Taranto: Just Give Me That Old Time Derision

Meet the Press

Excerpted by Jim Taranto, Best of the Web: OpinionJournal.com

As chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean has been casting about for a way of appealing to traditionalist Christian voters. The results are cringe-inducing, as was most recently clear in Dean's "Meet the Press" appearance with Tim Russert Sunday. Russert asked Dean about a fund-raising appearance at which he mocked Rush Limbaugh's drug addiction:

Russert: Is it appropriate for a physician to mock somebody who has gone into therapy and the abuse for drug addiction?

Dean: . . . The problem is not that these folks have problems. They do, and they have problems in the case of a drug addiction. That's a medical problem. And I respect those who clearly, in my profession, who are trying to overcome their problems.

The problem is it 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. . . . We ought not to lecture each other about our ethical shortcomings.

Russert: But should you jump in the fray and be mocking those kind of people?

Dean: I will use whatever position I have in order to root out hypocrisy. I'm not going to be lectured as a Democrat--we've got some pretty strong moral values in my party, and maybe we ought to do a better job standing up and fighting for them. Our moral values, in contradiction to the Republicans', is we don't think kids ought to go to bed hungry at night.

So in the blink of an eye Dean's message changes from "Can't we all get along?" to "You people want to starve children." Maybe a politician with Bill Clinton's skill could get away with being so brazen, but when Dean does it, it's either appalling or funny, depending on whether you take him seriously.