CHALLENGING BUSH
From Patrician Roots, Dean Set Path of Prickly Independence
The New York Times
December 28, 2003
By RICK LYMAN
The Park Avenue building where Howard Dean grew up has a neurologist's
office on the ground floor and a church just behind. His mother,
Andree Maitland Dean, is eager to emphasize that the family's three-bedroom
apartment there is not luxurious.
"Look around," Mrs. Dean said in a recent interview, gesturing at the quarters
where her boys grew up. "Howard didn't have the least bit of a
glamorous upbringing."
Explaining that every time she had a baby, the dining room
would serve as a bedroom for the newborn and his nurse, she concluded,
"I don't think we could even keep up with the Bushes."
Like her son, Mrs. Dean chafes at the notion that the family
lived the kind of privileged existence that many associate with America's current first
family - despite the striking similarities between the two families that even a cursory look reveals.
George Walker Bush and Howard Brush Dean III are from opposite sides
of the nation's political fault line. Yet besides energizing the left wing of
his party, Dr. Dean has some Republicans worried that the characteristics
he shares with President Bush could appeal to swing voters, especially
when Dr. Dean's current image as a Vermont liberal is leavened
with details of the fiscally conservative way he governed Vermont for 11 years.
The two are sons of established blueblood families dominated by powerful fathers.
They attended top prep schools and Yale. And they settled far
from traditional power enclaves, reinventing themselves as archetypes
of their chosen new homes, President Bush in swaggering Texas and Dr.
Dean in outdoorsy Vermont.
They were known for hard-partying, hard-drinking in their youths,
but those days ended when they simply gave up alcohol as adults. Each man's
character was shaped by the loss of a sibling: for the president,
a sister who died of leukemia at age 3; for Dr. Dean, a younger brother who
disappeared in 1974 in Laos while on an around-the-world trip.
And although each has a distinct political style, as governors
they developed reputations for carefully bridging the political divide between liberals
and conservatives, a skill that has thus far eluded them on the national stage.
Other, deeper similarities are apparent only to those who have
spent significant time with each man: temperaments prone to irritation; political
skills that play better in small groups than on television; rock-solid confidence in their own decisions.
In addition, each man is seen as being his own worst enemy
on the campaign trail, President Bush for mangling his English and fumbling answers,
Dr. Dean for creating unnecessary crises by speaking his mind too swiftly.
Too much can be made of these similarities, of course.
Certainly Dr. Dean, 55, and his family feel it is misleading to tag them as Bushlike
bluebloods, despite the fact that they own a Park Avenue apartment
and an East Hampton country house.
"I don't hide who I am," Dr. Dean said. "I am not in the least bit embarrassed
about how I grew up. But, now, it wasn't quite as opulent as everybody
might think."
Even so, the comparison is instructive - and not only for the
likenesses it reveals. The two men's paths diverged in the fractious, culture-shaking
heart of the 1960's.
After a post-high-school year in England in 1966, Mr. Dean
shrugged off many trappings of his background, including the Republicanism that his
father preached at home. He grew his hair long, experimented
with marijuana, played guitar and harmonica, switched from khaki to denim, cut
his hair short again and emerged liberal, antiwar and resolutely Democratic.
His life also took a critical turn away from the Wall Street career that
his father had desired for him. In deciding to study medicine, he was
inspired by a zeal to help others that grew out of the political ferment
of the era and was fueled by the mysterious disappearance of his brother
Charlie in the jungles of Laos.
Hays Rockwell, a former Episcopal bishop of St. Louis who was
Mr. Dean's wrestling coach at St. George's prep school in Rhode Island, attributed
his shift toward liberalism and medicine mainly to the times, saying,
"It was just what was going on in the 60's."
Ralph Dawson, a roommate at Yale, echoed that opinion, saying:
"Howard was moving leftward and rebelling. We were all rebelling from the
straitjacket that society had us in in those days."
Dr. Dean's brother Jim senses the added influence of losing Charlie.
"We didn't talk about it," Mr. Dean said, "but I think that after that, he
understood better than I did that life is not infinite."
Two Different Images
The image that has formed of Dr. Dean since he exploded onto the
national scene last spring is of a passionate bulldog, an antiwar liberal who has
almost magically tapped into the angry heart of a Democratic Party
tired of feeling disenfranchised.
The truth is more complicated.
Dr. Dean opposed the war in Iraq, but he had otherwise
been quite supportive of President Bush's antiterrorism initiatives. And his liberal
credentials are belied by a long-standing predilection for political
moderation and fiscal conservatism in Vermont.
The image of Dr. Dean as a Park Avenue patrician is also
unlike his image in Vermont as an unpretentious,
penny-pinching homebody. But there is
little doubt that his family's wealth and position
have played a significant role in his life.
All told, for instance, Dr. Dean's parents have given him
and his family nearly $1 million in cash gifts over the last two decades, including a single
gift of $200,000 in the early 1980's. And his wife's parents gave
the couple $60,000 in 1985 to help them pay $161,700 in cash for the family's house
on Burlington's south side, freeing the couple from monthly mortgage payments.
