An evening with Howard Dean right here in Dsseldorf, of all places

[DFW]

16. Follow up after breakfast--you'll want to consider some of this

We only had an hour before we had to go our separate ways.

We talked about Russian interference in South Ossetia, Georgia (Tbilisi, not Atlanta), Macedonia, and the Baltics, travel into and out of Laos, fraudulent electronic voting machines, and family. Most of the family talk was private, but I will let on that Judy was most relieved when he did NOT win in 2004. She would have continued her practice in Washington, but would have hated having security around all the time, and was in fact relieved when she didn't have to leave Burlington.

One interesting thing I didn't know: when Howard was in medical school, it was in a mostly Jewish institution that included students on its admission committee. He said that there three piles of applications: the obvious yesses, the obvious noes, and the "pile in the middle." From the pile in the middle, where it wasn't clear from the start if the applicant would be accepted for admission or not, he observed that the older members of the admission committee put in their "favorable" pile only Jewish applicants and that he had mostly non-Jewish applicants, and that it dawned upon him that both groups on the committee tended to choose those ethnicities most familiar to themselves. He noted that tendency, and tried to distance himself from that mentality ever since.

Howard still travels the world, invited to speak his mind and tell of his impressions of people and places (and, yes, of Bush and Obama and what he would have done differently--not all of which he speaks of openly, of course). He told the Germans flat out that American has ceded the moral and intellectual leadership of the world by installing Trump in office, and that the EU could and should make a real effort at more unity because there was such a leadership vacuum in the West at this crucial time, and Merkel can't be expected to go it alone.

It is not just because he is a friend that I say this, but because I absolutely believe it: the United States lost out big time when this man did NOT become president. We could have--WOULD have truly had a chance to live up to the greatness we so fervently aspire to, and too often so unjustly claim.

OK, so now Howard is on his way down to Mainz, and I have to get down to Zürich. To be continued, we hope, in January. It was good to see Howard, as always. It was also good to see that when he shows up even in a supposedly provincial city like Düsseldorf, that he fills the room nonetheless. People haven't forgotten, and when a voice filled with intelligence, rationality and reason comes to visit from America, people still want to hear it.