E-Mail This Article to a Friend The Iowa debate The candidates -- finally -- engage in substantive domestic policy debate. Is it too little, too late? BY DAVID S. BERNSTEIN

MONDAY, JANUARY 5, 2004 -- With 15 days to go before the Iowa caucuses, seven of the Democratic Presidential candidates gathered in Johnston, Iowa, for a Des Moines Register debate Sunday afternoon. Frontrunner Howard Dean was, as usual, the object of attack.

But the more important story may lie among the other candidates, who are battling to emerge as the challenger to Dean when the early contests winnow the field. Dick Gephardt, John Edwards, John Kerry, and Joe Lieberman -- call them The Legislators -- engaged, in between the Dean-baiting, in a serious, specific, and substantive debate on a wide range of issues. (Wesley Clark and Al Sharpton did not participate; Dennis Kucinich and Carol Moseley Braun did, but at this point serve only to take time from the other candidates.)

The Legislators laid out interesting and substantive ideas, particularly after the initial Iraq questions gave way to domestic policy issues. A lengthy discussion on free trade showed remarkable appreciation for the difficult nuances of the issue. A health care discussion clearly delineated their different approaches. Iowa caucus-goers looking for a Dean alternative certainly had the opportunity to differentiate among the choices.

Kerry in particular sounded sharp and original on those issues, and again when suggesting a cooperative effort of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration, to address food safety and nutritional issues. (But later, when asked how he would get Southern white men’s votes, he sounded merely pathetic saying "if I’m the nominee, I could always pick a running mate from the South, and we’ll do just fine.")

Edwards abandoned his "above the fray" strategy of the last two months and took some shots at the other candidates. He tried to differentiate himself among the Legislators as the relative outsider. "If you believe we can change America with people who spend most of their lives in politics, or have been in Washington for decades, you have other choices," he said. His grandest attempt failed, however, when he called on Gephardt to join him in supporting lobbyist and campaign finance reform -- and Gephardt did.

For the most part, the battle among the Legislators remained civil, although at one point Gephardt chided the others for voting for NAFTA and a trade agreement with China -- prompting Edwards, Lieberman and Kerry to scold Gephardt in return.

Through all of this, the questions kept coming at Dean, who remained unphased by them -- and unapologetic.

Kerry called out Dean on a variety of controversial foreign-policy statements, concluding that they form a pattern that "raises a serious question about your ability to stand up to George Bush and make Americans feel safe and secure." The litany included Dean’s comments that he can’t pre-judge Osama bin Laden’s guilt; that the US should never go to war without the permission of the United Nations; that we have to prepare for the day when America isn’t the strongest military; that President Bush had prior warning about the September 11 attacks, that the US could have captured Saddam Hussein six months earlier than they did, and that the country is no safer with Saddam captured.

To all of this, Dean responded that "a gaffe in Washington is when you tell the truth and the Washington establishment thinks you shouldn’t have."

At another point panelist Michele Norris of National Public Radio tried to get Dean to acknowledge that his plan to repeal Bush’s tax cuts would cost the middle class -- particularly the child tax credit. Dean simply repeated his mantra that "60 percent of us got a $304 tax cut," which, he says, was more than offset by rising tuition, property tax, and health care. "Middle-class people did not see a tax cut. There was no middle-class tax cut," Dean said.

Dean has been saying this for months, no matter how many times his figures have been discredited. Lieberman sputtered that Dean’s comments were "outrageous," and that the average family of four in Iowa saved $1,800 a year under the tax cuts. Kerry referred snidely to "the [tax cut] for the middle class that Howard’s not aware they got."

On another hot topic, Lieberman demanded that Dean unseal his gubernatorial records, which Dean declined by arguing that doing so might "out" homosexuals who sent him letters in support of Vermont’s civil unions bill. Lieberman rightly called that "an unsatisfactory and disappointing answer" for keeping 10 years’ worth of records sealed.

And on a controversy dating back several months now, Gephardt once again asked Dean to explain his support of the Republicans’ attempt in 1995 to cut Medicare by $270 billion. Dean denied supporting it. Gephardt called him on it: "You gave a speech the night before we voted in the House, and you said you were for the Roth proposal... that would cut [Medicare] by $270 billion." Given a chance for rebuttal, Dean simply said "I don’t have much to rebut."

Dean also rolled out a new and strange doubly-false allegation. Talking about health care, he said "all these folks are talking about they’re going to do health care and they’re going to balance the budget. I’m the only one that’s actually ever balanced a budget here."

None of the other candidates have promised to balance the budget, and most have specifically rejected the idea that it can be done in the near term. (In fact, Dean himself promised to balance the budget "in the sixth or seventh year of my administration.") Secondly, Edwards, Gephardt, Kerry, and Lieberman were all in Congress passing balanced federal budgets from 1998 through 2001 – a fact that Gephardt quickly pointed out during the debate.

Whether any of this will hurt Dean remains to be seen -- as well as which, if any, of the other candidates can benefit.