Laura Ingraham
The Dean bubble
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |
The Dean Machine, with its fluorescent orange ski caps and
cyber-whizzes all hooked up coast-to coast was supposed to be an
unstoppable force. Like so many others who should have known better, I
bought into the Dean hype. Big time.
Sound familiar?
Can you say "internet bubble"? Through much of the late '90s, millions of
Americans tossed their money into gems like Buy.com, flowers.com, and
com.com without really knowing how these companies were ever going to
turn a profit. We didn't bother to look at the business models. We didn't
care. It was all so exciting-it was a movement. We were told that the "old
rules" of the marketplace didn't apply. Profit-to-earnings ratios of 50 to 1
were not uncommon, 20-something internet execs were becoming
gazillionaires, and the stock prices just kept skyrocketing.
But then reality set in.
It turns out that the old rules did matter. The slick dot-com television ads
couldn't conceal the fact that there was no there there. The bubble burst.
In retrospect, it all seems so obvious. How could so many people have
been fooled for so long?
And so it goes with Howard Dean. In the months leading up to Iowa, many
thought Dean was leading more than a campaign. He was leading a
revolution-a revolution against doing things "the old way." "See Howie use
the internet!" "See Howie mobilize the youth vote!" "Hey, the fact that his
wife isn't on the stump with him is cool!"
Yet cool turned to cold and even to Democrat stalwarts, Dean's "shoot
from the hip" style didn't wear well. (Do we want to trust our future to the
Deaniacs?)
In retrospect, the Dean frenzy should have been seen for what it was-a frenzy. Suddenly, someone like John Kerry seems like the safe, "brick and mortars" candidate for Democrats. Maybe he's not as exciting as Dean, but so what? He's a known quantity. And with so much at stake, bricks and mortars look pretty good.
Counting Dean out-even with his hysterical braying on Monday
night-would be a mistake. Many of the same internet companies that we
were dumping a few years ago have made comebacks. But Dean doesn't
have years, or months. He has a few weeks at most. He will have to learn,
like so many high-tech companies have done, that there is no magic
bullets that guarantee success. Just as high-tech companies have had to
concentrate on actually making a profit, the Dean campaign must
concentrate on translating the enthusiasm from its hardcore activists into
real votes by lots of real Americans.
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JWR contributor Laura Ingraham is the host of a nationally syndicated radio show and the author of the just released "Shut Up and Sing: How Elites from Hollywood, Politics, and the UN are Subverting America". Comment by clicking here.
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