If Chewbacca Lives on Endor...

Although a few days ago many were mourning the demise of the Dean campaign, that campaign is far from over. For several days last week the media—intentionally or not—almost assassinate Dean's campaign with a variation on the Chewbacca Defense, which was more like a Chewbacca Indictment and went something like this:

Voters of this supposed America, Howard Dean's supporters would certainly want you to believe that he is a great candidate for president with the best vision for America's future and the best ability to realize that vision, and they make a good case. Hell, I almost supported him myself. But Voters of this supposed America, I have one final thing I want you to consider.

[Roll tape of Dean's post-caucus Iowa speech.] Voters, this is Howard Dean screaming at the top of his hoarse voice. Howard Dean is not a plastic person who has compromised with special interests for decades and missed a majority of his Senate voites. And Howard Dean is not a cipher who's not sure from day to day where his loyalties lie. Now think about it. That does not make sense. Why would Howard Dean, a former governor of Vermont, yell at the top of his hoarse voice to be heard over a cheering, raucous crowd? That does not make sense.

But more important, you have to ask yourself what does this have to do with whether Dean would make a great candidate, and whether he could defeat Bush. Nothing. Ladies and Gentlemen, it has nothing to do with your decision about who to vote for. It does not make sense. Look at me. I'm the media working for a major communications conglomerate that benefits from the most sensational news we can find or create, and I'm talkin' about someone screaming to be heard at a raucous rally. Does that make sense? Ladies and Gentlemen I am not making any sense. None of this makes sense.

And so you have to remember when you're in that voting box deliberating and conjugating the Emancipation Proclamation, does it make sense? No. Voters of this supposed America, it does not make sense. If Howard Dean screamed in Iowa, you must not support Howard Dean.

I know he seems like a terrific candidate, a fresh face with courage and conviction and great ideas and the most inspirational and populist campaign in modern history. But Voters, this is him screaming. Now think about that for one minute. That does not make sense. Why am I talking about screaming when the future of the United States is on the line? Why? I'll tell you why. I don't know. It doesn't make sense. If screaming does not make sense you must indict. Here look at the monkey , look at the silly monkey.

The media never rests.

But hey, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me—we've seen this tactic before, and most of us aren't falling for it this time. Thanks largely to Thursday's New Hampshire debate, followed by the homerun Dean and his wife hit in their interview with Diane Sawyer, Dean's back in the hunt.

Already beginning yesterday morning, Dean's Monday night, post-caucus speech began being referred to by some as only a "memorably loud speech," rather than a "screech" or a "yowl" or whatever. See the speech for yourself, in context, in this video shot from down in the crowd. Also check out Dave Winer's explanation of the speech:

So Dean gets a bit whacky, but after seeing it so many times, the shock value is fading. Taken at face value it wasn't anger, it was a steam-letting, and an attempt to rally the troops, and totally understandable. The press, as usual, is making a big deal of catching a candidate being a human being. But that's what he is. He's not an actor, he's not a commercial, he's not a deodorant, he's not a product, and I'm glad we have a chance to have this discussion. I'm not a Dean supporter (yet, but I'm getting there) and they didn't ask me to say this, but please, it's time for the press to let us have an election, or maybe it's time for us to have an election without them.

So yeah, Dean gave a rousing speech, but I simply don't understand why it was remarkable in any way except to show that Dean and his supporters were undaunted by the results of the Iowa caucus. Look at the definition of campaign—"An operation or series of operations energetically pursued to accomplish a purpose"—and then explain how and why people made such a big deal over this.

But as we put this behind this behind us, it's worth taking a look at the bright sides, and there are many. First, among the many, many audio remixes of the so-called "I have a scream" speech, a few are actually pretty good.

Another bright side: Now that Dean supporters have seen such a vivid example of how the media can twist and blow up any single image and soundbite to destroy a candidate, those who stuck with Dean, and even those who wavered and returned, as well as those who come to support him in the future—all of us have been handed a great lesson in what it will take to win the nomination and the White House. We need not excuse every foible or mistake, but we can't rely on the media to tell us what to think of what happens on the campaign either. Like Winer said, perhaps it's time to have a campaign without the media.

Final bright side: The inspiration of those who didn't let all the spin get to them, but spun right back to turn the speech into a great thing for the campaign. On the official Dean Campaign blog, one person who was at the post-caucus party in Iowa where Dean made his infamous speech describes what it was like to be there (the comment is about a dozen from the top):

I was there, and when I first heard the crowd, I wasn't in the mood. I was tired, I was depressed from watching the returns, and I felt like my effort was for nothing.

And then Howard took the stage, and I started to get more pumped. I remembered why I'd come to Iowa. And I don't care what the pundits say about that yawp. Man, that was what Walt Whitman talked about. "I sound my barbaric yawp from the rooftops of the world." We needed to hear that yawp.

I can't think of anything Howard could've said that would've pleased the crowd, the pundits, and the people watching on tv. I'm glad he spoke to us. He'll be speaking with the rest of the country all this week. That night, he was looking out for the people who'd given their time and energy for him.

And that's why I'm a Dean supporter. On to California!

Posted by [removed] at January 22, 2004 01:35 AM

(The commenter seems to be affiliated with Cyclists for Dean, which is planning a coast-to-coast Ride to Take Back America! Now that is my kind of campaigning. Do I really need legal experience this summer? Can't I just ride my bike across the country with a bunch of Dean supporters? ;-))

From another comment, a little further down in the thread, comes a well-written version of the best take on the speech:

It's our democracy he's fighting for, damn it.  Being emotionally engaged in something of such high stakes is no flaw, in my opinion.  There's a time to be deliberative and detached... and there's a time to be activated and engaged. Among his supporters, after such a blow, he became as impassioned as many motivational speakers I've seen... and more authentically so because it was spontaneous.

At the risk of sounding "intemperate" myself: If you're not angry about what Bush has done to the environment, education, foreign relations, U.S. workers, our judiciary, and on and on; if you're filled with passion to send this administration packing and get the U.S. back on a sustainable and sane path, you're just not paying attention.

Posted 09:43 AM | Comments (6) | election 2004

Grades.

Four out of five are in, and they're fine. Not awful, I don't think, but clearly not great. It's hard to tell; how fine are the distinctions between "bad" and "ok"? I assume some of our profs will be giving us grade distributions sometime soon so we can all see more precisely where we fall in the pecking order, because that matters, right? And, of course, the torts grade remains a mystery, and I suppose it could change the overall outcome significantly downward, but I doubt it. I put in the same sort of performance in that class and exam as in the others, so I assume the results will be similar.

Thanks to everyone for the comments about how grades are working at other schools. My only real concern with the fact that grades come so late at GW (and apparently at many other schools, as well) is that there's so much money on the line. If law school tuition weren't extortionate, it would be a different story; but that's not the world we live in.

In the end, I guess it's no big deal. I'm sure having to wait three weeks into a semester for last semester's grades will end up ranking among the least of the annoyances with which I'll have dealt by the time law school is over. Perspective, right? As Transmogriflaw pointed out in his comment, the real problem is simply the obsession with grades in law school. His analysis, I think, is spot-on—the legal world simply has few other ways to divide and categorize students, so grades take on an inordinate importance. However, it's not that there are no other evaluative measures; what about participation in extracurriculars, performance on skills boards, work and volunteer experience, former career and educational experience, etc? So perhaps it's not a lack of measures, but a culture of quantification that only understands measures when they're reduced to hard numbers. Of course, these difficult-to-quantify measures might not be very good predictors of success in the practice of law, but are grades really good predictors of that?

Posted 08:33 AM | Comments (9) | law school