Reply #34: NAFTA and the environment

[Eloriel]

what do you disagree with re NFTA? He wants it changed, and the way he wants it changed would completely alter the landscape for "globalization," making it about as expensive to send jobs overseas as to keep them here. Sounds good to me.

As for the environment, some folks more liberal even than I (and I'm pretty liberal) wrote some scathing anti-Dean screeds, completely ignoring a couple of pieces of reality, such as: he was GOVERNOR, not dictator. He needed to take care of the environment WHILE STILL arranging for Vermonters to have some jobs and the economy to work. He accommodated both, in that wonderfully pragmatic, eminently DOABLE approach he takes to politics and governing that is IMO distinctly Dean.

And somehow, despite how "awful" he supposedly was environmentally, he still put millions of Vermont acres aside so that they'll never be developed. What other state governors have done that? Not many, if any.

Hell, the way he got into politics in the first place, all those years ago, trying to do something environmental -- create a bike path along the Lake Champlain shore, instead of letting it be developed in non-environmental ways.

Please be careful what you THINK you know about Dean. He's not perfect, but a lot of the things that are said about him are either mischaracterizations, outright lies (esp. here at DU), wild exaggerations, or just simply unfair spin.