The New Yorker: Running on Instinct (Howard Dean)

[La_Serpiente]

RUNNING ON INSTINCT
by MARK SINGER
Howard Dean’s critics say he is winging it. Can that get him to the White House?

On a sultry Tuesday night last August, Howard Dean stood on a stage in Bryant Park, in midtown Manhattan, and faced a crowd of ten thousand. He was nearing the end of his twenty-minute stump speech, an enthusiastically received disparagement of George W. Bush’s handling of Iraq, the economy and the budget deficit, the battle against terrorism, the North Korean nuclear threat, global trade, health care, energy policy, the environment, and education—with detours to take swipes at Rush Limbaugh and the religious right. Along the way, Dean offered, by contrast, an accounting of his major accomplishments during his eleven years as governor of Vermont.

At last, he arrived at his peroration, the thematic crux of his campaign for the Presidency: “The biggest lie that people like me tell people like you during the election season is ‘If you vote for me, I’ll solve all your problems.’ The truth is that the power to change this country is in your hands, not mine. Abraham Lincoln said that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this earth. But this President, this President has forgotten ordinary Americans. And you have the power to take this party back and make it stand for something again. You have the power to take this country back.”

A lot of Vermonters have a bemused reaction to this sort of oratorical zeal, having received minimal exposure to grandiloquence during Dean’s governorship. His annual State of the State addresses, for instance, are remembered as flatly delivered, stick-to-the-text exercises. But Dean’s hortative style on the stump—his habit of aiming both index fingers at his listeners and, not unlike an evangelist in the pulpit, bellowing, “You have the power! You have the power!”—is perfectly suited to the Internet-driven populist energy that has given his campaign such dynamism, and it invariably galvanizes audiences.

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RUNNING ON INSTINCT

[maddezmom]

1. this is a good read

someone posted yesterday. Fills in a lot of the blanks on Dean. :)

[newsjunkie]

2. what an excellent article

Thank you for that,La_Serpiente! I learned a lot of stuff about Dean I was curious about. I love this guy's background and personality and vision. I think he has exactly the 'right stuff' to be a great US president.

[copithorne]

3. Yup, great journalism

A nice profile of Howard Dean.

In the same New Yorker thay had a piece about the privatizing of the Army that had a throwaway line, "no serious person believes we went to war for Halliburton."

I wrote a letter to the author correcting him.

But this Dean article is an informative, balanced piece. It's so rare to see something like that in these sad times.