Bush Advisers, With Eye on Dean, Formulate ’04 Plans

President Bush’s campaign has settled on a plan to run against Howard Dean that would portray him as reckless, angry and pessimistic, while framing the 2004 election as a referendum on the direction of the nation more than on the president himself, Mr. Bush’s aides say. …

As a Bush strategist put it, Dr. Dean’s rivals are ”doing a great job for us” with their increasingly tough attacks on him. …

Mr. Bush’s campaign aides left little doubt that if Dr. Dean captured the nomination, those Democratic criticisms would be put to service in Republican television advertisements next year, a tactic that would fit with the White House’s general goal of keeping Mr. Bush personally above the partisan fray.

Bush wants a ‘referendum on the direction of the nation’? Fine: is this nation going to move farther to the right than any time since Joseph McCarthy? Are we going to let the President amass more power than any time since the Civil War? Are we going to let the Radical Right completely dismantle the New Deal and the Great Society? Bush is no Teddy Roosevelt; Bush is right of Nixon and more dangerously deceptive. mjh