There was an interesting flap at the end of last week regarding Howard Dean and whether or not he supports changing the retirement age. The controversy generated a number of questions that may linger for a while.<\/p>\n
Last Tuesday, at a candidate forum hosted by the AFL-CIO, Dennis Kucinich criticized Dean for having supported moving the retirement age to 68, or possibly even 70. Before a union audience like this one, it’s a pretty important accusation.<\/p>\n
Dean responded forcefully and without hesitation, saying he wanted to “tell everybody that I have never favored Social Security retirement at the age of 70, nor do I favor one of 68.”<\/p>\n
Was Dean telling the truth? No.<\/p>\n
In 1995, Dean praised then-Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) for recommending changing the retirement age to 70. At the time, Dean said, “I believe that Sen. Packwood is on exactly the right track.” A month later, Dean said “moving the retirement age to 70” was a way to help reduce the deficit and balance the budget.<\/p>\n
If you’re thinking these comments were over eight years ago, and Dean has probably long since forgotten about saying this, I’d point out that Tim Russert on Meet the Press reminded Dean of the comments just a couple of months ago.<\/p>\n
And as for Dean’s comment that doesn’t favor a retirement age of 68, this flatly contradicts what he said just six weeks ago. “I would also entertain taking the retirement age up to 68,” Dean said.<\/p>\n
Dean’s lies in response to Kucinich’s charge led Slate to label this their “whopper of the week<\/a>.” In terms of handling this kind of controversy, I think Dean did the right thing. If you say something wrong, acknowledge it, say what you mean, and move on. That’s what Dean did and his efficient response helped minimize the impact of the story. Thomas Oliphant at the Boston Globe chastised Dean<\/a> for his “false denial,” and criticized Dean’s “first instinct…to cover up and fudge,” but most political reporters ignored the story.<\/p>\n I continue to believe, however, that this is part of a disturbing trend. Dean is constantly telling voters that he’s a straight shooter who tells it like it is. Dean’s supporters refer to this quality as a principal reason to back his campaign.<\/p>\n The problem is, however, that Dean keeps giving critics reasons to believe he’s anything but a “straight talk” candidate. It’s not just the “misstatement” about the Social Security retirement age. It’s been going on for months.<\/p>\n He’s flip-flopped on the death penalty<\/a>, contradicted himself on North Korea<\/a>, wavered in his position on war in Iraq<\/a>, lied about John Edwards’ speech<\/a> to the California Dem Convention, tried to convince Tim Russert that saying “I’m sorry” isn’t actually an apology<\/a>, switched his position on repealing Bush’s tax cuts<\/a> more than once, vacillated on whether he wants a Balanced Budget Amendment<\/a> to the Constitution, and says he’s “never thought about”<\/a> whether he supports gay marriage.<\/p>\n Straight shooter? I don’t think so.<\/p>\n Of course, if I know about all of these Dean mistakes, I guarantee<\/i> the Republicans do. If the GOP convinced the country that Al Gore was a serial exaggerator for things he didn’t even say, what do you suppose Karl Rove and the RNC will do to Dean with things he actually did say?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There was an interesting flap at the end of last week regarding Howard Dean and whether or not he supports changing the retirement age. The controversy generated a number of questions that may linger for a while. Last Tuesday, at a candidate forum hosted by the AFL-CIO, Dennis Kucinich criticized Dean for having supported moving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nHow did the campaign react to the revelation? Quickly and wisely. Dean announced the next day<\/a> that he had “misspoken” at the AFL-CIO event. He did, in fact, make the remarks in 1995, and was therefore wrong about saying that he “never favored” the change, but he added that he no longer agreed with that sentiment.<\/p>\n