On Monday, former governor Howard Dean ended his brief dalliance with running against Gov. Phil Scott by explaining that his only path to victory was “a scorched earth, negative attack campaign” out of character with Vermont politics, and that he refused to be the one to inject our system with that kind of vitriol.

Okay, well, at the time it seemed like a hollow, self-serving rationale — more acceptable to a politician’s ego than “The polls showed me way behind” or “I found out I couldn’t raise enough money” or maybe even “Turns out half of Vermont doesn’t even remember me.” But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered:

What would a scorched earth campaign against Phil Scott look like?

Secondary question:

Would it work?

I can think of two potential scenarios; one really doesn’t meet the definition and the other would be doomed to fail. So I’m still wondering if Dean had some brilliantly Machiavellian concept that could bring down Governor Teflon or if he was just bullshitting his way off the stage. I suspect the latter.

Let’s do the second one first. This would be, I suppose, a lightly laundered version of the old anecdote about Lyndon Johnson from his pre-presidential days in the rough-and-tumble of Texas politics, as recounted by the late great (but not necessarily reliable) Hunter S. Thompson.

As the story goes, Johnson was in a tight election campaign and told his campaign manager to spread a rumor that his opponent enjoyed having sex with the pigs on his farm. The minion, aghast, replied “Christ, we can’t get away with calling him a pig-fucker.” To which Johnson said, “I know, but let’s make the sonofabitch deny it.”

The problem with this approach, if we leave morality out of it for the moment, is that it wouldn’t work against Phil Scott. His reputation as a Nice Guy^TM is too entrenched. You might recall that the Planned Parenthood Vermont Action Fund tried this tactic against Scott in 2016, his initial run for governor. The organization spent heavily on TV ads (with money from the Democratic Governors Association) branding — err, attempting to brand — Scott as secretly anti-abortion.

And it didn’t work. If anything, it backfired on Scott’s opponent Sue Minter. See, an attack has to have the ring of truth if it’s going to work.

Mind, it doesn’t have to be true. It just has to feel true. Like when conservative groups went after John Kerry in 2004 over his service in Vietnam. Which had been, in fact, exemplary, but the guy looked and acted like an Ivy League softie while his opponent. George W. Bush, was the real Ivy League softie (and an artful dodger of military service) but he wore a cowboy hat and spoke with an acquired drawl and was The Guy You’d Want To Have A Beer With.

I digress, again. Point being, I don’t see any random, made-up attack working against Phil Scott, another G.Y.W.T.H.A.B.W.

There is, however, a legitimate line of attack that has the ethical advantage of being accurate. Scott’s actual record as governor is full of holes. He hasn’t seen the eruptions of scandal and/or incompetence that brought down Peter Shumlin, but his escutcheon is heavily laden with blotches. An incomplete, offhand list*:

Note. Readers have chimed in with items I forgot to include. Thanks to Lee Russ for suggestiong health care, and to Sen. Irene Wrenner for reminding me of the Zoie Saunders nomination and the mess that is Scott’s school “policy.”

