Newsweek

The Left’s Mr. Right?

By Jonathan Alter, Newsweek

Consider two voters motivated to contribute to Howard Dean's presidential campaign: one is a supporter; the other is a ... "supporter."

KEVIN O’CONNOR, A 53-year-old investment banker, went to Denver’s first gathering of Dean supporters in early February at a small downtown coffee shop, drawn by a posting on Meetup.com. Eight people showed. Now the group has to keep changing the venue to fit the 100-plus people who turn out every month, one of more than 600 Dean “Meetups” across the country. So far, O’Connor has contributed $500 to the campaign and plans to give more. “Washington Democrats have a failed strategy on dealing with President Bush,” he says. “Howard Dean is going to draw the line.”

The Left's Mr. Right?
By Jonathan Alter, Newsweek

Consider two voters motivated to contribute to Howard Dean's presidential campaign: one is a supporter; the other is a ... "supporter."

KEVIN O'CONNOR, A 53-year-old investment banker, went to Denver's first gathering of Dean supporters in early February at a small downtown coffee shop, drawn by a posting on Meetup.com. Eight people showed. Now the group has to keep changing the venue to fit the 100-plus people who turn out every month, one of more than 600 Dean "Meetups" across the country. So far, O'Connor has contributed $500 to the campaign and plans to give more. "Washington Democrats have a failed strategy on dealing with President Bush," he says. "Howard Dean is going to draw the line."
Then there's Tom Bevan, a 38-year-old former advertising executive from the Chicago area with a conservative bent. He wrote a $25 check to Dean last week after seeing him surge. "The further left he goes and the Democrats go, the better for my man Bush," Bevan says. "Some of the more centrist candidates would present more of a challenge to a Republican."

'DEANYBOPPERS' ON THE MARCH
It's hard to know how much company Bevan has, but the operational head of his party, a Mr. Karl Rove of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, agrees. At a Fourth of July parade in Washington, D.C., Rove saw a dozen "Deanyboppers" marching in their DEAN FOR AMERICA T shirts. "Heh, heh, heh. Yeah, that's the one we want," Rove said, according to a curbside bystander quoted in The Washington Post. "Come on, everybody! Go, Howard Dean!"

He's going. The diminutive family doctor from Vermont with the brusque political bedside manner is the hottest thing in the Democratic Party. Dean is now in statistical dead heats for first place among likely caucus attendees in Iowa (with Rep. Dick Gephardt) and primary voters in New Hampshire (with Sen. John Kerry), and has a decent shot of picking up some of the John McCain-style independents he covets. He is revolutionizing political fund-raising with his clever cyberstumping, and the proceeds are going to build a sturdy grassroots organization that should help sustain him when the hype subsides.

Take last week's stunt. After hearing that Vice President Dick Cheney was traveling to Columbia, S.C., at the end of July to raise $300,000 for the Bush-Cheney campaign at a $2,000-a-plate fund-raising luncheon, the Dean campaign posted a digital picture on its Web site of the candidate eating a $3-a-plate turkey sandwich while sitting at a computer. The appeal to stand up to wealthy interests raised more than $500,000 in three days, beating the Bush-Cheney juggernaut (for one weekend at least) and bringing Dean's Internet booty to more than $5 million, by far the most ever raised by a politician online, though he's amassed less than a third of Bush's war chest so far.

A BREAKTHROUGH FOR DEMOCRATS
It's a new kind of political movement. While Dean's last financial report shows him trailing both Kerry and John Edwards in overall cash, the Deanites say they now have 230,000 "registered activists online," with more than half having made at least a small contribution (whatever the motivation). In another twist, more than 30,000 of the activists wrote handwritten notes--some for the first time in years--to 60,000 undecided voters in Iowa and New Hampshire. After years when the so-called party of the people trailed Republicans badly in the number of small donors, all this is a breakthrough for Democrats, whatever Dean's fate.

"If you'd asked me six months ago would I be in the position I am today, I would have said, 'Don't be ridiculous'," Dean told NEWSWEEK last week. "We've caught fire and, frankly, not with anything we've done that's so brilliant. I wish we were so smart to have figured out the Internet thing, but the fact is, the Internet community found us."