The Deans have amassed a nest egg of about $4 million, not including
the value of their house, despite an annual income that has never exceeded
$170,000. Some of it is in land - nearly $700,000 worth, plus the Burlington
residence - but the remaining $3.24 million is in cash, bonds and a
handful of conservative stocks.
His blunt style, which has endeared him to legions of supporters
eager for a Democratic version of the Washington-bashing anti-politician who has
proved so successful for Republicans, can be misread as a lack of political sophistication.
"He's very matter-of-fact," said Peter Welch, a Vermont state senator
and longtime ally. " He's very unadorned, very quick. He's not particularly
reflective, so he comes across as less studied than he is.
But he has great political instincts, good at sizing up people and situations. Howard was
always two or three moves ahead on the chessboard."
No question, Dr. Dean's blueblood credentials are impeccable.
But even in prep school he struck classmates as unpretentious and not
materialistic. "He was not the least bit snobby," said Rick Kessler,
a scholarship student at St. George's who said he became quite attuned to the
tone of condescension from rich classmates.
Mrs. Dean sees her son's unpretentiousness as something
he learned at home, pointing out that her own parents taught her to treat people in an
egalitarian way.
"When I was growing up," she said, "we didn't even treat the servants like servants."
Her husband - also Howard B. Dean - rented their Upper East
Side apartment for $200 a month after World War II. He eventually bought it, she
said, for $9,500.
On his death in 2001, he left his widow an estate of around $7 million.
For the most part, Mrs. Dean said, her four boys - Howard, Charlie,
Jim and Bill - lived most of their childhoods in the Hamptons. The boys rode
bikes. They played with a model train set. They built elaborate underground forts.
While his parents were active in the exclusive Maidstone Club,
an East Hampton institution that for decades refused to admit blacks or Jews, the
Dean boys shunned that life. "I had plenty of friends at Maidstone,
and they were people I liked," Dr. Dean said. "But it wasn't what I wanted to do.
It wasn't that interesting."
For high school, Mr. Dean went off to St. George's, a boarding school
near Newport, R.I., affiliated with the Episcopal Church.
In the yearbook, he described himself as "a solid conservative defending
the powers of the Student Council and lashing out at cynics and
opponents." Anyone wanting to know him, he said, needed to be "the
curious type who can put up with a temper."
A Life Changing Trip
Mr. Dean's transformation from a bright, somewhat feckless son
of privilege into a goal-driven family man began, his mother believes, in the year
he spent in England after graduation from St. George's.
Dr. Dean says his mother may be right, though he remembers
the biggest change coming after he entered the politically charged atmosphere of
Yale in 1967.
His brother Jim also noticed the change after England. "His hair
was hanging down over the top of his ears," said Mr. Dean, a former marketing
executive now volunteering full time on the campaign. "He had on
those boots, you know, like the Beatles used to wear, and wire-rim glasses. He
wasn't a hippie, but it was definitely a new look and a different feel."
Of course it was a transforming experience, Dr. Dean said. He was 17,
far from home and on his own for the first time. Mr. Dean made new friends
at the Felstead School, which he attended in England, including an
emir's son from northern Nigeria. He and some other students hitchhiked
around Europe, spent Christmas break in Tunisia, slept on the floor of
the Gare du Nord in Paris and, in a particularly memorable episode, drove
overland to Turkey, passing through the Iron Curtain twice.
Mr. Rockwell, who was spending the year as a chaplain at Oxford,
had dinner one evening with Mr. Dean, who was surprised by the anti-American
sentiments he had encountered in England, especially concerning the Vietnam War.
"Nobody in Howard's life had ever said anything critical of the
United States," Mr. Rockwell said.
When he entered Yale in the fall of 1967, Dr. Dean asked to be paired
with black roommates. One of them, Mr. Dawson, was a scholarship student
from South Carolina. He says he remembers a very organized, nice guy,
but saw no hint of a budding politician. "At some point, I forget how, we
found out about his background," Mr. Dawson said. "We'd work him over a little bit about it."
Dr. Dean said there was never any discussion at home about his
having requested black roommates. "My perception was that my parents didn't
care," he said. "Yes, there was sort of this casual racism, in terms
of the racist expressions that were used by that generation. But in all, I think
my family was pretty open-minded about different kinds of people."
Years later, he remembers, his parents were immediately accepting
of his decision to marry Judith Steinberg, even though it was highly unusual
for someone from his family background to marry a Jew.
In fact, his mother said, she and his father discussed Ms. Steinberg's
heritage, but decided they really liked her and felt she would have a calming
effect on their determined but sometimes scattered son.
"We decided, well, he was never going to belong to the Maidstone Club, anyway."
Told later of his mother's comment, Dr. Dean took a moment to soak it in.
"She said that?" he finally asked, barking out a hearty laugh. "She's like
me. She says whatever comes into her head."
At Yale, social activities dominated his life, at least the first two years.
"I was a little wild," Dr. Dean said. "You know, you say things that
are inappropriate and you wish you hadn't said them. I do that enough without
drinking, so I didn't need the help."
