Dean Is Targeted by Rivals

Even with new entrant Wesley Clark on the stage, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean remained the central target at a debate Thursday that saw the Democratic presidential candidates divide in their greatest detail yet on trade, taxes, health care and the future of Medicare and Social Security.

In a substantive and spirited two-hour debate, the sharpest sparks came in confrontations between Dean and rivals Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri and Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts.

Kerry criticized Dean on trade and taxes, while Gephardt resumed an attack he launched earlier this month, accusing Dean of siding with congressional Republicans -- led by then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia -- in their efforts to reduce Medicare spending in 1995.

“At our darkest hour, when I was leading the fight against Newt Gingrich ... you were agreeing with the very plan that Newt Gingrich wanted to pass, which was a $270-billion cut in Medicare,” Gephardt said to Dean.

Drawing on a phrase Dean frequently uses in his campaign speeches, Gephardt added: “Now you’ve been saying for many months that you’re the head of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. I think you are just winging it.”

Dean, responding to Gephardt’s charge on Medicare, fired back: “That is flat-out false. Nobody up here deserves to be compared with Newt Gingrich.”

Flashing with anger, Dean added: “I’ve done more for health insurance in this country ... than you ever have because [as Vermont’s governor] I’ve delivered it to a lot of seniors and a lot of young people. And I’ll stake my record on health insurance against anybody up here.”

The debate, sponsored by CNBC and the Wall Street Journal, came amid a flurry of polls showing increasing vulnerability for President Bush and shifting sands in a Democratic race unsettled by Clark’s entry last week.

Three new national surveys have shown Clark, a retired Army general who served as NATO supreme commander in the late 1990s, leading or close to the top of the Democratic race.

Meanwhile, a poll by the Marist Institute released Thursday showed Dean with a solid lead in New Hampshire, site of the first critical primary in the nomination race in January. Dean was backed by 35% in the poll, followed by Kerry with 22% and Clark with 11%.

Also this week, national polls by the Wall Street Journal/NBC and CNN/USA Today/Gallup have shown Bush’s approval rating dipping to the lowest point of his presidency -- at 50% or below.

Beyond the exchanges with Dean, the debate generated several fascinating subplots.

In his first debate appearance, Clark sharply criticized Bush and emphasized his allegiance to the Democratic Party, which several of his rivals have questioned.

Asked about a published report that he had praised Bush at a 2001 GOP dinner in Arkansas, Clark responded with his most forceful answer of the debate.

“We elected a president we thought was a compassionate conservative. Instead ... we got a man who recklessly cut taxes; we got a man who recklessly took us into war in Iraq,” Clark said.

He added: “I am pro-choice [on abortion]; I am pro-affirmative action; I am pro-environment, pro-health. I believe the United States should engage with allies ... [and] we should use force only as a last resort. That’s why I’m proud to be a Democrat.”

Throughout the debate, Clark emphasized centrist themes, such as reducing the federal deficit, expanding trade and increasing access to health care by building on existing federal programs.

On some questions, Clark said he had not yet prepared detailed positions, but he appeared comfortable on stage and generally conversant with the domestic issues under discussion.

Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina also was a more vivid participant than in the first two debates, offering detailed answers on an array of issues, from helping the middle-class accumulate financial assets to reforming labor laws to allowing unions to organize more easily.

“What this president is doing is trying to shift the tax burden in America from wealth to work,” Edwards charged.

“What we ought to be doing instead is empowering [working] families: helping them buy a house, helping them invest, lowering their capital-gains rate,” he said.

Kerry, after largely staying above the fray in two debates earlier this month, focused his fire on Dean. He charged that Dean’s call for America to trade only with countries that meet U.S. standards for environmental protection and labor rights “means we would trade with no countries.”

Dean stood his ground. As an interim step, he said he would trade with countries that met international standards for labor rights. But he indicated he would attempt to use trade agreements to ensure that “ultimately, we ... have exactly the same labor standards everywhere.”

“I’m no longer willing to sacrifice the jobs of middle-class Americans to pad the bottom lines of multinational corporations,” Dean said.

“I think Sen. Kerry is insensitive to the plight of ... American workers who have lost their manufacturing jobs.”

Kerry, who has also struck hawkish notes on trade before union audiences, then accused Dean of “pandering.”

“I am desperately concerned about those jobs.” Kerry said. “But you don’t fix them by pandering to people and telling them you are going to shut the door [on trade]. You have to grow jobs.”

Kerry also continued his criticism of Dean’s tax policies. Dean and Gephardt both have called for repealing all of the tax cuts Bush pushed through Congress in 2001 and 2003, including those that benefit the middle class.

Kerry, along with Edwards, Clark and Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, have called for repealing only the portions of the tax cuts affecting families earning about $200,000 a year or more.

“We can be fiscally responsible, but we don’t have to do it on the backs of the middle class,” Kerry said.

Dean responded by accusing Kerry of making incompatible promises by pledging to reduce the federal budget deficit and increase spending on social needs while protecting tax cuts for the middle class.

Kerry also took on Dean after the Rev. Al Sharpton chastised Dean and Gephardt for their biting exchange on Medicare.

Sharpton cautioned his rivals about personal attacks on each other, but Kerry said: “In defense of Dick Gephardt, I didn’t hear him say [Dean] was like Newt Gingrich. I heard him say that he stood with Newt Gingrich when we were struggling to hold onto Medicare. I think these are policy differences that we need to discuss, and it’s perfectly fair.”

Dean responded more forcefully to such comments than he had been in earlier debates.

“To listen to Sen. Lieberman, Sen. Kerry, and Rep. Gephardt, I’m anti-Israel, I’m anti-trade, I’m anti-Medicare and I’m anti-Social Security,” Dean said. “I wonder how I ended up in the Democratic Party.”

Lieberman toned down his attacks on Dean over the Middle East and trade policy.

But Lieberman broadened his critique of his rivals, arguing that they were attempting to reverse the move toward the political center by Democrats on issues such as spending and trade that former President Clinton engineered.

“The debate going on between us is really a debate about whether we want to take the Democratic Party back to where it was before Bill Clinton transformed it in 1992 or do we want to take it forward,” he declared.