‘Hypocrisy!’ He Cried

[I]t is galling to Democrats-48 percent of us who did not support the president-it is galling to be lectured to about moral values by folks who have their own problems. Hypocrisy is a value that I think has been embraced by the Republican party. We get lectured by people all day long about moral values by people who have their own moral shortcomings. I don’t think we ought to give a whole lot of lectures to people-I think the Bible says something to the effect that, Be careful when you talk about the shortcomings of somebody else when you haven’t removed the mote from your own eye. And I don’t think we ought to be lectured to by Republicans who have got all these problems themselves. . . . Everybody has ethical shortcomings. We ought not to lecture each other about our ethical shortcomings. . . . I will use whatever position I have in order to root out hypocrisy.

-Howard Dean, Meet the Press, May 22 D EAN, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, made so many provocative comments during his recent interview with Tim Russert that his comments about Republican hypocrisy attracted relatively little notice. Republicans were keen to point out that Dean had confused Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. (Isn’t that what Democrats accuse President Bush of doing?) Newspapers, to the extent they mentioned the above exchange at all, noted only that Dean, having been questioned by Russert about the propriety of “mimicking a drug-snorting Rush Limbaugh,” had defended himself. That was the context in which Dean delivered the above soliloquy.

About the Author

Ramesh Ponnuru

Ramesh Ponnuru is the editor of National Review, a columnist for the Washington Post, and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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[I]t is galling to Democrats-48 percent of us who did not support the president-it is galling to be lectured to about moral values by folks who have their own problems. Hypocrisy is a value that I think has been embraced by the Republican party. We get lectured by people all day long about moral values by people who have their own moral shortcomings. I don’t think we ought to give a whole lot of lectures to people-I think the Bible says something to the effect that, Be careful when you talk about the shortcomings of somebody else when you haven’t removed the mote from your own eye. And I don’t think we ought to be lectured to by Republicans who have got all these problems themselves. . . . Everybody has ethical shortcomings. We ought not to lecture each other about our ethical shortcomings. . . . I will use whatever position I have in order to root out hypocrisy.

-Howard Dean, Meet the Press, May 22 D EAN, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, made so many provocative comments during his recent interview with Tim Russert that his comments about Republican hypocrisy attracted relatively little notice. Republicans were keen to point out that Dean had confused Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. (Isn’t that what Democrats accuse President Bush of doing?) Newspapers, to the extent they mentioned the above exchange at all, noted only that Dean, having been questioned by Russert about the propriety of “mimicking a drug-snorting Rush Limbaugh,” had defended himself. That was the context in which Dean delivered the above soliloquy.