A conservative for Dean

I am neither a Libertarian, nor a political conservative, but it is interesting to me that people who hold those positions can also resonate to the grassroots character of the Dean campaign. David Franke, for example, weighs in on Howard Dean: “To me, he’s the Barry Goldwater of our time - that rare politician who speaks his mind honestly and passionately, without regard for the polls and the political technicians, and often too bluntly or clumsily for his own good. That doesn’t make either of those two men the ideal politician or presidential candidate, but it sure endears them to me on a personal level. It is rare to find a politician who is not scripted. As a right-wing libertarian, I disagree with Dean on virtually every issue, including war (I go further than he does), but I would feel safer with him in the White House than with any of the standard-issue politicians in either party. He could be counted on to repeatedly make the “mistake” of leveling with me and the rest of us, rather than lying and concealing. It’s in his nature. He hasn’t been reconfigured by living or working in Washington, DC.”

Franke goes on to make several points about the ways in which mass media journalists seem more interested in their own “spin” than in investigation and public discourse. I am reminded of the movement this past summer to rescind the rules the FCC was trying to impose that would have created even more monopolistic media practices. A coalition of groups as diverse as the NRA and NOW, religious groups across the spectrum, and so on, came together to argue that it was in everyone’s best interests to have more open access, more broadly diverse ownership, and so on. I think some major shifting is happening in the political landscape, and if it opens up more room for real democracy, I think it’s a good thing.