suggest one article that I thought was interesting:
http://www.theunionleader.com/prez_show.html?article=28818November 12, 2003
Dean is rewriting
campaign rule book
By KENNETH S. BAER
Lost Angeles Times
The fact that a presidential candidate publicly discussed this decision before making it is shocking in and of itself - and the fact that he submitted himself to a vote is unprecedented.
While this "money poll" was dismissed (perhaps rightfully so) as a stunt to give political cover to a decision to withdraw from the public financing system - a decision Dean and his campaign manager, Joe Trippi, clearly wanted to make - such a dismissal is only blinding people from what is really going on in Burlington, Vt.
In any case, he announced that he would not accept public financing.
Simply, Howard Dean is running the most radical campaign in a generation. The former Vermont governor's political team is reinventing how campaigns are run, rejecting a decadelong trend toward near-Orwellian campaign centralization (which has reached its apotheosis in the Bush administration) and trading that control for a more energized group of supporters.
To understand how radical the Dean campaign is, one needs to appreciate how influential the success of the Clinton campaign in 1992 has been on the practice of politics.
-- more --
He's a fighter, he's clear-eyed and clear-speaking, he energized and excites not just the base but people who've felt completely alienated from politics for a long time if not their entire lives. Spend some time on his blog, especially reading the Comments from Supporters (click "commnents" link under each entry).
http://www.blogforamerica.com/He's also revolutionizing politics and wouldn't it be fabulous to have someone in office who's not bought, doesn't owe anything to anyone but The People? (He doesn't get near enough credit for this on DU, IMO, but then there are a lot of professional Dean-bashers on the board.) Even if I disgreed with him about more of his policies than I do, I'd be real tempted to support him for these facts alone.
Eloriel