Monday, January 26, 2004

TAPPED

Here's an article from TAPPED which considers Howard Dean's approach to problem-solving as influenced by his medical background:
If you've ever spent time in the medical arena you know that being a physician is something very different from being an attorney, which is what John Edwards, John Kerry, and Joe Lieberman are. Your stance to the world is simply different if you're a physician, because -- outside of a few specialties, like plastic surgery -- your power doesn't come from how you look or how you appear or even how you sound. It comes from your knowledge and the capacity to do things no one else is authorized to do in their daily lives -- to touch bodies, to demand of individuals, to prescribe courses of action -- and from the human power of interaction. You can't convince people to be healed, no matter how eloquently you speak about disease and suffering or what you wear. You have to actually do something to make a person better. You also have to do the right thing. And if you don't, the consequences can be dire and literally deadly.

And, of course my favorite passage would have to be, "...they're kind of dorky, just like the science nerds they used to be....The Deans are a couple who met in a neuroanatomy class. That about says it all."

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