Enter the skeptics, center stage. Dean is another Bill Bradley in 2000, Paul Tsongas in 1992 or John Anderson in 1980, they say, an NPR flavor of the month with appeal mostly to educated secular sophisticates who simply aren't numerous enough to win the White House, whatever the ratings of "The West Wing" (whose actors almost all support him). He's a classic "Doonesbury" candidate, the critique goes, which is fitting, perhaps, considering that the strip's creator, Garry Trudeau, was a close childhood friend of Dean's when they were in day camp together more than 40 years ago. The greatest fear among certain Democrats is that if Dean does win the nomination, his liberal supporters will put their Birkenstocks on the gas pedal and drive the party right over the cliff, a la George McGovern in 1972.

HEARTS VS. HEADS
The dilemma for Democrats tempted by Dean is whether to go with their hearts or their heads. Their hearts soar at Dean's bare-knuckle attacks on Bush and patented Rx on social issues. Their heads tell them that the only times Democrats have won in four decades was when they nominated moderate Southerners--Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton--with a natural connection to black and working-class Democrats and independents. Under this analysis, liberals--especially if they didn't serve in Vietnam--are in danger of being depicted as "soft on terrorism" post-September 11, just as an earlier generation was derided as "soft on communism" during the cold war.

"A Dean nomination could again [mean] Democrats lose 49 out of 50 states," says Clinton's pollster, Mark Penn, who is working for Sen. Joe Lieberman's campaign. (The 2000 vice presidential candidate is currently leading in national surveys, based mostly on name recognition.) "Dean's antiwar image will linger and will be used against him," predicts Jim Jordan, Kerry's campaign manager. "This 'security mom' thing is real. Women are even more hawk-ish than men. Until you can convince the voters that you, too, can keep the country safe, you don't get heard on the other stuff." Can Dean beat Bush? "Absolutely impossible," says Jordan.

That's a bit premature and categorical for an election that is 15 months away. In fact, it's still too early for even the savviest political operatives to plausibly war-game the results of the Democratic caucuses and primaries, which don't begin for more than five months, an eternity in politics. Any of the six major candidates--Dean, Kerry, Gephardt, Lieberman, Edwards and Sen. Bob Graham--still has some chance to win.

INTO THE RECYCLING BIN?
Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Biden and retired Gen. Wesley Clark--urged on by still-uncommitted fellow Arkansan and Rhodes scholar Bill Clinton--are now thought to be leaning toward late-entry candidacies. (Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Carol Moseley Braun and the Rev. Al Sharpton will introduce differing perspectives to the campaign but aren't plausible nominees.) With all Democrats operating in Clinton's large shadow, the trail is not well marked yet. The harmful gaffes, memorable one-liners and policy pirouettes of a presidential contest--any of which can be more important than money--remain well down the road. One arrogant remark by Dean in a debate could send all his hard work into the recycling bin.

Despite a strong sense among most Democrats that Bush has changed the country radically for the worse, it's not even clear yet how valuable the Democratic nomination will turn out to be. The president is starting to sag in the polls, with questions about his credibility, broken promises and fiscal management finally sticking. But if the economy rebounds and produces new jobs and family-income growth (the key indicators to watch politically), he'll be hard for anyone to beat. And even in a so-so economy, he's still seen by most voters as a likable wartime leader.

The old Will Rogers line--"I'm a member of no organized political party; I'm a Democrat"--seems especially apt this year. The party is not so much divided ideologically as it is confused tactically. The old labels are increasingly useless. Dean, for instance, is hardly an old-fashioned big- spending liberal. As governor from 1991 to 2002, he repeatedly balanced the budget, though Vermont is the only state that doesn't require him to do so by law; the NRA gives him high ratings. Graham of Florida, usually thought of as a moderate, is a relentless critic of the Iraq war.

