Howard Dean Meetup

Last night I attended Howard Dean's MeetUp at Ashton's in Decatur, GA. We were lucky enough to be part of a southern-states conference call that the Governor took part in, and I was happy to have two friends come out who hadn't been there before.

Dean has had some issues in the last few days with documents from his time as Governor of Vermont that he has sealed. Richard Cohen of the Washington Post gives an overview of the problems with this, namely that Dean has stashed a lot of documents for 10 years, his off-the-cuff response being that when Bush "opens his, I'll open mine."

Bush is now claiming to have his records open, which is likely a lie. I say likely because much of what comes out of the Bush administration is a lie, but also because according to Dean's answer to a question about these documents last night, Bush in fact has not opened his papers. Dean says that Bush's papers are in the possession of the Attorney General of Texas, and while many of the originally sealed papers are now public, they can be viewed only at the discretion of the AG.

And for the record, Dean didn't hesitate to answer that question about the documents. He jumped right in with the "There are communications from advisors who would not have given advice had they known they would be public sooner rather than later," which is a valid, if political answer. More interestingly, he said something like, "There are people who aren't portrayed in a flattering light," later in his list of reasons, which is almost certainly true, and which is almost certainly the real reason to keep the documents private. Think about it: Dean was Governor during the Clinton years and Dean was forced by the courts to deal with the Civil Unions issue. I can only imagine what colorful phrases Dean uses in working through the Civil Unions issue, and I delight in imagining what might have been written down internally about any number of Clinton-era scandals.

They would make good reading, I'm sure, but not so much during a political campaign.

Molly Ivins, by the way, endorses the Governor today, saying that he's the only one who can win. This is shaping up, as many have commented, to be a race of base against base, and Dean seems to be the only one who can energize the Dem base enough to get throngs of people to the polls.

Also, as John Kerry said, Dean is a "balanced budget freak". The republicans are hoping to register millions of new voters, but I'm wondering if that might backfire for them if the Dems nominate someone with a demonstrated penchant for fiscal discipline.

I think Dean is capable of getting at least five million people who've never voted before out to vote. I say that before the Karl Rove smear engine has kicked in, but based on the growth of the MeetUps and the excessive energy of Dean's army of bloggers, what I'm seeing makes me cautiously optimistic that the upcoming election will be about ideas: What does America stand for? Where do we want to go from here?