The Democratic presidential candidate who benefited most from the debate Sunday afternoon might well have been retired Gen. Wesley Clark.
He wasn’t there.
Instead, he spent his time doing an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” with a much larger viewing audience, serving pancakes and holding small forums with potential voters in New Hampshire, a place where he hopes to have a surprisingly strong finish. It was perhaps time better spent.
Clark has opted out of the Iowa caucuses and opted out of the debate, broadcast nationally on CNN and Fox, as well. Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, who also decided to spurn Iowa, did participate, with the seemingly single-minded mission of undercutting former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean.
There was a numbing familiarity to this debate, a product of the large size of the field and the static state of the race, which has had little fluctuation in the last three months. The format also was not aided by a well-intentioned but distracting insertion of video clips to illustrate issues.
Each of the seven candidates in the debate–activist Al Sharpton also did not attend–hewed to their now-rote scripts on policy positions, almost ensuring an ungainly, mutual drowning out, except when there was an opportunity to attack Dean.
The volume of the attacks on Dean, of course, merely is a powerful measure of his strength on one level and the degree to which his success has frustrated most of his rivals, especially Lieberman.
Lieberman, who had a rhetorical burst of Iowa facts and figures even though he isn’t competing here, did his best to get noticed. That was most obvious when, 76 minutes into the debate, he brandished a pen and asked Dean to release records that cover his tenure as the governor of Vermont that Dean has asked to be sealed. It was a reach for high drama–Lieberman’s aides tried to stir interest by telegraphing the stunt before the debate–but it is not likely to have the desired effect.
While Dean’s answer was a bit clumsy, he did note that releasing all records without some form of judicial review could result in devastating violations of personal privacy. He said that would be especially true for sensitive correspondence he received during Vermont’s debate over civil unions for homosexuals.
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For Lieberman, the answer that might be better remembered by Iowans anyway was the senator’s explanation that the compressed campaign calendar meant he couldn’t compete in Iowa. As if the other candidates didn’t have the same issue.
Dean also was forced to respond to questions about his assertions that the United States was not necessarily safer after the arrest of Saddam Hussein; that Osama bin Laden, while deserving of the death penalty, also deserved the rule of law; and of his overall penchant for blurting out responses that he later is forced to clarify.
But none of those arguments against Dean was really new and neither were his now much more controlled responses to them. He argued that he has been misunderstood by some, that his is a campaign “based on hope, not anger.”
It must also be one of stubbornness because he stood by his position about Hussein’s capture, contending that the resources used to fight the war in Iraq should have been dedicated to the fight against Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
And Dean, despite all the heat on him, scored one light moment when he vowed to support the eventual Democratic nominee and asked for a show of hands whether his rivals would respond in kind. All did.
Debates can offer a chance for separation, for breaking out and being seen in a new light. This, it seemed, was not one of those moments.
That could be good news for Dean, with the caucuses two weeks away. It is a game of ball control at this point, especially if you believe that you are at or near the top.
The real scramble at this point is to be at or near the top with Dean. Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri, who is devoting nearly all of his attention to Iowa, was himself the object of some criticism as was Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, who has committed a surprisingly large amount of resources here.
As Dean put it, the real “front-runner in this campaign is George W. Bush.”