Tracking The Candidates -- Howard Dean:

If you visit this site often, you know I try to balance posts that reflect my opinions with posts that can help inform you about the issues as you consider your own opinions. In this vein, I'm launching Tracking The Candidates. With Tracking The Candidates I'll supplement each week's posts with content that reflects the views and activities of a particular Democratic presidential candidate (while keeping my smartass opinions to myself). In doing so I'll try to present unbiased information that can inform your (and my) opinions, and where I do link to criticism, I will try to balance that link with one from the other side of the fence.

This week's lucky candidate: Howard Dean.

We'll start with the February 21 Dean speech to Democratic National Committee winter meeting. This speech generated a lot of press coverage, not only for its policy content, but also for the very enthusiastic response it produced among the audience and Democratic pundits nationwide, in part because of these lines:

What I want to know . . . is why in the world the Democratic Party leadership is supporting the President's unilateral attack on Iraq?

What I want to know . . . is why are Democratic leaders supporting tax cuts? The question is not how big the tax cut should be -- the question should be: Can we afford a tax cut at all with the largest deficit in the history of the country?

What I want to know . . . is why we're fighting in Congress about the Patient's Bill of Rights when the Democratic Party ought to be standing up for health care for every man, woman and child in this country?

What I want to know . . . is why our folks are voting for the President's No Child Left Behind bill that leaves every child behind, every teacher behind, every school board behind and every property tax payer behind?

I'm Howard Dean. And I'm here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party!"

Indeed, on Face The Nation the following Sunday Bob Schieffer said:

It is a long way from knowing who the Democrats' nominee will be, but if I were one of those other candidates, I'd start keeping an eye on Howard Dean.

You can read the text of the speech here, and you can visit the "Dean For America" website here. More to come ... the Dean Watch has begun.