George Will smears Howard Dean

Posted at 11:08 AM ET, 01/11/2011

By Greg Sargent

George Will has a column today denouncing those who are hoping to use the Arizona shooting to spark some introspection about the tone of our discourse. He calls such people "charlatans" and accuses them of "political opportunism" and "McCarthyism."

One of the primary pieces of evidence for the charge is Will's claim that Howard Dean supposedly called Tea Partyers racist:

Three days before Tucson, Howard Dean explained that the Tea Party movement is "the last gasp of the generation that has trouble with diversity." Rising to the challenge of lowering his reputation and the tone of public discourse, Dean smeared Tea Partyers as racists: They oppose Obama's agenda, Obama is African American, ergo...

Let us hope that Dean is the last gasp of the generation of liberals whose default position in any argument is to indict opponents as racists. This McCarthyism of the left -- devoid of intellectual content, unsupported by data -- is a mental tic, not an idea but a tactic for avoiding engagement with ideas.

It didn't take long to dig up what Dean actually said:

Dean, the former Vermont governor known for his no-holds-barred demeanor, was careful at The Christian Monitor-sponsored breakfast for reporters to add that he didn't view tea party activists as "racist." But he suggested that discomfort with the election of the first African-American president and an increasingly diverse electorate largely fueled the movement.

"I think it's the last gasp of the 55-year-old generation...a group of older folks who've seen their lives change dramatically,'' he said. "The country is not the same...and all of a sudden it's here for them and they don't know what to do...Every morning when they see the president they are reminded that things are totally different than they were when they were born and I think that has a lot to do with it."

"Economic uncertainty fuels this but this is the last gasp of the generation that has trouble with diversity,'' Dean added. "The tea party is almost entirely over 55 and white, and the country has changed dramatically as a result of what happened in 2008 and it's not going back. Every day that goes on, the demographic change continues, and that's what a lot of this is about."

In other words, Dean explicitly didn't call Tea Partyers racist. Rather, he was arguing that demographic change and economic uncertainty are among the factors creating the unease in Tea Party ranks. That's a blunt point, to be sure, but even those who strongly disagree with it would have to agree -- if they're being intellectually honest -- that Will's depiction of it has no basis in reality. I'd say Will's casual misrepresentation of Dean's words does far more to lower the "tone of public discourse" than anything Dean said. 

By Greg Sargent  | January 11, 2011; 11:08 AM ET