Howard Dean is our Harry Truman
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In 1991 when the sudden death of Gov. Richard Snelling thrust Lt. Gov. Howard Dean into the chief executive’s slot, I likened that day to April 12, 1945, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death elevated Harry Truman to the top slot. Like FDR on the national stage, Snelling had loomed larger than life on the state’s political landscape. Like Truman, Dean was an unknown.
The comparison holds: Howard Dean is Vermont’s Harry Truman. Dean, like Truman, is a no-nonsense, plain-speaking guy who loves to give ’em hell.
This is the governor who likened the Legislature to a zoo, grumbled that Supreme Court justices think they are God, and called the left wing of his party arrogant and the right wing of the Republican Party a bunch of crackpots.
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http://timesargus.nybor.com/Archive/Articles/Article/58611…
The fact that our health care system needs major improvement, the fact that the quality of our care is often too low and the costs too high these things are hardly news. Just listen to this message Harry Truman sent to Congress over a half century ago. President Truman wrote:
“The real cost of our present inadequate medical care is not measured merely by doctors’ bills and hospital bills. The real cost to society is in unnecessary human suffering and the yearly loss of hundreds of millions of productive working days. To the individual, the real costs are the shattering of family budgets, the disruption of family life, the suffering and disabilities, the permanent physical impairments left by crippling diseases, and the deaths each year of tens of thousands of persons who might have lived. This is the price we are now paying for inadequate health care.”
Truman wrote those words in 1949. Since then, several generations of Americans have been born, far too many Americans have died before their time and we are still paying the price for a terribly inadequate health care system.
When I graduated from medical school twenty-five years ago, I swore an oath along with my classmates. In that oath, my classmates and I pledged, “the health of my patient will be my first consideration.”
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http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/PageServer?pagename=policy_speech_health_markle…
Many years ago, a plainspoken man observed that:
“Millions of our citizens do not now have a full measure of opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.
Millions do not now have protection or security against the economic effects of sickness.
The time has arrived for action to help them attain that opportunity and that protection.”
It was 1948 and the man who said those words was a Democrat named Harry S. Truman.
He believed that winning health care for every family was at the core of the Democratic Party's compact with the American people.
It was true then…and I believe it's still true today.
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http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/PageServer?pagename=policy_speech_health_columbiaHarry S. Truman quotes:
Richard Nixon is a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he'd lie just to keep his hand in.
The buck stops here!
America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.
It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours.
This administration is going to be cussed and discussed for years to come.
I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/h/harrystru128010.html