Dean rallies for Obama at UW-Stout

Last modified: Thursday, October 2, 2008 2:00 PM CDT

Dean rallies for Obama at UW-Stout

MENOMONIE — They didn’t get much notice. But more than 200 from the campus and community alike gathered at the University of Wisconsin-Stout’s Memorial Student Center to listen to former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean on the subject of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

The chairman of the the Democratic National Committee delivered a compact speech Wednesday afternoon that addressed several key issues and concerns — starting, of course, with the state of the economy.

“Frankly, I don’t think anybody gives a damn, except for the executives, if Washington Mutual gets folded into Citicorp or whoever it is,” Dean said, noting that the country’s economy, however, depends on a functioning banking system. “This is not a matter of whether we give a damn of what happens on Wall Street. We only give a damn what happens on Wall Street because it effects everybody else in the country.”

The ready availability of healthcare and health insurance, Dean told the group, is also crucial to the health of the economy.

“Senator Obama has a plan, at long last, that will allow America to join the rest of the industrialized democracies in the world and have a healthcare plan that works for everybody,” he said. “This is not just about doing the right thing for the American people. We are losing jobs because of this. ... In Detroit a couple of years ago ... big headlines: General Motors invests $2 billion in Windsor, Ontario — right across the border.

“Why? Because they have a healthcare system that the companies and the workers don’t have to pay for. They pay for it indirectly through taxes,” he continued. “It doesn’t go up at three times the rate of inflation every year like it does here. It’s not just a matter of losing jobs to China in our automobile industry. We’re losing the jobs to Canada. We need a healthcare system that covers everybody and that works in the United States of America.”

Dean slammed the Republicans at the recent convention in St. Paul for “making fun” of community organizers.

“A community organizer isn’t just somebody who works on the south side of Chicago,” he said, referring to Obama’s early career following his graduation from law school. “A community organizer is somebody who’s on the library board ... on the PTA ... who coached Sarah Palin’s son on the hockey team ... anybody who works hard in their community to bring people together on issues that matter. Small towns are made up of community organizers who knit together a society so that we’re all in this together.”

Before anything else can get done, however, the next president is faced with two important jobs, Dean said.

First is the healing of America and ending what he called 30 years of “ugly, divisive anger and hate-based campaigning. … If you have to win an election by making everybody mad at a particular group … then you are doing something that’s great at winning elections – what I call the Slobodan Milosevic approach to American elections.”

In addition to treating each other better, Dean said Americans need to treat each other differently as well.

“If we had disagreements with each other, we need leadership that will work to heal those disagreements — not that will exploit them for their own personal gain,” he said. “Healing America and bringing us together to find common cause is a big deal. And I think that only Barack Obama can do that.”

Restoring America’s moral authority, Dean claimed, is the second job facing the new president. Explaining why that matters, he said, “There are a lot of people in Wisconsin who make things that we sell to people all over the world. You know … you would prefer to buy something from somebody you like rather than somebody you don’t like. It matters to have America respected and have the American president respected, because it keeps jobs here in America, making things we can sell to other people to offset all that foreign oil we’re bringing in.”

Moral authority, Dean added, is also important when it comes to defending the United States.

“The reason America won the Cold War is not just because we had a big military budget and well-trained troops,” he explained. “It’s because we had the moral high ground. And what we were selling, despite whatever imperfections we have as a country … to the rest of the world was a vision of hope, democracy, opportunity, human rights and human dignity.”

Concluding his 20-minute talk, Dean spoke to the students in the crowd, quoting John F. Kennedy and telling them that the time has come to “pass the torch” to a new generation.

“Our generation was confrontational. We were fighting against an establishment that didn’t believe in any of the things we believed in,” he admitted, adding, “The message that your generation is about is to stop fighting about the things you can’t agree on and start doing something about the things you do agree on. You see the world differently and see America differently. It’s time to actualize your vision of the world.”

Barbara Lyon is editor of the Dunn County News in Menomonie.