What Dean Means
By MATT BAI
Published: February 27, 2005
Two weeks ago, on the eve of Howard Dean's election as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, his old rival John Kerry -- the same John Kerry who had once been caught hissing ''Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean'' into an open microphone, in what sounded like an imitation of Jan Brady's ''Marcia, Marcia, Marcia'' -- sent an e-mail message to his supporters. ''Let's welcome Howard Dean and give him the groundswell of grass-roots support he needs,'' Kerry wrote enthusiastically, urging his followers to contribute to the party. The turnabout here, if anyone really stopped to think about it, was mind-bending. It was Dean, after all, who pioneered the Internet campaign, and it was Dean who had to urge his supporters, the most motivated in the Democratic universe, to accept Kerry as their nominee. And although Kerry emerged as the safer, consensus choice for president, it was Dean, alone among Democrats, who retained the personal loyalty of street-level activists and millionaire donors. Kerry urging his fans to give it up for Dean was like the leader of a warm-up band begging the audience to wait around for U2.
Somehow, at the end of the day, Dean managed to triumph over his rivals after all. Lashing out at Washington Democrats as timid and feckless during the primaries, he vowed to ''take back our party,'' and he did exactly that. The party's Congressional leaders could talk all they wanted about how Dean would be a mere functionary -- ''I think Dean knows his job is not to set the message,'' Harry Reid lectured -- but, like Kerry's welcoming e-mail message, such statements had the ring of self-delusion. The moment the votes for chairman were counted, Howard Dean became the de facto voice of the Democratic Party.
Dean would seem to be better suited to the chairman's office than he was to the White House. Up close, there was always something a little disconcerting about Dean's presidential campaign; he seemed to derive too much enjoyment from his followers' rage and idolatry. Dean's work after his campaign imploded, however, was more ennobling and, arguably, more important. Under the guise of his political action committee, Democracy for America, Dean ventured deep into Republican states where national Democrats rarely trod, raising money and campaigning not just for Senate hopefuls but also for candidates seeking offices as lowly as soil-and-water commissioner. Rural Democrats fear, perhaps with good reason, that Dean is the wrong messenger for the party in much of America, and yet not one of them has spent the time and capital Dean has on reviving the party in those sparsely populated states and counties where Democrats are fast disappearing.
Inevitably, Dean's ascension has been seen in the familiar Democratic context of center versus left, New Democrat versus old. Dean, it has been said, is too far left to lead a party that suffers from an image of extremism. But what Dean's selection actually makes clear is that these distinctions have less meaning in today's party than ever before. While Dean was a leftist, antiwar presidential candidate, he was also, as he never tired of reminding people, a defiantly centrist governor of Vermont. (Early in the presidential race, Dean told me, ''I was a triangulator before Clinton was a triangulator.'') Dean opposed the invasion of Iraq, but his rhetoric about winning the peace and fighting terrorists at home hardly contrasts with anything that supposedly moderate Democrats espouse. Dean likes to be described as ''pro-gun,'' but his actual positions are indistinguishable in every way from those of Democrats who favor stricter gun control.
more at...
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/magazine/27WWLN.html
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