February Issue Of Rolling Stone Magazine Cover Story On
Demo Howard Dean, MD Jann S. Wenner and Will Dana
Interview Sez:
"In Iowa, an unnamed Democratic group was running ads
against you that somehow implied that your policies would
help Osama bin Laden.
I'm disturbed by the Democratic attack ads. When we find
out who's running them, they're going to be unelectable, and
they'll have no future in politics.
Why's that?
Because they're being funded by enormous special-interest
groups -- we don't know who they are yet. That is the old
Democratic Party, the Democratic Party that can't possibly
win. If you're a politician who relies on special interests,
trying to run against the president, who relies on special
interests, you really don't have much of a case to be
president.
You criticized the president for not standing up to Saudi
Arabia. What would you do to confront the Saudis?
First of all, I'd get off foreign oil. All it means is enormous
investment in renewables. Wind -- the Danes get twenty
percent of all their electricity from wind. We can do
something very close to that. Solar -- you've got to change the
tax laws and have a massive effort to do that. Oil conservation
-- if you had the same mileage requirements for SUVs and
trucks as you did for the rest of the fleet, every year you'd
save the entire amount of oil that's supposed to be in the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
What do you think is George Bush's philosophy? What
motivates him?
George Bush's philosophy is, "If you're rich, you deserve it,
and if you're poor, you deserve it." That's not my philosophy.
The Republican Party has become the official party of the
religious right.
There's nothing wrong with being religious, and there's
nothing wrong with having religious people lobbying the
government. What's wrong is to have anyone in this country
be able to inflict their religious views on somebody else who
doesn't share their religion.
How do you feel about the president's policy of limiting
stem-cell research? Do you think he did that to mollify his
supporters on the religious right?
I don't know what drove the president to his restrictions on
stem-cell research. But I can tell you: This president should
never get the vote of any family with a diabetic in it, under
any circumstances, because of what he's done to dash the
hopes of small children of recovering. And not just diabetes
but all manner of potentially curable diseases. I think his
slavish adherence to anti-scientific thinking is costing people
their lives and their hopes all over the country.
How about John Ashcroft?
He doesn't represent the mainstream. He doesn't care, and
he believes he literally has the God-given right to enforce his
views on every other American.
Irrespective of what the Constitution says?
That's what I believe. You'd never get them to admit that,
but that's what they're up to. This administration intends to
remake America by appointing judges who will rewrite the
Constitution by their court decisions.
These guys are not driven by real-world considerations.
They're driven by an ideological view of the country, which
they believe, literally, it's their God-given right to inflict on
everybody else. And this election's going to show, I hope, that
it's not their God-given right, and that we don't want it."
LINK:
Full Excerpts From Rolling Stone Howard Dean Interview
1:18:45 PM
