Dean - Fox News has dumbed down the news

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean last night urged some of his most ardent supporters to remain politically active, both to defeat President Bush and to address such issues as the war in Iraq, trade and budget deficits.

During a question-and-answer session, he also offered some biting, off-the-cuff remarks about the Fox News network and New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd and their coverage of his once high-flying candidacy.

In a speech to more than 300 Upper Valley residents and students at Dartmouth College, Dean said the country had been harmed by the Bush presidency, by mass media increasingly controlled by large corporations, and even by a Democratic Party that had lost its way.

“A lot of it is our fault, because democracy is not a spectator sport, and if you think voting is enough, you're wrong,” Dean said.

“The obligation everyone has is to get involved in some way in our communities, involved in politics. If you don't speak up, unspeakable things happen.”

“The biggest issue of this campaign has now become the credibility of the president of the United States, just as it was with Watergate,” said Dean, whose Democracy for America group is now helping more than 400 former campaign supporters seek office on their own right, from city councils to school boards around the country.

Dean said college students today may be the most “farsighted” young generation in American history because they are increasingly worried about budget deficits, and he also said he would change his past, blanket support for free-trade policies to also emphasize worker and environmental protections overseas.

“I don't want (trade barriers), but if we don't deal with this problem, we're going to have a tremendous backlash of protectionism in this country,” Dean said. “The president, I think, is congenitally incapable of doing any long-term thinking.”

Dowd, who is middle-aged and unmarried, had written a critical Times column about Judith Steinberg Dean's reluctance to campaign for her husband. “I shouldn't do this, I’ll just be a little catty,” Dean said last night before noting that a Florida columnist had written “if Maureen Dowd got married right now, she'd be in a nursing home before she’d been married for 23 years, which is how long Judy and I have been married. I thought that was pretty funny.”

Judith Dean ultimately did hit the campaign trail, an experience “that gave her an insight into what was going on in one of the most important things I ever did in my life, and it certainly made our marriage stronger,” Dean said.

As for Fox News, Dean said the cable network created “flashier, glitzier programming designed for people with (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) to look at. They've dumbed down the news,” and other networks have followed their lead.

As a case in point, Dean said his concession speech to Iowa -- now regarded as the “scream” -- was unremarked upon by the print reporters who witnessed it, but then was played “630 times” on television, which didn't pick up the noise from the large crowd that had been responding to his impassioned speech.

“Do you think they reported the CPI (consumer price index) 630 times?” Dean said. “No, it was played because it was great entertainment, and that's what the news has become.”

When asked about mistakes in his campaign, Dean said he was reluctant to use what he jokingly called the “retrospectroscope,” but said he now regrets running attack advertisements against Democratic rival Richard Gephardt in Iowa. The negative ads between the two candidates, then the frontrunners, helped Kerry soar by them and win both Iowa and crucial momentum.

Hanover resident Judith Rocchio, one of Dean's most steadfast volunteers, said the local Dean for America group, now reconstituted as Democracy for America, still meets regularly to spread his message.

“It's very sad that he didn't get the nomination. However, how he's changed the country and how he’s rejuvenated how democracy works is an extraordinary thing,” she said. “I shook his hand and tried not to cry.”