In a city as liberal as Madison, a Democratic candidate should feel more at home than Bill Clinton in a McDonalds. It comes as little surprise, then, that Howard Dean visited UW.

And Dean, with a 45-minute stump speech and occasional Wisconsin joke on the back of a note card, confirmed that it is in the best interest of America for him to receive the Democratic presidential nomination. After all, a Dean vs. Bush election would surely divide this country into thinkers and non-thinkers, and there remains a serious question as to whether any of his non-thinkers know how to successfully cast a ballot (Gore’s certainly didn’t).

But Dean insists that he is no George McGovern, an argument he does little to bolster when he claims, “There are a lot of parallels with the administrations of Richard Millhouse Nixon and George Walker Bush.”

(For those of you not already grasping the irony, McGovern lost to Nixon in 1972.)

Of course, the Democratic candidate has a point; there are similarities. Nixon improved the international atmosphere by opening Red China, and Bush has improved the international atmosphere by removing one of the world’s most oppressive regimes and tyrannical dictators.

But Dean doesn’t approve of the Iraqi war — he is perfectly content to sit around, watch Saddam cleanse a few ethnic groups, deny women rights and menace the civilized world.

In fact, Dean is so pro-Saddam that he faults his leading primary opponents for taking their pro-humanity, anti-terror stands.

(Hunting season within the Democratic Party seems to have finally begun now that candidates’ shots at Bush have proven about as accurate as Gray Davis’ financial projections.)

Dean isn’t a big fan of the embattled Rush Limbaugh, either. Referring to Old Glory, the former Vermont governor insists, “That flag does not belong to John Ashcroft and Rush Limbaugh …”

Not Dean’s finest piece of rhetoric, this quote is either questioning whether the Attorney General and radio personality are, indeed, citizens of the republic, or, in the more likely or tragic scenario, the candidate is suggesting the conservative leaders’ voices shouldn’t be heard.

And kid yourself not: Dean’s attack on Limbaugh is really an assault on free speech.

Rush Limbaugh used ESPN’s NFL pre-game show as a pulpit to criticize the sports media for engaging in what essentially amounts to discriminatory reporting. A simple look at Limbaugh’s comment reveals that it was not an attack on the Philadelphia Eagles’ quarterback, but rather on those who report on him. But, alas, in the overly PC world of Howard Dean, anyone who so much as mentions the word “race” or any of its ugly synonyms is a racist.

Dean, in his stump speech, likens himself to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy. But as long as he remains intolerant of people like Limbaugh who are striving for a colorblind society, the former Vermont governor is truly trampling upon the two civil-rights leaders’ graves.

Dean’s shaky relationship with the First Amendment also produces a bizarre stance on the issue of prayer in school: the candidate says it is a community issue.

On one hand, Dean should be applauded for not taking an absolute stance against the introduction of added values into America’s all-too-frequently immoral schools.

On the other hand, it is a cowardly passing of the buck on the former governor’s part. Whether a moment of silence — or the introduction of an actual prayer — in schools violates the separation of church and state is a constitutional question. It simply doesn’t make sense to argue that Psalm 23:4 is more religious in New Mexico than California or that the word “State” includes schools in Oregon but not South Carolina. Federalism is a wonderful thing — one that conservatives value greatly — but it cannot be used to give our great constitution multiple meanings.

Dean’s bigger constitutional problem, however, comes with the question of whether marijuana should be permitted for medicinal use. The candidate, when ambushed by a crowd member and forced to depart from his prepared speech, admits, “The medical marijuana problem is a bit confusing.” But the former Vermont governor, who is partially pro-pot, doesn’t think that people should have any say in the matter.

That’s right, the man who is hoping to lead the largest democracy in the world is opposed to entrusting his constituents with this question at the ballot box. Just how he would make the decision was left unclear, but it certainly would have no relation to the will of the people. The blind following may be the norm within the Democratic Party, but the thinkers of this country enjoy having their say.

This results in an odd paradox. Dean wants to empower people on the question of prayer in school, something that is a matter of interpreting literature that has stood for over 200 years — but not on the question of legalizing drugs, something that is a matter of creating new literature.

And Dean claims to be the “people’s candidate” — ha!

But Dean did affect one group of ordinary citizens during his rendezvous in Madison: Badger fans. You see, those diehard supporters of the football team who are willing to sleep in the cold for good seats to the Ohio State game were camped out in front of the Kohl Center for days before the presidential candidate came to town. And when the great liberal demagogue arrived, he preached to his masses no more than 50 feet in front of the gridiron campsite.

Is it really okay that UW, a bastion of higher education with no political affiliation, forced its most loyal fans to listen to nearly an hour of liberal propaganda?

But, then again, 60 minutes is better than four years.

Mac VerStandig ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in rhetoric.