William Safire comments on Dean's Urban Legend:
The persistence of a quotation he insists is an "urban legend" is evidently infuriating Howard Dean.Poor baby! Hmm, but what did Deano actually say?
At lunch last week in the Washington bureau of The Times, the reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg identified herself and started to ask a question. Dr. Dean immediately interrupted: "I want to quickly jump on you for a sec here," he said sharply, and referred to an article she had written based on an interview with Senator John McCain in which yesteryear's maverick took issue with a reported remark of Dr. Dean's.
"I never said that. I never said that," the man from Vermont insisted. "McCain claimed I said that on television. We called the station and said we never said that. This is the problem with LexisNexis. It's great, but it circulates urban legends and creates them and I had never said that. . . ."
What was the "that"? Dean angrily denied being "soft on the death of Uday and Qusay. That was something McCain said, and it got quoted in my story and I've been a victim of it ever since. McCain said I said it. We talked and called the station and said we never said any such thing."
What horrendous McCain smear was quoted in my colleague's story? Here's the passage in The Times, coming after McCain said that Dean's national security positions "are way out of the mainstream":
"For instance, Mr. McCain cited Dr. Dean's remark that `the ends do not justify the means,' in reference to the death of Saddam Hussein's sons. `I was astounded,' the senator said. `The ends were to get rid of two murdering rapist thugs and the means was the use of American military intelligence.' "
Before joining Dean in castigating McCain for putting words in his mouth, I went to Google and keyed in "ends justify the means" and "Dean." To my astonishment, amid the 368 hits was this Associated Press dispatch by Holly Ramer from Manchester, N.H., dated July 22, 2003:Game, set, match. Although as Safire observes, the spin will change from "I didn't say that" to "taken out of context."
"Questioned about the deaths of Saddam's sons, Odai and Qusai, in Iraq, Dean dismissed suggestions that it was a victory for the Bush administration. `It's a victory for the Iraqi people . . . but it doesn't have any effect on whether we should or shouldn't have had a war,' Dean said. `I think in general the ends do not justify the means.' "
On the day this A.P. story appeared, McCain was asked on MSNBC for his reaction to Dean's reaction to the killing of Saddam's murderous sons: "I am astonished. A lot of people have compared me with Governor Dean. I could not disagree with him more to say that the ends don't justify the means. . . . Mr. Dean does the nation a great disservice when he doesn't recognize how wonderful an event this is and how important it is to the morale of the troops."
Mr. Poor Impulse Control is going to have to watch those Freudian slips.
