Waving the wrong flag

In politics, former Texas Gov. Ann Richards has said, your enemies can’t hurt you, but your friends will kill you. So true. Just look at how Howard Dean’s fellow Democrats are raking him over the coals for his politically incorrect flag waving.

“I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks,” the former Vermont governor was quoted as saying in the Des Moines Register. “We can’t beat George Bush unless we appeal to a broad cross-section of Democrats.”

True enough. You build political support by addition, not subtraction.

But, on his way to that common-sense conclusion, Mr. Dean rhetorically brought up a symbol that seasoned politicians have found to be political nitroglycerin for both parties. His fellow Democratic candidates saw their opportunity to pile on and they took it.

Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri charged Mr. Dean with pandering to people “who disagree with us on bedrock Democratic values like civil rights.”

Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts accused Mr. Dean of trying to “pander to lovers of the Confederate flag” and the National Rifle Association.

North Carolina Sen. John Edwards called Mr. Dean’s remark “offensive” to “Southerners who drive trucks.” There’s a constituency you certainly don’t want to alienate.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who earlier called Mr. Dean a come-lately to support for affirmative action, reacted like a man who could smell the political red meat a’cookin’.

“I’m not saying Mr. Dean is a bigot,” Mr. Sharpton told me in a telephone interview as he prepared for Tuesday night’s Democratic debate in Boston. “I like Dean.”

Sure.

“But I’m saying that he said something that was deeply insensitive.”

Right.

“In South Carolina, people have been struggling for several years to take the Confederate flag off the Statehouse.”

Right. South Carolina also was the scene of the clash between candidate George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain in the 2000 South Carolina primary. A similar battle is shaping up for this winter when that state’s primary is set to be the first important Southern contest. With African-Americans making up about half of South Carolina’s Democratic voters, the primary also offers Mr. Sharpton his first big chance to pick up Democratic Convention delegates.

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