In a 1974 letter recommending Mr. Dean for pre-med classes,
a Yale professor, Peter Brooks, tried to explain what had happened to the clearly
bright young man in his first years at the university.
"I judge that these years were for him a time of somewhat undirected
personal experimentation," Mr. Brooks wrote. "The trying out of various
commitments and ways of life with the generosity and energy that
characterize him, but without much sense of what it all meant."
After Yale, having received a medical deferment from the Vietnam
draft because of a long-standing back condition, Mr. Dean meandered and
resisted Wall Street's pull. He spent 10 months skiing and working odd
jobs in Aspen, Colo. When the spring snows melted in 1972, he returned to
New York.
"People used to follow their fathers onto Wall Street," Mrs. Dean said.
"That's the way it was done."
He began as a stockbroker's assistant and, two years later, was helping
manage a small mutual fund. "He was damn good at it," Mrs. Dean said.
"But I don't think it ever gave him any satisfaction."
Mr. Dean decided to become a doctor after working at a Denver hospital
and then volunteering in the emergency room at St. Vincent's in New York.
His disappointed father took the news well.
For one thing, Mrs. Dean said, she and her husband were amazed by
the straight A's Mr. Dean got in the classes he was taking to qualify for
medical school. He was studying, falling in love - he met Ms. Steinberg
at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, where they attended
medical school - and finding direction.
"Howard is a very solid resident, a good teacher, intellectual
in his approach, who performed well in his third year," said the doctor who evaluated
him in 1981. "His major problem continues to be one of impulsiveness."
Dr. Dean and Dr. Steinberg opened their joint practice in an old creamery
in Shelburne, which is just south of Burlington. They had two children:
Annie, who is now at Yale; and Paul, who is in his senior year of public high school.
Always a Few Steps Ahead
Still in the midst of his residency at the Medical Center Hospital
of Vermont, Dr. Dean was spotted by a local Democratic leader, Esther Sorrell,
and brought into the fringes of the party.
In 1980, he worked on Jimmy Carter's re-election campaign.
Soon afterward, he wandered into a presentation by a University of Vermont professor,
Thomas Hudspeth, about revitalizing Burlington's waterfront with a bicycle path.
"Howard came up after the presentation and said, `O.K., let's do it,' " said Rick Sharp, a lawyer.
The three men formed the Citizens Waterfront Group, to secure
a nine-mile stretch of land along Lake Champlain for the path.
"I remember Howard at the time was very good at sizing up people,"
Mr. Hudspeth said. "He'd cut to the chase, every time. He'd say, `Let's don't
bother with that guy, he's too contentious, we'll never convince him.'
Instead, we worked on some other guy. Howard was always a few steps
ahead."
Ms. Sorrell persuaded him to become the party's county chairman.
In 1983, Dr. Dean was elected to the state legislature.
Even Republicans in Vermont acknowledge that on many
issues - certainly fiscal ones - the Howard Dean of recent national fame is not the
political animal they remember from his 11 years as governor.
"Mostly, voters here saw Howard as in the center of his party,
perhaps even somewhere between his party and the Republican Party," said John
Bloomer, a Republican and the minority leader in the Vermont Senate.
Dr. Dean is sometimes portrayed as an almost accidental politician.
He did not give up his medical practice until 1991, when he became governor
upon the death of Gov. Richard Snelling. Dr. Dean had been lieutenant governor,
a part-time position he had held for nearly six years. But those
closest to him said they had detected his growing political ambition long before then.
His reputation as governor - not unlike George W. Bush's - was as a bridge
between the state's political wings. In style, though, he was quite
different from the Texas governor, who constantly preached political
tolerance and made regular genuflections to Democratic power brokers in the
legislature. Governor Dean was blunt and outspoken. He frequently
upset his top aides by lashing out at aggressive reporters or snapping at
political opponents.
The crisis that nearly cost Dr. Dean his governor's seat in 2000 - an uprising
by conservatives and independents over his signing of a law
legalizing gay civil unions - sorely tested his political skills.
"In a no-nonsense way, he made the tough decision," said Bob Rogan,
who was Dr. Dean's deputy chief of staff at the time and now a top official in
his presidential campaign. "And he didn't look back."
When conservative Democrats seemed as if they might drift into
Republican ranks, Dr. Dean set up a series of meetings with them,
dispassionately explaining his decision to sign the civil unions bill. He then let the crowd rail at him.
Then there are the questions about whether a man whose chief political
experience has been running a governor's office has the skills to run the
federal government.
"A C.E.O.'s skills are essentially the same, no matter the size
of the company," Dr. Dean said. "Clearly, with the presidency, you've also got to deal
with defense. But otherwise, the basic problems are the same and
the difference is the number of zeroes in the budget."
That may be understating the difference, even close supporters believe.
"The governor's staff was maybe five or six people, plus clerical help,
and only two or three of those are really close to you," said Dick Mazza, a
veteran Vermont senator and an ally. "You have, what, one state police
officer assigned to you? It's a lot different from being president of the
United States."
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