When did Howard Dean peel the "Question Authority" bumper sticker off his Volvo? On Syria, we've already seen the likes of Nancy Pelosi making like George Patton. Now of all people comes mega-dove Dean, credulously claiming that we should support President Obama's decision to attack Syria . . . because he knows more about the situation than we do.
Dean's astounding assertion came during a clash with Joe Scarborough on today's Morning Joe. Scarborough hit Howard where it hurts, telling him he sounded like Paul Wolfowitz defending President Bush's decision to go to war against Iraq. View the video after the jump.
Dean had incited Scarborough by rejecting as "Washington hooey" the panel's criticism of Obama's fathomless fecklessness on Syria.
While Scarborough made the Wolfowitz analogy, I was reminded of one of my first moments of political consciousness. As a kid in the 1960s, I listened as my adult relatives sat around the dining room table debating Vietnam. I recall my beloved Aunt Gertrude arguing that we should support President Johnson because he surely had information to which we weren't privy. Even then, the assertion struck me as dubious. Today, the notion that we should trust President Barack 'It Ain't Me, Babe' Obama is nothing short of a very bad joke.
NOTE: Here was Dean in 2003, arguing against the war in Iraq: "Even the largest, most sophisticated military in the history of the world cannot be expected to go to war against every evil dictator who may possess chemical weapons." H/t FReeper Lockbox.
HOWARD DEAN: I think we've engaged here in this conversation in a little bit of what I would call Washington hooey.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Give me a break, Howard. You know what? Give me a break.
DEAN: It is Washington hooey. This is the blame game.
SCARBOROUGH: Save it for somebody else. You're on the wrong show. You're on the wrong show.
DEAN: Let's get to the knitty gritty of what's going on here. What are we to do? So the first assumption you have to make, question you have to ask is, do we belong in Syria? Is there a reason for us to go in? Some people say it's none of our business. I say when kids are getting killed, it's always our business and the next question is what can we do about it? Now the fact of the matter is, I was very happy to criticize the President when he did health care reform. I know a lot about it. I've had a lot more experience about it than probably most the people that wrote the bill. In this situation, the President of the United States is the only person who knows all the facts except for a few of his advisors.
SCARBOROUGH: But just five minutes ago, you said the president knows more than we do; we really need to trust him to make this tough decision. You sound just like Paul Wolfowitz back in 2002. Don't ever trust that the president has more information than we do and that we can't sit back and be baffled by this man trying to pretend that he is a passive actor on the world stage when he is the one that has framed the outlines of this debate and has put us in the position we're in.