INTRAPARTY STRUGGLES
Most of the intraparty domestic-policy disputes are at the margins, though that will hardly make them any less fierce. The growing clash between those who favor full repeal of the Bush tax cuts (Dean and Gephardt) versus the others who favor partial repeal is a tactical--not ideological--struggle over whether the full repealers can later be stigmatized by Bush for raising taxes on the middle class. (All the Democrats want to use Bush's tax cuts for health care, a popular trade-off in the polls.) Like the squabbling over the war, the tax debate is at bottom about how best to play defense and inoculate themselves against the $200 million Bush media barrage, plus the talk-radio/cable-TV "elephant echo chamber" that is sure to amplify the GOP message.

The Democrats' biggest problem is that they, too, often look weak, especially when they fail to confront the party's own single-issue activists. "The interest groups don't really like to win," says James Carville, who helped his old client Clinton stand up to the special pleaders in 1992. "They just want a big ass-kissing festival." Carville says the Democrats lag behind the competition in this area: "The Republicans don't make Bush go to the NRA convention and hold an assault weapon up over his head for the crowd." Carville suggests that instead of Dean's going before abortion-rights activists and pledging his support for late-term abortion (which could prove harmful in a general election) or Lieberman's apologizing to the NAACP for not attending its convention, some candidate should advocate civil unions before the Baptist convention or oppose the war at the American Legion. That would show strength, he says.

Dean's answer to that challenge is to play hard-charging offense--even when it proves offensive to other Democrats. He first broke through at the winter party meeting by grabbing the late liberal Sen. Paul Wellstone's line that he is from "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." This tapped in perfectly to the anger many Democrats felt toward the Washington party establishment for going soft on Bush.

And he's in sync with the underlying dynamics of his party's nominating sys-tem. Orderly Republicans have for half a century nominated through primogeniture--the candidate whose "turn" it is gets the nod. Rebellious Democrats usually nominate through insurgency--outsiders who storm the barricades. One danger for Dean--and his people know it--is that he may have peaked too soon, leaving room for another entrant to ride a popular wave.

TWO OF A KIND?
By background, Dean, a WASP native of Park Avenue, now 54 years old, is no more a man of the people than Bush. Both went to prep school and Yale in the 1960s (Bush was three years ahead), both figured out how to avoid serving in Vietnam, both gave up drinking after party-hearty years (Dean much earlier) and both tried business first, with Dean deciding after a brief stint on Wall Street that he didn't much like his father's occupation and wanted to go to medical school instead. He and his wife, Dr. Judith Steinberg, settled into a family practice in Vermont. The death of a politically active brother, Charlie, which may have happened at the hands of Laotian communist guerrillas, hit him hard, he told NEWSWEEK's Howard Fineman, and he was in therapy for a time.

In 1978, Dean got involved in politics when he championed the establishment of a bicycle path around Lake Champlain, then stuffed envelopes in Jimmy Carter's 1980 re-election campaign, preferring him to the more liberal Ted Kennedy. After a stint in the part-time Vermont state legislature, he became the part-time lieutenant governor. While examining a patient one day in 1991, Dean learned that Gov. Richard Snelling had died of a heart attack. As he jokes to campaign audiences, he finished the exam because the patient had waited so long for an appointment, then he became governor.

During more than a decade running the tiny (population: 600,000), 97 percent white state, Dean focused on fiscal responsibility, child care and health-care reform. He lowered the state's hefty income tax, improved its flagging bond rating with professional fiscal management and established a rainy-day fund that has proved useful recently as the state weathers the economic downturn better than others. On social issues, he resisted most liberal blandishments. But he did establish a child-abuse prevention program that helped cut abuse cases by 30 percent; he signed a bill that shifted money from wealthy school districts to poorer ones (ticking off novelist John Irving and others, who moved to wealthier communities in search of better schools), and, over time, he expanded health-care coverage to include all children and most adults.

A FIRE-BREATHING CENTRIST?
Early on, Dean was forced to apologize for saying that if welfare recipients "had any self-esteem, they'd be working," and generally developed a reputation as a centrist. Vermonters say they barely recognize the fire-breathing neopopulist now exhorting liberal audiences to "Take your country back!" But the pugnaciousness is familiar enough. Last year he strutted like a little Napoleon onto the floor of the usually genteel Vermont State Senate, stuck his finger menacingly into the face of 76-year-old Sen. Bill Doyle, then shouted: "You're willfully obstructing this session!"

