I have a little device I call the Dean-O-Meter. I keep it in my shirt pocket close to my heart. Every time I watch a Democratic debate, or see a candidate speak, I can pull it out and measure how they rank compared to any given Dean speech. Sometimes I think my Dean-O-Meter is broken. The little needle just sits there. Then someone will say something, like when Edwards talked about taking on corporate power, and it will flicker a bit.
I know I'm not the only one. In fact, the way I see it, this little meter thing is the perfect instrument to explain why Al Gore, a man who has not given even a hint that he's going to run, is still the candidate of choice for so many Democrats.
Yes, you can laugh at all the Al Gore diaries which, admittedly, are beginning to resemble Elvis sightings. But there's a message in there somewhere. And that message, to my ears, is straight from an old Peggy Lee song, 'Is that All There Is?'.
Quite simply, and this should be obvious to anyone who's honest about it, the current slew of candidates fail to inspire. And, most importantly, they have failed to tell the truth.
You want to know what Ron Paul's appeal is? Every now and then, he speaks the truth. I am no more fond of Libertarianism than I am of Conservatism. Both philosophies fail to recognize that societies are more than an aggregation of individuals, but are indeed a cohesive system - An interconnecting, interdependent whole. And the collectivism they so vehemently oppose looks a lot like democracy to me.
But that doesn't mean someone like Ron Paul is wrong all the time. And every now and then, regardless of his misguided - I'd say absurd - philosophy, he speaks the truth. The kind of truth that rattles the conventional wisdom and scares the Washington establishment - like saying the reason we were attacked on 9/11 is not because they hate our freedom, but because of our imperial misadventures in the Middle East.
Not to draw too close a comparison, but Howard Dean did that too. He rattled the conventional wisdom with his opposition to the Iraq war way back when Hillary and Edwards were still holding their political fingers in the wind.
But more than anything, Howard Dean's campaign was about empowering people. Not just empowering Howard Dean. "You have the power" he would yell, and we believed him. And that scared the Washington establishment most of all.
And so they took him down. But when they took down Howard Dean, they really took us down. And the old saying, 'Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer'? That is why Howard Dean is still DNC chair - that once powerful position now a retirement home for old threats to the established order.
The Democratic establishment hates John Edwards too. At least if you believe MSNBC's Chuck Todd who, in a rare moment of candor for those up late enough to see it, said as much after the Democratic debates last week. "The democratic elites" he called them, "hate John Edwards." I'm surprised no one else caught it, or at least wrote about it.
But I'm not surprised they do. They hated Al Gore too. They have a cushy gig there in the Beltway. And the last thing they need are principled populists and visionaries to fuck things up.
I wonder how many people realize that for every election, there are actually two campaigns: one for the people's vote, and another, behind the scenes, for the support of the money people and their conventional "wisdom." This is why Democratic candidates are so strained to say anything meaningful on the stump - it would conflict with what they've been saying behind closed doors. Incidentally, Hillary won the money race back in 2006.
The Republicans don't have to work so hard, speaking in forked tongues. Their message of lower taxes, deregulation, and reducing the size of government to a defense contract is the same out front as it is in the back room.
Will we ever get a candidate who can speak to the American people, honestly and without hesitation, without the internal conflict of knowing he or she doesn't believe a word they're saying.
I think that's what people see in Al Gore. Someone who has the integrity to tell the truth, and the clout to make it mean something. Someone who's both a member of the establishment, and a patron of the people.
Al Gore's become almost a Messiah like figure, someone said. But I think it's more like Moses. Born a prince, exiled a peasant, coming down from the mount, reborn and white haired, to lead his people to the promised land.
Me, I'll settle for anyone who can make this Dean-O-Meter thing work. Cause I can almost swear it's broken.
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