Kerry Spot    [ jim geraghty reporting ]
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Meanwhile, the most high-profile candidate for the job, former Vermont governor Howard Dean, is not featured in that issue of the New Republic. Dean is featured in Rolling Stone this month, as one of their “People of the Year” in between Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps and Seymour Hersh.

Dean is credited with “articulating a message - anti-war, tolerant and fiscally conservative - that added a dose of common sense to the tired liberalism of the Democratic Party.” There is also this gem:

Interviewer: Given the size of the Republican victory, should Democrats try and cooperate with them?

Dean: Since when is fifty-one percent of the votes a mandate by anyone’s definition? It’s ridiculous.”

Oh, where to begin? That no candidate has gotten that high a percentage since 1988?

That one who never came close to his party‘s nomination ought not to scoff? That the good doctor has yet to win a race, even a Democratic primary, outside Vermont?

That if 51 percent isn’t a mandate, then no Democrat since Lyndon Johnson has had a mandate?

(Bill Clinton won 49.23 percent in 1996. Jimmy Carter’s highest total was 50.08 percent, after Watergate, running against Gerald Ford. The last time a Democrat received more than Bush’s 51 percent was LBJ’s 61 percent in 1964.)

That Bush's 59.1 million votes was the highest total for a presidential candidate in American history? That Bush was the first president since Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 to win re-election while adding to his party's majorities in the House and Senate?

I believe Dr. Dean has misdiagnosed what constitutes a mandate.

By the way, I know Rolling Stone became the rock music wing of the Democratic National Committee a couple of years ago, but perusing their “People of the Year” list, one would have no idea that this was a tough year for the Democratic Party. Rolling Stone salutes Michael Moore, Bruce Springsteen, Richard Clarke, Barack Obama, Dean, Hersh, Jon Stewart, Tom Brokaw (His pull-quote is, “ ‘Genius’ is not the word that I would use for Bush”), and Billie Joe Armstrong, who is credited with “scoring a number one album at Bush’s expense.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger is also named, and gets an interview where he is repeatedly asked to renounce GOP criticism, pressure from “religious conservatives”, etc.

Now, a lot of those guys had good years, but did red-state culture score no wins this year?

My brother (my source on all things musical and the purchaser of the mag), reassured me that Rolling Stone was no longer seen as the Bible of Rock and Roll but was seen as just another celebrity magazine - US Weekly, or People without all that substance.

But one has to wonder… of all anti-Bush cultural figures to salute… Why Seymour Hersh and Richard Clarke? What, Joe Wilson didn’t ‘keep it real’ enough this year?

[Posted 12/26 11:17 PM]