{"id":535,"date":"2004-01-14T00:46:54","date_gmt":"2004-01-14T08:46:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/01\/14\/a-vote-for-dean-is-a-vote-for-bush\/"},"modified":"2004-01-14T00:46:54","modified_gmt":"2004-01-14T08:46:54","slug":"a-vote-for-dean-is-a-vote-for-bush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=535","title":{"rendered":"A Vote for Dean is a Vote for Bush"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Campos argues<\/a> that Howard Dean “is, socially speaking, practically the same person as the current president.”<\/p>\n

Both men are the scions of old money East Coast WASP families of the sort where anyone who is anybody is everybody else’s third cousin (indeed, Bush’s grandmother was a bridesmaid at Dean’s grandmother’s wedding). Both went to exclusive prep schools, and then to Yale, where both were what might be described charitably as indifferent students.<\/p>\n

Both spent a good deal of time after college in the sort of aimless drifting engaged in by the hopeless poor and the idle rich. […] Both men assiduously avoided combat during the Vietnam War, by legal though morally dubious means, and both eventually decided to accept the immense privileges that their families insisted on handing them (Bush was more or less given a large ownership share in the Texas Rangers baseball club, while Dean was admitted to medical school despite his dismal academic record).<\/p>\n

In other words, both Dean and Bush have lived lives that are monuments to class privilege. To be a Bush or a Dean means that you can spend much of your life failing to do your homework, while still having the option of growing up someday, and, with daddy’s help, becoming a doctor, or a governor, or a president.<\/p><\/div>\n

Of course, Campos is stretching to make his point – there’s a world of difference between help getting into med school (even if that’s true, passing med school and building a career as a doctor are legitimate accomplishments) and being more-or-less given a baseball team in exchange for family connections. Still, Dean vs. Bush is not exactly a stirring choice for those who dream of a classless society..<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paul Campos argues that Howard Dean “is, socially speaking, practically the same person as the current president.” Both men are the scions of old money East Coast WASP families of the sort where anyone who is anybody is everybody else’s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-site-and-admin-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}