Several conservative outlets, including the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times, are abuzz with word that Howard Dean mistakenly referred to Russia as the “Soviet Union” on MSNBC’s Hardball this week. As far as I can tell, Dean did mess up, but I think there’s a little more to this.
On Monday, Dean enjoyed a well-received appearance with Chris Matthews. There were several questions about foreign policy, but Dean handled most of them without much trouble.
Early on, in discussing U.S. efforts against terrorists, Dean mentioned that we’re “not spending money…on buying the enriched uranium stocks of the former Soviet Union. If that stuff gets in terrorist hands, we have a major national security problem.” So far, so good.
A little while later, Dean addressed foreign policy towards Iran. Here’s where he got into a little trouble.
“Iran is a more complex problem because the problem support as clearly verifiable as it is in North Korea,” Dean said. “Also, we have less-fewer levers much the key, I believe, to Iran is pressure through the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is supplying much of the equipment that Iran, I believe, most likely is using to set itself along the path of developing nuclear weapons. We need to use that leverage with the Soviet Union and it may require us to buying the equipment the Soviet Union was ultimately going to sell to Iran to prevent Iran from them developing nuclear weapons.”
That’s four references to the “Soviet Union,” without the requisite “former” before the name.
Dean’s conservative critics chuckled. The Wall Street Journal Online’s James Taranto said, “That’s four times Dean mentioned the Soviet Union — a country that hasn’t existed for almost 12 years.”
Obviously, this was just a careless mistake, compounded by the fact that Dean repeated the error four times in one answer. But in all fairness, can anyone seriously believe that Dean does not know that Russia is no longer the Soviet Union? Of course not. It was a slip of the tongue; nothing more.
For me, however, the reason this is of any interest at all is because of Dean’s sudden cockiness about the scope of his foreign policy knowledge.
As the Washington Post reported on Monday, Dean held a town hall meeting in New Hampshire over the weekend in which he said, “Mr. President, if you’ll pardon me, I’ll teach you a little about defense.”
While I have little doubt that Bush has plenty to learn about almost everything, it was a little surprising to hear Dean, who has no foreign policy or defense experience, boast about his abilities to offer lessons on the subject.
Likewise, at another New Hampshire event over the weekend, Dean attacked the Bush administration for waging war in Iraq based on the decisions of advisors who never served in the military. That may be at least partially accurate, but it overlooks the fact that Dean could have served in Vietnam, but chose to go skiing instead.
My point is, if Dean wants to hold himself out as an expert in foreign policy and defense, fine. But if he does, he should be prepared to be ridiculed for calling Russia the Soviet Union four times on national television.