"Go Howard Dean"

Nah, not the way you think.

So I'm watching last night's "The Practice" on the TiVo, and Eleanor just broke out with, "If you can get [the short-tempered defendant] to go Howard Dean" then the case would go their way.

So I'm not sure what to make of the verbing of Howard Dean in this way. I mean, I like the new John Kerry, and the new Democratic chutzpah in general. But the backbone we all appreciate in our Dem candidates is on the verge of becoming a real cliché. And, as an English teacher, I can tell you that clichés are bad, bad, bad.

Most of us don't even think about clichés anymore, seeing as how they're, um, cliché. But every cliché began as a very clever metaphor somewhere in literature. Every time I teach Shakespeare, some student invariably points out the clichés in the language without recognizing that Shakespeare invented the beast with two backs, or my salad days, when I was green.

The trouble with the cliché is that what can be both clever and powerful the first time, through repitition and pejoration, loses any power it may have had. It becomes empty rhetoric. When a student uses a cliché in an essay, it's a shortcut--an easy way out. A place holder instead of an original thought. In a way, what the Democratic party had been for the better part of a decade.

Howard Dean is the original thought. And what Dean started is too important to let it become empty rhetoric.

Stopping a metaphor from becoming a cliché, though, is, well, like trying to nail jell-o to a wall. Dean can go a long way to stopping it depending on whether he can turn his organization around into a Democratic powerhouse: Dean must make a name for himself outside of the narrow parameters of that cliché. The cliché is still young enough we might be able to stop it. But, man, I am not feeling too hopeful.

PS: The big closing arguments scene in the case on "The Practice" featured Jamie telling the jury, "I don't have the power. You do."