WaPo reviews HoHo's FoPo fumbles

Endorsement or no endorsement, if Al Gore really helped Howard Dean write that 'major foreign policy address,' the Doc has to cut the Veep loose.

The Washington Post adds their editorial take to the reviews of Dean's foreign policy vision, and the picture ain't pretty.

First, they point out that it failed in its stated purpose.

" Mr. Dean's carefully prepared speech was described as a move toward the center, but in key ways it shifted him farther from the mainstream."

Then, they pile the 'straight-talker's problem keeping a straight story.

"A year ago Mr. Dean told a television audience that "there's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the United States and to our allies," but last weekend he declared that "I never said Saddam was a danger to the United States." Mr. Dean has at times argued that the United States must remain engaged to bring democracy to Iraq, yet the word is conspicuously omitted from the formula of "stable self-government" he now proposes."

But they think his inability to tell the same truth twice may help after all.

"The former Vermont governor has compiled a disturbing record of misstatements and contradictions on foreign policy; maybe he will shift yet again, this time toward more responsible positions."

Would that it were, ummm, true.