Dean's Dilemma

Steve Soto sees the DNC falling short - very short - of the RNC's fundraising totals since Howard Dean's ascension to DNC Chair and wonders...

Here's my question for the evening: why shouldn't Howard Dean outline some basic principles that the party stands for irrespective of individual votes that Hill Democrats have to take, and appeal to the base using those basic principles and a 50-state strategy that challenges the GOP in their own red state backyard?

The obvious answer reinforces a point made repeatedly during the DNC campaigns earlier this year. Dean doesn't - and shouldn't - offer such an outline because it's not his job. The outline of 'basic principles the party stands for' is called the Platform of the Democratic Party, and it's Howard Dean's job, or at least part of his job, to promote it, not to define or create it.

Of course, that's problematic, because the Platform is the creation of delegates to the National Convention, and tends to reflect the views and goals of the Presidential nominee, who has a large roll in the composition and activities of the Platform Committee and enough votes on the floor to control the outcome of debates. That, of course, presents a particular problem for Chairman Dean, who, as Candidate Dean, spent much of 2003 and part of 2004 belittling many of John Kerry's ideas, ideas that became incorporated into the Democratic Platform.

There's an easy out for him, of course. When the Presidential campaign is unsuccessful, the role of the Platform is diminished accordingly, and the Congressional leadership of the Party takes a more prominent role in defining the policies that will best express our principles. Dean recognized this early on, and ceded policy questions to Reid, Pelosi & co. It was a smart move, and an appropriate one. After all, Howard Dean's own formulation of Democratic Party principles had been decisively rejected by the rank and file Democratic electorate in primary after primary, caucus after caucus.

The Chair of the DNC is not empowered to override the work of the Convention, nor to direct the agenda of Congress. Maybe he or she should be, maybe he or she will be in the future. My own belief is that he or she shouldn't, and won't, but there's a contrary case to be made. The place to make it is at the next Democratic National Convention.

Anybody think there's a potential nominee likely to support such a move? Not likely. Meanwhile, Howard Dean, who built a reputation (deserved or not) as an insurgent unafraid to speak his mind on his own set of strongly held opinions finds himself in the grip of the Party establishment, tasked to measure his words so that they reflect well on the ideas of others.