From the WSJ Opinion Archives
CAMPAIGN 2004
Howard Dean, Unpasteurized
A Vermonter explains why the Democratic front-runner isn't fit for the White House.
Campaigning for the Democratic nomination for president, Howard Dean frequently points to his record as Vermont's governor to indicate his fitness for the job. I served with Dr. Dean in the state Senate, ran against him for the governor's office in 1992, and have watched him in action in the decade since. Now is a good time to re-examine his record.
Vermont is a small and liberal state with a population equaling that of Monmouth County, N.J. It is also, as Peter Beinart of The New Republic recently observed, "ideologically extreme." Dr. Dean himself aptly remarked to a New Hampshire gathering on Aug. 22, "In Vermont, politics is much further to the left. A Vermont centrist is an American liberal right now."
Vermonters do, however, place stock in balanced budgets and strong bond ratings. Gov. Dean can rightly claim that he signed budget bills that projected balanced budgets during his last nine fiscal years, after his predecessor's tax increases erased an initial inherited deficit. He can also point to channeling surpluses into the state's "rainy day funds" in the boom years of 1999-2001.
On several occasions during those years he was forced to make some spending cuts. In his earlier years, he favored directing his department heads to reduce their spending. In later years, he became adept at fund raiding and cost shifting. On the former point, Jack Hoffman, the longtime liberal commentator for the Vermont Press Bureau, observed in 2002 that "Dean's proposal to squeeze the education fund looks less like an exercise of fiscal restraint and more like an old fashioned raid on the one account that's still healthy."
More pernicious than the fund raiding was Dr. Dean's financing of his ambitious government health-care programs by shifting a large portion of the costs onto the providers--hospitals, nursing homes, doctors and dentists. Forced to treat government-sponsored patients often at less than 50 cents on the dollar, hospitals shifted costs to patients covered by private insurance. (Many doctors and dentists opted out of the Medicaid program altogether.)
This cost shift helped to send the cost of health-insurance premiums skyrocketing, causing more businesses and individuals to drop their coverage and go into the state program, thus stimulating a new round of cost shifting and higher premiums. Even so, the legislative joint fiscal office has projected a Medicaid deficit of $95 million by 2008. This mandating of popular benefits without raising taxes to pay for them is a prominent characteristic of Dr. Dean's fiscal record.
On one occasion (in 1999) Dr. Dean did get the Legislature to lower income-tax rates 4% across the board. But aside from that one instance, Dr. Dean gladly spent all he could take in. In his early years, when he was still restricted by his predecessor's fiscal bailout program, he earned a respectable "B" on the Cato Institute's fiscal responsibility report card. By 2002 his ranking had dropped to "D." During his last eight years Dr. Dean signed into law increases in the sales and use, rooms, meals, liquor, cigarette and electrical-energy taxes. In 1997 he raised the corporate, telecommunications, bank-franchise and gasoline taxes. Dwarfing all of these was his approval of a state education finance "reform" built on a new 1.1% state real property tax. All of the 1997 tax rate increases were justified in the name of property-tax relief for some Vermonters, but the relief is rapidly evaporating with ever-increasing educational costs.
Dr. Dean as government manager does not compute. Attuned to political implications, his style has been to intervene at critical points rather than devote time, effort and political capital to creating efficient and predictable government. He used his influence to whisk favored applicants through Vermont's maddening tangle of environmental regulations, while ordinary small-business people trying to open a convenience store could only take a ticket and wait.
The prime example is Husky Injection Molding, a well-paying Canadian company looking for an American plant site. After convincing the company to put its plant in Milton, Vt., Dr. Dean created a special task force--"Operation Big Dog"--to get Husky its permits. It did so in record time, even though the site violated both the Milton town plan and the regional plan. Concurrently Dr. Dean asked the Legislature to create a program of "economic progress" tax credits for businesses, to be awarded to applicant firms which had obtained Dr. Dean's personal approval. (The Legislature complied, but removed this "Boss Tweed" provision.)
Dr. Dean's leadership of the Legislature was often feeble. The two most important acts of his governorship were the educational finance "reform" of 1997 and the "civil unions" bill of 2000, both mandated by Vermont's ultraliberal Supreme Court. Dr. Dean, now claiming credit for both, was largely AWOL on the issues.
Sen. Jean Ankeny, a very liberal Democrat from Chittenden County, complained in 1997 that "during this legislative session, Democratic legislators have had very little help, let alone leadership from the governor. Indeed his biggest effort has been to constrain those charged with property-tax reform by promising a veto if the income tax is used." During the red-hot civil-unions debate in 2000, Dr. Dean caught early flak from his gay and lesbian supporters for observing that he was uncomfortable with the idea of gay marriage. After that, Dr. Dean steered clear of the battle and eventually signed the bill "in the closet" to make sure there was no photo to follow him around in later political campaigns.
Many Americans are asking what kind of a president Howard Dean would make. Based on his 11 years as governor of Vermont, a reasonable person could fairly conclude that he would not make a very good one. This verdict is not based on his views on particular issues. It is based on a review of his autocratic style, his lack of ability to deal with bureaucratic management and his overwhelming commitment to his own political ambitions rather than to any recognizable principle.
He has run a brilliant pre-primary campaign. He is saying the things that energize the Angry Left of his party. He can boast of executive experience and, at least superficially, some fiscal conservatism. But as chief executive of a multitrillion-dollar enterprise and leader of the most powerful nation in a dangerous world, I believe that most Vermonters who have watched him closely as governor would, after sober reflection, agree that as president Howard Dean would be far, far, over his head.
Mr. McClaughry, a former Vermont state senator, runs the Ethan Allen Institute in Concord, Vt.
