a tale of two Democrats

Yesterday Doug gave me the heads-up on this fine example of Democratic appeal to red-state America:

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean tried to be all things, except George W. Bush, to all voters on fundraising stops in Boulder and Denver on Tuesday.

The pack-leading Democrat hit all the marks, courting fiscal conservatives and social liberals. He bashed the war and pumped up his plans for universal heath care, renewable energy and investments in schools, highways and broadband Internet for everyone.

Okay, this is just weird. How, pray tell, can one “court fiscal conservatives” with a promise of government expansion that even Al Gore would blush to propose? “Broadband for everyone,” indeed. (Note that elsewhere Dean also promised to repeal all the Bush tax cuts.) Sounds like a certain Denver Post reporter has drunk the KoolAid.

It gets better.

Dean declared himself a “metrosexual,” the buzz phrase for straight men in touch with their feminine sides, as he touted his accomplishments in “equal justice” for gay and lesbian couples.

But then he waffled.

“I'm a square,” Dean declared, after professing his metrosexuality to a Boulder breakfast audience with an anecdote about being called handsome by a gay man. “I like (rapper) Wyclef Jean and everybody thinks I'm very hip, but I am really a square, as my kids will tell you. I don't even get to watch television. I've heard the term (metrosexual), but I don't know what it means.”

Well, of course he's square. His name is Howard, after all. I don't however buy his self-deprecation for a Vermont minute; if the Dean campaign has been about anything, it's been cultivation of the candidate's image. Perhaps that's to avoid the uncomfortable fact that being governor of Vermont is in political terms about as challenging as being the mayor the average mid-size city in America—i.e., not very.

And, for the record, Howard, of course you can't be a metrosexual: you're too freaking old.

Also in yesterday's news was Georgia Democratic Senator Zell Miller:

“The way I see it is, that these next five years are going to be crucial in determining what kind of world my grandchildren and great grandchildren live in, and I don't want to entrust that to any of these folks that are running out there on the Democratic side. I'm going to vote for George Bush,” Miller said in a taped interview for Fox News' “Hannity & Colmes” show.

“I think that George Bush is the right man in the right place in the right time,” the former governor said. “I think he's got some [Winston] Churchill in him. He understands the history of freedom. He knows where it came from, and he's not afraid to take sides. I loved him whenever he looked at the American people on Tuesday and said, 'We're not leaving [Iraq].'”

Two thoughts: First, it is really a shame that Miller is retiring at the end of this term. And second, I would love to toss that Churchill bit at John Kerry, just to see how his cultivated New England hauteur might cope with such a trauma.

UPDATE: James Lileks takes on the same Dean puff piece. And better than me, of course.

UPDATE 11/05/03: Zell Miller explains his reasons in WSJ's Opinion Journal.