• All the vetoes. Scott has failed to establish a productive relationship with the Legislature. This ought to be his strong suit, if he’s the conciliator he professes to be. Instead, he has more than doubled the previous record for gubernatorial vetoes, set by Howard Dean in a far longer governorship. He’s likely to add somewhere between six and 11 more in the wake of this session.
• Failing to address multiple crises. Scott has proposed piecemeal, limited “solutions” to critical challenges including climate change, housing, homelessness, the opioid epidemic, and public education. His only major efforts have been funded by federal Covid relief dollars. Now that those funds have run out, our state is adrift with icebergs all around.
• The Zoie Saunders fiasco and its implications for school policy. After dithering for almost an entire year, Scott came up with an underqualified, underwhelming choice for education secretary who was comprehensively rejected by the state Senate. He went ahead and appointed Saunders interim secretary anyway, a nice little “fuck you” to the Legislature and an indication of how bankrupt his education policy is. I mean, his only real idea for reining in school costs is to borrow money against future cost containment measures. Meanwhile, school infrastructure is a mess and there’s no hint of a creative vision for public education besides the further erosion of the public schools.
• A lack of vision on health care. There’s been no hint of any plan for improving health care in Vermont beyond using the Green Mountain Care Board to try to limit cost hikes, which continue to be unsustainable anyway. We suffer from painful shortages of nurses and primary care providers, and besides the occasional, and pitiful, incentive programs, nothing is being done about it. On a personal note, my PCP left Vermont almost a year ago and I’m still a floating patient seeing whoever in my practice happens to have an opening. That’s not how primary care is supposed to work.
• Not giving a damn about those in need. This is most painfully visible in the ongoing homelessness crisis. Scott’s administration has repeatedly failed to plan for the end of the motel voucher program even as they repeatedly try to kill it — only to repeatedly reverse course in the face of embarrassing publicity. Scott has also actively resisted efforts to strengthen our response to opioids, insisting that his program is working in spite of record levels of overdose deaths. Ditto our mental health crisis, for which Scott is satisfied with more of the same stuff that ain’t working.
• Administrative failures. Scott has frequently enabled poor leadership because he never upbraids, let alone punishes, the failures in his own cabinet. The Human Services Agency is a rat’s nest of bureaucracy that seems designed to frustrate those who need help. (Hmm, maybe that’s a feature, not a bug.) The Labor Department has been trouble-prone for years, and there’s no sign that Scott gives a damn. We’ve been hearing about culture change in the Department of Corrections since Scott first sat down in the corner office. And the failure that rules them all…
• Whatever happened to Lean Management? Scott entered office promising to save at least $50 million annually by streamlining state government. He said it would be easy. But he stopped talking about it years ago, after initial efforts produced very little in the way of tangible results. Instead, he continuously resorts to the lazy man’s way of controlling costs: Across-the-board limits on budget hikes. Which in turn leads to…
• The hollowing-out of state government. There is abundant evidence that since Scott became governor, the state has become a lousy place to work. Applications for open positions have plunged. Many who are offered a state position turn it down. Almost half of those hired leave their jobs within a year. Numerous agencies and departments suffer from destructively high turnover levels. (And they are notorious trouble spots under Scott, including Corrections and Mental Health.) These are jobs with union protections and negotiated benefits, which ought to be very attractive in these uncertain times for the working and middle classes.
• Extreme dependence on unproven “incentive” tactics. Scott doesn’t like spending money, but he thinks tax breaks and economic incentives are “free.” Two problems: There is no evidence that they have any substantial effect, and they do in fact cost money. Every tax incentive means uncollected taxes. In theory, you gain more in economic activity than you lose in revenue, but again, there’s no proof of that.
• A counterproductive approach to crime and justice. Scott’s new budget called for cuts in State’s Attorneys offices at a time when the courts are overloaded already. His Corrections Department is a disaster with more than 20% staff turnover every year. Scott talks a lot about crime, but what has he done to address the situation? Damn little.

That’s a good starter list without any, you know, opposition research. A campaign that focused strongly on Scott’s shortcomings might or might not prevail, but it would stand a fighting chance. (Brenda Siegel pursued this course to no great effect because her campaign was severely underfunded and attracted scant media attention. But she laid out the blueprint.) Although Howard Dean might disagree, it would not be a scorched-earth campaign. It doesn’t fulfill the definition because, well, it is thoroughly anchored in truth.

And if the truth leaves you feeling a little burnt, well, that’s on you.

So. Was Dean imagining himself labeling Phil Scott as a pig-fucker? Or does he see a fact-based attack campaign as “scorched earth”? If the latter, I think this explains a lot about Democrats’ general failure to hit the governor where he’s most vulnerable. They’re just too damn polite.