A Front-Running Insurgent
Don't discount the excitement around Howard Dean.
BY ALBERT R. HUNT - WSJ.COM
Sunday, July 20, 2003 12:01 a.m.
More relevant than whether the Howard Dean phenomenon is ideologically driven by his opposition to the Iraq war and support for civil unions are these bits of history:
In the summer of 1971, insurgent Democratic hopeful George McGovern ran a distant sixth in Democratic presidential preference polls; four years later, Jimmy Carter was doing even worse, tied with such luminaries as Milton Shapp among the also-rans; in 1983, Gary Hart trailed not only the front-runners but even Alan Cranston; and four summers ago, John McCain lagged behind not just George W. Bush but Elizabeth Dole, Dan Quayle and Steve Forbes.
They were typical insurgents: back in the pack, living off the land, building grassroots support and a message, peaking six months later when the voting started. Howard Dean, however, is unique at this stage of presidential politics; an early upper-tier insurgent. In the initial Iowa and New Hampshire tests, the physician-turned-politician is running first or second in surveys and is, with Sen. John Kerry and Rep. Dick Gephardt, one of the front-runners.
For both the former Vermont governor and the Democratic Party, this unusual situation--a surging insurgent before there's an establishment favorite--affords opportunities and pitfalls.
The Dean base largely is what pollster Stan Greenberg calls the "secular warriors"--largely white, middle- to upper-middle-class, non-churchgoing, non-gun-owning voters. With his singular--among major candidates--opposition to the Iraq war, he became the favorite of more Democrats who intensely dislike and mistrust George W. Bush, dating back to the 2000 election controversy. Dean campaign chief Joe Trippi argues his camp's growing band of supporters are not only anti-Bush and antiwar, and anti-Washington insider, but are willing, even eager, to make sacrifices for a greater good.
The candidate behind all this is considerably less ideological than often depicted; he's a reformer, not a liberal or a progressive. His priorities are fiscal discipline, health care, children and, he says, foreign policy; social issues are secondary. Even on national security, this isn't a left-winger. The war, he argues, was wrong, but it would be a huge mistake to pull out of Iraq and he acknowledges the defense budget can't be cut.
Mr. Trippi doesn't worry about the "Birkenstock liberal" rap; when reporters go to Vermont, they'll discover the real Dean.
Unlike his insurgent predecessors, the Vermont governor won't lack for resources. He topped the Democratic fund-raising field in the second quarter and is well outdistancing more experienced rivals like Dick Gephardt and Joe Lieberman. Half of his money comes via the Internet; he has more than three times as many donors as any other Democrat.
But there is more than a little peril to being elevated so soon. "All the other Democrats have a common agenda: Stop Howard Dean," notes Mr. Trippi. The Jimmy Carters and George McGoverns had a year to hone their messages, see what worked and what didn't, with little scrutiny. Dr. Dean now is being held to a higher performance standard; witness the celebrated grilling he got a few weeks ago on "Meet The Press" from Tim Russert. (The candidate thinks that was a good experience, and the campaign raised about 10 times as much money on that day as it usually does on Sundays.)
But the Dean demeanor will be scrutinized in the months ahead. He's prone to bouts of petulance--as governor, he would veto bills because he was mad at the Legislature--stubbornness, and a penchant for petty or abrasive comments. Even his followers reacted negatively when he attacked John Kerry during a South Carolina debate. This week he charged Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt had "disrespected" the NAACP merely for not showing up at its conference in Miami.
For the party, the biggest concern ironically could be the issue that propelled Dr. Dean into the limelight--Iraq--although he looks pretty prescient today. The Sept. 11 terrorism revived the Cold War criterion that a presidential candidate must be competitive on the national security issue; that wasn't the case after the Berlin Wall fell, as Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both defeated candidates with better credentials.
But even if the Iraq occupation continues to be a disaster, and the Bush administration continues to dissemble, some smart Democrats worry that if the Dean message drives the debate away from a tough national-security posture, the Democrats may have trouble meeting that threshold level.
Dr. Dean, however, is demonstrably energizing more voters and expanding the Democrats' potential. Stories abound of sizeable crowds greeting him--from Austin, Texas to Seattle, Washington--that go well beyond political junkies on the Web.
The odds still are against the insurgent getting the nomination, or, if he does get it, defeating George W. Bush. "His base is well suited for Vermont and New Hampshire," notes Mr. Greenberg, "but the battleground will be in Missouri and Wisconsin." Yet the most interesting dynamic of the race today is the Dean-Kerry clash, and the conventional wisdom of only a month, parroted by me among others, that Mr. Dean was a Bruce Babbitt or, at best, a Gary Hart-type antiestablishment candidate and certainly not a prospective nominee is, to put it charitably, outdated.
Many Democratic politicians remain wary, but they're struck by the grassroots vitality of the Dean forces. Michigan's Rep. John Dingell, a veteran liberal, the antithesis of the secular warriors, says the one political booth at the Ann Arbor farmer's market last weekend was populated "by informal, unguided" Dean supporters. He sees Michigan, which is another early contest, now as a legitimate three-way race between presidential front-runners Dick Gephardt, with union backing; John Kerry, who seems to be the favorite of the Democratic governor; and Howard Dean, with the most impressive grassroots support in places like the farmers market.
Mr. Hunt is executive Washington editor of The Wall Street Journal. His column appears in the Journal on Thursdays.
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