November 05, 2003

Letting His Flock Decide

Howard the Duck will let his followers decide if he should take federal matching funds for his campaign (along with the spending restrictions). Is this how he would run his administration? Would a President Duck collect votes on how to address policy questions through e-mail, weblog comments, and web polls? This is actually worse than when President Clinton acted based on polls and focus groups. If the Duck is so fond of direct democracy he should declare his stance out loud and in public so we can all decide if such a radical change in governance is warranted.

What Dean is doing is the opposite of leadership. He's not leading, he's following the will of his public. The wind of public opinion can shift quickly. It can also be quite incoherent. That's when leaders are needed to make tough decisions. This experiment not only proves the Duck has no understanding of 3000+ years of Western political thought. It proves he doesn't have the moral strength to lead his supporters let alone a superpower.

"Howard Dean's Political Suicide?"

UPDATE: After a little more thought and reading the Duck's e-mail I figured out that "letting the people decide" is his way of getting out of his promise to "take public financing and would make it an issue if other Democrats didn't." If he thinks he'd be hog-tied and at a disadvantage by accepting public funds, then he should have the guts to say so. If his followers vote to not take the money and he fails to make up for the lost $19 million, then he can blame them. This isn't leadership. It's the Duck's way of having a scape goat.

"Dean Keeps Options Open on Campaign Funds"

UPDATE II: To further support my claim that the Duck is using this poll to wiggle out of his promise, there's this paragraph from the NY Times:

One person close to the Dean campaign described the polling, which will be conducted Thursday and Friday mainly through an elaborate secure Internet system, as a way to provide political cover for abandoning the system.