Friday Late Night: Howard Dean and his Ludicrous Lies

[Image courtesy of the one and only SM from Tampa.]

Howard Dean was on the NPR program “Talk of the Nation” on Thursday afternoon. What he had to say was both fascinating and revealing. I hope you will all listen to the entire interview. It is only about 16 minutes long. Here are the parts I found most striking.

Question: How much credit do you claim for what happened [Obama's win]?

Dean: Well, we claim some. It helps to have an extraordinary candidate….Well whoever is alive now is going to be able to say that 2008 was the most important election of their lifetime no matter how many elections they go through.

Wait a minute. So no matter how many elections a person lives through, from now on this will always be the most important election? Even if a woman is elected President? Based on the treatment that both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin experienced this year when they ran for President and Vice President respectively, I’d have to say that a woman would clearly have a much harder time getting elected President than any man, regardless of ethnicity or skin color. I’d say if a woman overcame what happened this year and became President sometime in the next 40 years, that would be pretty darn historic and unforgettable. Let’s go further: what if the woman who finally managed to break the glass ceiling were Latino, Asian, or African American? Wouldn’t that be pretty important? What if a gay person were to be elected President someday? That would be pretty amazing and unlikely, wouldn’t it? I think Howard Dean needs a bigger imagination.