What was so terrible about Howard Dean’s famous scream?
After reading an article (praising Obama’s victory speech) that made a saracastic reference comparing how Dean had committed suicide with his speech, I got curious.
So I replayed a youtube video of it, and I have to admit: I don’t see what was so deadly about it.
Sure, he sounds like a fanatic born-again preacher, and he calls out the names of the upcoming state contests like a crazy football fan. But Americans like to treat their elections as religious revivals / football games.
At every acceptance speech, the candidate is greeted by his fanatic believers (staff workers in the campaign headquarters) yelling and screaming like fans in a football stadium after the winning goal is scored in the final seconds of play.
Why was Dean’s momentary excitement in front of his core fans so universally condemned?
Did people think he would speak that way in front of the generals in the White House situation room?
It seems to me that too much is made of a single incident
He would have lost the election in any case, because his platform was much farther left than the public wanted. But most pundits say he lost because of that one speech.
As a follower of entertainment and storytelling instead of politics, I think the media killed him because it made a good story. If they hadn’t replayed it incessantly for the following weeks, with accompanying stories about how he sounded “wild” and “unhinged” or whatever the adjective du jour was, then there would have been some funny stories about the moment the following day at the water cooler and it would have been dropped. Instead, it derailed his candidacy, because they told us it would.
Yeah, I’m a little tinfoil hat around the media and elections, I admit it. But “They” have the power here - they can say anything they like, and we believe it’s what everyone else is thinking and so we should too. I think the internet, while a great tool for Dean back then, was still not pervasive enough to overwhelm the rest of the media’s influence on the election. I’m not sure it is yet, actually, blogosphere aside.
I’m with WhyNot. There is nothing the media enjoys more than finding a chink in the armor (or creating one), sticking a knife in, and then twisting until the subject is dead.
The event was as relevant as Bush’s pronunciation of nuclear. It gave the media an opportunity to create some drama and buzz, and so they did.
The media didn’t want Dean to win. So they invented an “incident” to discredit him. It was just the usual post-election stir-up-the-faithful stuff.
The Bushies wanted a weak Dem. candidate, that is, Kerry. They got Kerry.
Cf. Muskie getting smeared after “crying” in New Hampshire in 1972. Nixon wanted to run against McGovern. He got McGovern.
The single most important thing to remember is who owns the majority of US media and who they support. (The reporters have no control and don’t matter. Cf. Dan Rather getting dumped on for a report that (a) He didn’t want to air. (b) That wasn’t actually wrong.)
Dave Barry came closer when he wrote something to the effect of, "Dean made a sound that was something like a hog being castrated with a fondue fork. "
Actually, I think that’s more relevant. The man is a Harvard MBA from Connecticut (not Texas). I’m fairly convinced that he mispronounces the word intentionally to appear “folksy”.
That kind of pandering makes me sick. What’s worse is that it probably works.
And I agree with the OP. I saw the video of Howard Dean and thought, “What’s the big deal?”
If they did like it, it wouldn’t have made a difference, so obviously your generalization is wrong. In my own (Republican) case it is. It’s usually best to give up one’s notions in the face of contrary evidence.
Furthermore, Dean’s scream didn’t change my opinion of him one bit. It was just more of the same.
What would have been the reaction if Bush had let go with a rebel yell under similar circumstances? Not a perfect comparison, but that’s the general idea.
Assuming solely for the sake of argument that it was just the media (and not others in the Democrat party) that did not want Dean, it does not follow that there was significant Bush pressure on them for Kerry. The burden of proof is on you.
Cf. 35 years later, men crying publicly is still not universally accepted.
(a)In fact, he went with that faked memo even when his own experts told him they couldn’t authenticate it because it was a xerox copy.(b) That’s not actually saying it was right. :rolleyes:
No, the most important things to remember are that verifiable facts matter, journalists make errors that simple Googling would have prevented even though they claim to have layers of fact-checking, and those who present a claim are responsible for proving it, not (like Dan Rather and believers in all sorts of weird stuff) the responsibility of others to disprove it.
Howard Dean got screwed. Before I go any further, let me say that I had/have no opinion about Howard Dean or his presidential bid.