Dean almost lost his 2000 re-election campaign over the backlash against the first-in-the-nation legalization of "civil unions," which gives gay partners hospital visitation and inheritance rights. After a Vermont Supreme Court decision, the legislature sent him a bill, which Dean says he signed without a public ceremony in order to quell divisiveness. Some Vermont gay activists claimed he signed it "in the closet"; he insists he helped push the bill through.

Dean makes a point that civil unions are "not marriage" and that the whole issue is none of the federal government's business. But he concedes the issue will hurt him in the South, where polls show him trailing the president by larger margins than other Democrats. Merle Black, a political-science professor at Atlanta's Emory University, says Southerners would have "no use for him at all" and predicts that many Democratic officeholders in the region would fail to campaign with him. But Black thinks the problem is more stylistic than related to his position on particular issues: "He's a New Yorker. He's very aggressive. For voters who are not ideological, they look at candidates and see if they think he's a nice guy. I don't think Dean is that nice guy."

It's exactly this tough demeanor that Dean's team thinks will help prevent him from being turned into a weenie by Republicans, as Michael Dukakis was in 1988. "He's not going to take it," says Joe Trippi, the campaign manager and master architect. "He's going to be up in Bush's face." The problem, of course, is that Bush can stick to the high road and let his minions go negative, as he did in 2000. And over time, Dean's pugnacity might not wear well with voters, who usually favor buoyant, warm personalities.

His immediate rival among the Democrats, Kerry from neighboring Massachusetts, is a decorated Vietnam veteran with his own reputation for toughness. It's unclear whether Kerry, in the crunch, will exploit the fact that in the early 1970s Dean got a medical deferment from the draft for a bad back not long before he spent the winter skiing the bumps in Aspen. Campaign chief Jordan says Kerry won't raise the matter himself but he doesn't forswear accentuating the contrast at some point. The six primary debates this year could prove critical. Kerry is a more experienced debater than Dean, as are Gephardt and the avuncular Lieberman. Edwards's Clintonian message could resonate, and his trial-lawyer capacity to frame issues in everyday ways might rival Dean's reputation for speaking English instead of Washingtonese.

But while Edwards was hurt by a weak performance in "the Russert primary" (NBC's "Meet the Press"), Dean's testy and unpresidential appearance on the show on June 22 (he likened one question about force structure in the U.S. military to "asking me who the ambassador to Rwanda is") didn't hurt him at all. In fact, his fund-raising surged that Sunday, testament, perhaps, to a feeling among some liberals that the media are now on "the other side." In truth, Dean is no favorite of working reporters, who tend to like their candidates funny and solicitous. So do voters.

Dean knows he needs to be less angry and more uplifting to go the distance. "A campaign of hope beats a campaign of fear every time," he says. And by stressing his support for more troops in Afghanistan, he seems determined to show that he knows pacifism is a big loser. "It's not if you're against the war that matters," notes Carville, differing with the Democratic Leadership Council crowd. "It's how and why you're against the war." His advice to Democrats wary of Dean is to "give him a chance." If he moves to the center nimbly enough to win the nomination, he will be, almost by definition, a good enough politician to be competitive with Bush in Nov-ember. As for winning the presidency without the South, Trippi likes to point out that with the Gore states plus New Hampshire, the Democrat wins in November.

In 1932, President Herbert Hoover's first choice for the other party's nomination was a crippled liberal governor named Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1980, much of President Jimmy Carter's team thought that a too-conservative former governor named Ronald Reagan would be the easiest to beat. Karl Rove and the graybeards of the Democratic Party might turn out to be right that Bush would eat Howard Dean's lunch in 2004. But Dean has already proved that he can go a long way on just a turkey sandwich.

With T. Trent Gegax, Barney Gimbel, Debra Rosenberg, Holly Bailey and Suzanne Smalley