrell, are you not?” And he proceeded to ask me some questions about our debates.

Now, of course, the political press is viewing those tapes. Just the other day The Washington Post quoted some of Dr. Dean’s characteristically ill-conceived quips from “The Editors.” Journalists are beginning to call me to ask what Dr. Howard Dean was like in those faraway days of his political virginity. “He seemed fiery, but was he genial?” “He seemed very much a conventional mainstream Democrat, but was he really ideologically driven?” One caller asked if the Dr. Howard Dean whom I encountered in the 1990s was a “George McGovern type or a McCarthy type?” I assumed he was referring to Gene not Joe McCarthy.

Well, how am I to answer the increasing number of inquiries I receive from my brethren in the press corps? I try to observe the discretion of a gentleman. I try to keep confidences. When Dr. Howard Dean confronted me, it was a turbulent time. His Democratic colleagues, the Clintons, had created problems of a moral nature that compromised other Democrats. Is it ethical to judge him today for sentiments he impetuously expressed in those days?

Frankly I feel a protective sense regarding his youthful appearance back then. In terms of his political life, he was a mere pup. He was frisky, with the urge to yip and gambol in the sunshine. And he was a loyalist. One could tell he wanted to leap to the defense of his party’s standard-bearer despite the squalor that standard-bearer backed into.

So I am conflicted. Today Dr. Howard Dean aspires to the Oval Office. If he has his way, he will be the first Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the 21st century. He will face our era’s Herbert Hoover: a Texas Hoover who has mired the country in economic gloom, who has failed to confront tyrants from afar. Just as a priest must not betray what he hears in a confessional, I have a feeling I should not betray the raw and primitive Dr. Howard Dean who was presented to me in Montreal.

Politics is a rough business. It is a realm bereft of probity or principle. I have come to the position there is almost no politician who is anything but an intriguer and a cad. Witness the late Al Gore’s disregard for the niceties in dealing with his old running mate, Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. Think of how shamelessly President Saddam Hussein abandoned his pose as a Saladin and became a pacifist when our troops removed the rug from his rathole. Shall I betray my views of Dr. Howard Dean lo those many years ago and be but another conniver in the political maelstrom of ego?

Possibly I shall. The fact is all these calls from the press are very enticing. Not much firsthand information has been delivered up on the ambitious doctor. Not many members of the press had a chance to meet the great man in battle. I could become his Boswell. I could become a Bernstein wrapped in a Woodward and with a yellow bow tied round.

What course will I follow? Will it be the discretion of a gentleman or the excess of a blabber mouth? I have to decide before the next press inquiry comes in. I am thinking.

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is editor in chief of the American Spectator and a contributing editor to the New York Sun. He is also an adjunct fellow of the Hudson Institute.