Democrats' Anger at Bush Still Fueling Dean's Effort
By T.R. Reid
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 15, 2003; Page A02
WINTERSET, Iowa -- There was a doctor in the room, so Nancy Hull naturally grabbed the opportunity to get advice for her aching back. "Dr. Dean," she asked, "whenever I hear George W. Bush speak, I get a searing pain in my spine. Can you suggest a remedy?"
The question sparked an explosion of cheers and whoops of agreement among the 100 Democrats gathered at the Madison County Historical Center where the biggest display commemorates the fact that John Wayne was born in this quiet farm town -- and physician-turned-politician Howard Dean was ready with his answer.
"My prescription is for you to go to the caucuses on January 19 and vote for Howard Dean," the candidate said, drawing even louder whoops and cheers.
"That's the best cure for what ails America."
As Dean noted here Friday, much has changed since he first came to Winterset more than a year ago as the former governor of Vermont.
But even though he has emerged as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination -- and his one-sedan campaign entourage has morphed into a full-scale motorcade, complete with press bus -- the Dean campaign is still running primarily on the tonic that fueled his rise: Democratic loathing of President Bush.
All over Iowa, Dean encounters Democrats who get a "searing pain" from the president. "What we think of Bush can't be printed in a family newspaper," said John Kaiser, a veteran Iowa Democrat who decided to support Dean only after long, personal talks with four other contenders. "And Dean is the guy who has tapped that outrage."
The war in Iraq is part of his case against the president, but only part. Thus the capture of Saddam Hussein seems unlikely to change Dean's focus.
Dean responds negatively -- in fact, angrily -- to the suggestion that his campaign is driven by anger. "This campaign is not about anger. It's about hope," he said testily this weekend as he hopscotched from the heartland to Dixie to California in pursuit of caucus votes and contributions. And yet the "hope" he is offering, he told the crowds, is that "we can give George Bush a one-way bus ticket back to Crawford, Texas."
As the candidate conceded in an interview, the "anger factor" in his campaign may be potent among active Democrats, but it is too narrow for the electorate as a whole. As he starts to look toward the general election, Dean said, "I'm talking not just to Democrats anymore. I'm talking to the whole country." That is the "biggest change," he noted, in his transformation from the bottom to the top of the Democratic polls.
But with a month to go before the first votes of the Democratic primary season, Dean is focusing on his core group, the kind of people who flock to his rallies wearing T-shirts that read "Dump Dumb Dubya" or "He Lied -- People Died" or "Save the Environment -- Plant a Bush Back in Texas." As the candidate is fully aware, that is the constituency that could sew up the Democratic nomination for him in the first month of the primaries.
"We're going to start with the people who brought us to the dance, the loyal Democratic folks," he told a gathering of black bankers and lawyers in Atlanta's cushy Cascade Manor neighborhood Saturday. "And then we'll go to the swing voters."
A son of wealth and a product of private schools and the Ivy League, the 55-year-old physician generates minimal personal chemistry with the large crowds who turn out to hear the hot political phenomenon of 2003. With his fitted suits, paisley ties and shiny black Bass Weejuns, the silver-haired Yale graduate looks like the cover of the J. Press catalogue.
But the socioeconomic distance melts away when Dean launches into his Bush-bashing stump speech. "This is a president who cares more about Halliburton than about bringing our soldiers home!" he shouts to applause.
"The president who forfeited the moral leadership of the United States around the world!" "A president who's made this country weaker, not stronger!" "A president who's playing the race card!" With each blast, the chants and cheers from the crowd grow louder.
In fact, Dean goes on, anger at Bush was the basic motivation for his campaign. "It started when I was reading something in the paper, one more thing the president did that made me furious," he says, to nods of recognition. "And I said to myself, 'Are you just going to sit here and get mad, or are you going to do something about it?' "
With no Secret Service detail yet to get between him and the voters, Dean is still engaged in retail politics, even as the crowds and the campaign staff surrounding him multiply. But if "Dean for America" is no longer a one-man shop, it has hardly achieved the polish of a Wal-Mart as yet. The candidate, or perhaps his advance staff, often shows no sense of place.
When Dean spoke to the senior class Friday at Abraham Lincoln High School in Council Bluffs, Iowa -- 400 people, all eligible to vote in next month's caucuses -- he offended the young audience by bringing in a student from arch-rival Thomas Jefferson High School to introduce him. Here in Winterset, he failed even to mention the local claims to fame, John Wayne's birthplace and Madison County's famous bridges.
Talking about Latin American relations in Miami on Saturday night, Dean mysteriously launched into a discussion of Bush's dealings with Mexico -- with nothing said about Cuba, the Latin American state that matters most to Miami.
"Doesn't the man know we care more about Cuba than Mexico?" growled Enrique Ibarra.
But those hiccups do not seem to get in the way of Dean's chief appeal, as the candidate who has most sharply articulated some Democrats' sheer rage at Bush. No matter what goes wrong, Dean can always draw a mighty cheer with his common answer to voters' questions: "The first thing we've got to do is change presidents."
washingtonpost.com |
