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Throughout the '90s, Dean was a close Clinton watcher. Like Clinton, Dean used a political strategy of triangulation. On one hand, Dean alienated progressives by tightening spending and successfully pushing tax cuts. "Howard would start [each budget cycle] by cutting programs for the needy, things like wheelchairs and artificial limbs," says state auditor Elizabeth Ready, who has been both friend and foe to Dean. Horrified liberals would have to claw each benefit back from the tightfisted Governor. But at election time, Dean marginalized Republicans by appealing to socially liberal groups like environmentalists. "Every year, as the first thing in his budget, [Dean] put $10 million aside for conservation," says Don Hooper, a Vermont conservationist.
As President, Dean would ask Congress to repeal all the tax cuts Bush signed, which would have the effect of raising--in some cases dramatically--Americans' tax bills. Dean opposes the tax cuts because he believes they have produced deficits, but his planned tax "hike" is one of the most damning exhibits Republicans will use in making the case that he is an out-of-touch liberal.
So is he a liberal, a conservative or something in between? The answer is, all of the above. Dean is constantly attacking "ideologues in both parties," which allows him to choose what he thinks is the best of all worlds.Take health care. Again, Dean learned from Clinton. In the early '90s, Dean was arguably the Governor most involved in helping shape the huge, doomed Clinton health-care plan. During the 1994 State of the Union address, according to the Burlington Free Press, Dean was sitting just behind Hillary Rodham Clinton, the plan's major architect. Dean claims he doesn't remember the event and even at the time thought the plan was overly ambitious. Today, nine years after HillaryCare imploded, Dean is preaching the virtues of incrementalism.
"My health-care plan is not reform," he said last month in Hampton, N.H., "and if reform is all you care about, I'm not your man. My plan is designed to do two things: cover everyone and get passed." Dean would expand existing programs to make sure those under 25 are insured. He would also give tax credits to businesses that agree to insure 25-and-over workers. "It's a way to cover a lot of the uninsured, but it doesn't have the flavor of a single national plan that people would associate with most liberal Democratic candidates," says Robert Blendon, a Harvard professor of health policy.
But Dean says nothing will happen on health care (or any other issue, for that matter) until he works out a plan to balance the budget, his No. 1 priority. And some Vermonters say even if he does tackle health care, his record on that issue has plenty of shortcomings. Critic Michael Abajian, an anesthesiologist at Central Vermont Medical Center, says Dean paid to cover uninsured Vermonters mainly by underreimbursing doctors for care given to Medicaid patients. "It's so hypocritical to say he wants to provide universal coverage and turn around and not even pay the people who would provide the health care," says Abajian.