Tom Tomorrow is moderately enthusiastic about Howard Dean as a presidential candidate:
What I saw last night was a centrist candidate?too conservative for my tastes, honestly?who nonetheless has the cojones to take on the President of the United States. Watching Dean last night, I found it hard to imagine him standing on a debate stage repeating some thirty-eight times, “I agree with my opponent.” I know it was just a stump speech, but stump speeches can tell you a lot. I watched Michael Dukakis address an outdoor rally of San Francisco Democrats in the Marina District in 1988 , a picture-perfect setting with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background?and this was at the end of eight long years of the Reagan Administration, and by all rights the crowd should have been eating out of the palm of his hand?but at the end of it, the mood could only be described, charitably, as “dispirited,” as everyone wandered off to find a quiet place somewhere to lay down and die. Okay, not really, but that?s how it felt.