美国社会热点/名家漫画赏析W.D.White(美)

　　The long-running race for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination has involved as many as nine different candidates. On 27 January the first primary election will be held, in the northeastern state of New Hampshire. The favorite, Dr Howard Dean, is the former governor (1991-2003) of the neighboring state of Vermont. His candidacy received a boost when former Vice President Albert Gore on December 8 publicly urged Democrats to rally behind Dean. David Horsey's cartoon betrays annoyance with Gore's effort to bring the struggle within the Democratic Party to an early end and refocus energy on defeating George Bush.

　　Howard Dean was born in 1948 into a wealthy New York family rather similar to the aristocratic Anglo-Saxon Bush clan in nearby Connecticut. Like George Bush, he got his BA at Yale University, graduating in 1971 (both Bush and Dean currently have a daughter at Yale too). After a couple of years out of school Dean went on to get an MD at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine in New York, where he met and in 1981 married Judith Steinberg, a Jewish New Yorker with a BS from Princeton. Dr Dean and Dr Steinberg began to practice medicine in the small, beautiful state of Vermont, where Dean quickly developed an interest in local politics. When he was elected governor in 1991, his wife chose to continue her medical practice.

　　Many governors have gone on to become presidential candidates: Clinton was governor of Arkansas, Bush, of Texas. Howard Dean was an effective and immensely popular governor, but the population of Vermont is very small (630,000) and almost entirely of European descent, predominately British and French. Thus governing the state does not provide much experience relevant to the complex tasks of the American presidency.

　　Dean is a vigorous speaker with strong opinions, often expressed with vehemence and a tendency to oversimplification; he looks good on TV despite his short stature. He has made masterful use of the internet to galvanize left-wing Democrats and anti-Bush independents. Democratic strategists worry, however, that he may be unable to broaden his appeal -- or that he will lose his core supporters if he moves to the Clintonian center.

　　Key Republicans have long said that Dean is the man they want to see opposing Bush next fall. Americans tend to respect doctors, but Republicans think Dean will be too critical and sound too intellectual on the stump①. People have noted his habit of using complex sentences and a somewhat literary vocabulary in public speaking -- like Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton in private, and certainly not like George Bush in public or private②!

　　①“那么，我们会过一个美好的圣诞节，过一个有趣的新年除夕夜。之后，在二月，我们就可以开始考虑想要哪个民主党人当总统了。”②报纸大标题：戈尔支持迪恩，小标题：“一切都结束了，”专家们说。