Climbing Above the Culture Clash

Gov. Howard Dean
Delivers 2009
Commencement Speech
After nearly three decades of
political, professional and grassroots
involvement, former Vermont Governor
and Democratic National Committee
Chair Howard Dean is ready to pass the
torch. In his commencement address to
BU Law’s Class of 2009, he talked about
his years of experience being used as a
benchmark for change, and cited the
newly minted graduates as an example of
what the face of change looks like today.
“You are the first multicultural
generation that sees yourselves how you
really are, and so the very first thing
you do when you’re in your 20s is to
elect a multicultural president, which
is extraordinary,” said Dean. “We are
witnessing a change, a transfer of power
to a new generation of Americans.”
And Howard Dean knows change
when he sees it. As the longest-serving
governor in Vermont history, from
1991 to 2003, as well as a physician, he
was the momentum behind the state’s
Dr. Dynasaur Program, an initiative
that provides near-universal healthcare
coverage for pregnant women and
children. The program, the first of
its kind in the United States, thrust
Vermont into the spotlight as a national
leader in healthcare. In 2000 he signed
the nation’s first civil union legislation
into law.
During his campaign to be nominated as
the Democratic Party’s 2004 presidential
candidate, Dean used the Internet to
gain financial and voter backing. Despite
his failed run for the nomination, his
grassroots tactics served as a model for
future elections. Barack Obama followed
Dean’s lead, harnessing technology to
galvanize younger voters and to help
secure the presidential nomination in
2008.
Despite Dean’s pioneering history,
he is quick to attribute the success of
the recent election to the graduates in
the audience. “My generation could
put a million people on the streets of
Washington, D.C., but your generation
sends a million e-mails to Congress and
shuts down the congressional e-mail
system for three days. You are smarter
and more pragmatic, and you believe in
talking to each other,” said Dean. “That
is the hallmark of your generation — to
set aside the things we fight over and
focus on the things we agree on.”
One of the hallmarks of Dean’s career
emerged when he became chairman of
the Democratic National Committee,
and set as a goal the idea to smash the
long-held belief that traditionally red
and blue states could not meet in the
middle. With his “50-State Strategy,”
Dean aimed to create a Democratic Party
presence in Republican strongholds.
Obama’s adaptation of this strategy in
the 2008 presidential race earned votes
in regions once considered Democratunfriendly.
While comparing the 2008 voter turnout
rate to “an earthquake for everybody in
my generation and for everybody in the
past two or three generations in politics,”
Dean was quick to caution that the work
is far from over.
“Politics is not all about running
for office,” said Dean. “It’s also
community organizing, belonging
to your community library, working
in your church or your synagogue or
your mosque to find ways to help less
fortunate people have a chance. It is
anything that organizes human beings.
We need you to be involved.”
Dean added, “This is an extraordinary
country, but democracy is like every
other invention of human beings: If
you don’t nurture it, it dies. You have
changed the culture of America to reflect
what America really is. Don’t blow it.” •
30 | Boston University School of Law | www.bu.edu/law