I base my opening comment on an ABC-TV news segment that aired some time after the “scream” had derailed Dean’s White House bid. The segment showed that Dean’s yell was perfectly appropriate within the raucus din of the rally venue. ABC pointed out that the famous clip of Dean yelling – shown by his detractors and the news media alike – only played the audio from the candidate’s mic. This isolated audio track made him look like a crazy man. But when ABC added the background noise from other mics, Dean merely sounded like a revved-up rally leader trying to be heard above the deafening crowd. It was a remarkable revelation that got surprisingly little attention when it aired. I can remember myself after the segment thinking, “Poor Howard Dean. Somebody screwed him over big time.”
Dean had been talking non-stop for several days, and his voice gave out in the middle of his cheer. Many newscasters and all the right wing commentators labeled him a madman, and that was the end of his run.
Up until then, he was surprising everyone. He was not one of the annointed few default front runners, but he used the internet more effectively than any previous candidate. He raised a lot of money in a short time, most of it online. He looked dangerous to every other candidate, and every wise talking head on TV had failed to predict him. A lot of people were praying for him to stumble. They pounced on the instant of his cracked-voice yell.
It’s a shame it happened. His party got stuck with a wooden waffler.
Thing is, the scream sounds much worse if you hear it on the radio, with no visuals to show what’s going on around him. And that’s how most voters first heard it - when they were driving in to work the next morning, listening to the local DJ replaying the thing over and over.
I paid almost no attention to the campaigns at the point in which Dean made his scream, but as soon as I heard it I thought, “He’s done.” Dean’s sole claim to fame prior to that was how much money he’d raised via the internet, his poll numbers weren’t that good to begin with (otherwise he wouldn’t have lost the primary). Dean was pretty much doomed from the start, no matter what his merits as a politician might be. Thinking that the scream doomed him or that the media somehow conspired to bring him down is simply retconning. If the media hadn’t been hyping Dean as the interweb candidate, he wouldn’t have gotten the coverage which showed his scream.
Let’s not forget that this was a speech right after he had just done surprisingly badly in Iowa by coming in 3rd. The first result of the election cycle. So it wasn’t like he was winning stuff and then he gave the speech and then started losing.
I was not a big Dean fan four years ago… but I really thought he got jobbed on this.
Out of context, as it was nearly unanimously played, Dean came off as out of control… and it really scared off the voters.
The truth is that he was simply trying to rally the troops after a worse than expected showing… and he didn’t seem any worse to me than somebody trying to show some excitement in the face of bad news.
There was a shred of real truth to the criticism, though. I was at a Democratic pre-season whatever-you-call-it back in June of that year, where the candidates came to Milwaukee to drum up support. Dean’s support was very strong at that event, much more than the other candidates. His people were there, they were visible and they were organized.
They were also the weirdos. I know that’s harsh, but honestly his core group was NOT the mainstream Democrats. He really spoke to the disenfranchised elements of the party, the ones who are a bit odd. And they were so passionate about him, they cried when he spoke, they cheered to a deafening level.
I don’t think the media picked on him just for sport - I think the “Dean Scream” exemplified a quality in him that’s a bit weird and difficult to describe. Take a look at his behavior since then, when he was given (rightfully so) some power within the Party.
Dean is also the one who came up with the 50 State Strategy, which in my opinion is responsible for democrats recapturing both houses of Congress in 2006.
That is why I looked a little askance at your “behavior since then” comment.
Of course truth is that “the scream” was a very reasonable thing to do in the context of the venue - revving up your core troops like a football coach after a bad quarter. But, it doomed him for two reasons:
[ol]
[li]It played into what the general population was fearful of him, the perception that he was a loose cannon who wouldn’t be Presidential enough to win let alone to govern well.[/li][li]It showed he wasn’t wise enough to know that he was no longer ever playing just to the single venue. That he was always playing to everyone at that point. It was a stupid thing to do in a primary run when all eyes were watching, and if he wasn’t smart enough to know that then he had no chance of going the distance.[/li][/ol]How you respond to a set-back helps define you.
And to bring up the second part of the op’s title, the “now”, how did HRC’s response to her set-back help define her to people I wonder?
