Last night Walter, Matt and I saw Howard Dean speak on campus for the ASSU Speaker’s Bureau. We heard about it last-minute, so we had to sit in the upper balcony, but we were still able to see and hear fine.
The first thing I noticed was how much more of a dynamic speaker he is than John Kerry (who, by the way, seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. Has anyone seen him lately?) I think that Kerry probably had a better chance of winning than Dean since he knows how to play the game of politics (or politricks, if you’re Ozomatli), but Dean is a much easier candidate to stand behind. He is idealistic but not to the point of naïveté, (check out those special characters!) and he isn’t afraid to tell people things they might not want to hear. He was even more outspoken than usual, because he’s no longer campaigning, and he certainly did his share of Bush-bashing and Republican-bashing.
He spoke a lot about the future of the Democratic Party, and how they don’t need to become “Republican Lite” in order to win elections. He stressed the importance of standing up for what you believe and having strong convictions, and how voters respond to that. He related the story of an Evangelical Christian who was volunteering for his campaign. He asked her how she could possibly support him, given his beliefs on gay rights and abortion. She told him that although she was “troubled” by some of his beliefs, at the end of the day, she wanted someone with strong convictions leading our country. Interestingly enough, this is exactly the same reason many people voted for Bush. Perhaps the Democratic Party *shudder* has something to learn from him.
He also talked about the role of the media in our country, and how 90% of the country gets their news from one of 11 major media corporations. He spoke about how news has degenerated into entertainment, and how media corporations are bowing to their shareholders rather than doing truthful and intelligent reporting. He did say that we’re in for a change, though, because most young people get their news from the only two quality sources: the internet and The Daily Show. 
And for the record, yes, he did do “the scream”. It made my night. But he did also explain how the media misrepresented the event, and how even he wouldn’t have voted for him if all he saw was the way it was reported on the major news networks. 
Dean also spoke at length about signing Vermont’s civil unions bill during his time as governor. It was an extremely unpopular bill, and he said that many people asked him if he signed it because he had a gay family member or a gay friend. He said he didn’t (that he knew of) but that he signed it because of basic human decency. I thought this was refreshing, because it reinforced the idea that you don’t need to be a member of a minority to care about what happens to them.
Overall, I thought he had a lot of good ideas and interesting things to say. Hopefully we haven’t heard the last of him in the political arena.
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