Missteps Pulled a Surging Dean Back to Earth
By JODI WILGOREN and JIM RUTENBERG
itting on a mirror-ceilinged bus normally used by Aretha Franklin, Howard Dean searched for something to say to 1,000 screaming supporters about his surprising third-place showing in the Iowa caucuses.
His campaign brain trust — the longtime loyalist from Vermont, the Washington media guru — choreographed an entrance into the ballroom near Des Moines in which Dr. Dean would whip off his suit coat and roll up his sleeves, ready to fight the next round. Senator Tom Harkin, stunned that no one had prepared notes for a concession speech, urged the candidate to be upbeat.
Then, just as Dr. Dean headed onstage, his campaign manager, Joe Trippi, offered a snippet of rocker philosophy: "Freedom's just another for word for nothing left to lose."
Actually, Dr. Dean still had plenty to lose that night, when his speech turned his highflying candidacy into late-night joke fodder.
There was the New Hampshire primary. There was his $41 million war chest, which he was just beginning to realize had been frittered away. There was Mr. Trippi, who had taken Dr. Dean from unknown to seemingly unbeatable, but walked out last week when his candidate hired a Washington hand to run the campaign.
And there was Dr. Dean's image and presidential persona, overwhelmed by the endless replay of the screamed speech on cable television, talk radio and the very Internet chat rooms that first propelled his campaign.
Dr. Dean, whose remarkable ascent from asterisk to leader in the polls dominated the the campaign for much of last year, may yet mount a formidable challenge for the nomination, with a new campaign chief who has constructed a strategy based on larger, later-voting states. But as Democrats weigh the slide of Dr. Dean, the former Vermont governor, from likely back to longshot, they see the origins of his unraveling as a mix of mistakes and the unavoidable reality of life as a front-runner in a crowded field.
Endorsements from the establishment muddled his outsider's message. The campaign failed to consistently respond to intensifying attacks, just as people began to tune in. The feuding Vermont- and Washington-based factions on the staff never reached detente. The candidate himself kept giving his opponents ammunition with his words.
Perhaps most fundamentally, say Democrats inside and outside Dr. Dean's team, the campaign catapulted forward by billing itself as a broad movement for change, but failed to adequately define and sell its leader, who was little known outside of his home state.
"Ultimately, when people cast a vote for president, they are casting a vote for someone in whom they are entrusting their lives, their future, their children," said Anita Dunn, a Democratic strategist who worked for Bill Bradley in 2000. "They cast it for a person."
Kate O'Connor, a member of Dr. Dean's cabinet in Vermont who has traveled with him daily since he started his long-shot campaign two years ago, said the surge "went too high too fast, and you can't sustain something like that."
"He was made into a rock star, which he wasn't," Ms. O'Connor said. "It became more about the crowds than about Howard. Because the expectations were so high for us, we almost had nowhere to go but where we are right now."
In the earliest days of Dr. Dean's heady summer surge last year, as his shockingly large fund-raising haul of $7.6 million landed him on the covers of Time and Newsweek, the campaign committed to an aggressive spending strategy in hopes of wrapping up the nomination in warp speed. Exploiting the news media's fascination with their Internet-fueled insurgency, Dr. Dean's aides threw millions into unheard-of early advertising in multiple states, some 30 field offices and audacious stunts like the four-day, 10-city "Sleepless Summer Tour"— so named to mock President Bush's lengthy vacation.
Other campaigns were stunned by the crowds of 10,000 people in Seattle and New York — and the price tag of the effort. Jim Jordan, who at that time was campaign manager for Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, recalled seeing an 8 1/2- by 11-inch, four-color, card-stock invitation to one of those August rallies, and estimating its cost at 85 cents. "I scribbled down the math," Mr. Jordan said. "They must have sent out 60,000 to 80,000. So they were spending $50,000 to $70,000 for postage for a rally. That was all about building up an illusion for reporters on the plane. It was all about building a sense of momentum and invincibility."
But inside the Dean campaign, the expense seemed essential. "You could argue that it was a mistake for us to spend in the summer, in the fall, and in nine states rather than just one or two, but our position is that we had to spend the money to generate the momentum, to get the endorsements that we got," said a senior campaign official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We believed that if we won Iowa and New Hampshire, we would be the nominee by Feb. 3. Look what's happening to John Kerry. The strategy wasn't wrong; it just didn't work for us."
Throughout the fall, Dr. Dean led in polls, donations and press attention, and wore a target on his back at every debate. But he also appeared to wear a Teflon coat. His rivals' efforts to point out that he had changed his position on trade, Medicare and gun control seemed overshadowed by the resonance of his anti-Washington message and a seemingly endless ability to refuel with Internet donations.
An early sign the ground had shifted under Dr. Dean came on Dec. 1, when he was asked on both "Good Morning America" on ABC and "Hardball" on MSNBC why he had sealed more than half his gubernatorial records for a decade, longer than his predecessors. Dr. Dean had dismissed the issue nearly a year before, telling Vermont Public Radio, "we didn't want anything embarrassing appearing in the papers at a critical time for a future endeavor," and swatted it away again when newspapers inquired in the summer.
But now the issue would not die.
"Dean had been absorbing all of these hits," said Steve Murphy, who managed the campaign of Representative Richard A. Gephardt. "I pointed out: Wait until it makes the jump from cable to broadcast. Broadcast television magnifies the exposure by 20 times."
A week later, Al Gore endorsed Dr. Dean. It was a huge symbol of success, but it also muddied Dr. Dean's image as an outsider. The stamp of approval brought hordes of more help from inside the Beltway; flooded with advice from such experts, Dr. Dean started speaking in more moderate tones, trying to transform from flame-thrower to party unifier.
"There's always a schizophrenic role that an insurgent candidate plays between being an outsider and needing to build relationships within the party and within organized leaders to validate your candidacy," said one top Dean official, on the condition that he not be named. "It's like the more endorsements he got from the major players of the Democratic Party, the worse he began to do."
Throughout December and into January, as attacks flew daily from all corners, Dr. Dean and his aides were uncertain how to respond. Making it worse were what people inside the campaign called self-inflicted wounds.
The tipping point came on Jan. 8, when "NBC Nightly News" broadcast a tape of Dr. Dean, from four years before, criticizing the Iowa caucuses on which he was now relying to vault him to the nomination. His Iowa poll numbers dropped 10 points overnight.
"Even though we looked like an 800-pound gorilla, we were still growing up," one a senior campaign aide said. "We were like the big lanky teenager that looked like a grown man."
The Dean campaign was proud of its ground game, but many seasoned operatives found it lacking. Top officials were assured to the end that there were 37,000 solid Dean votes, but less than 22,000 turned up.
When Mr. Gore traveled with the campaign, according to one Democrat close to him, he was surprised at the lack of organization and the inattention to Dr. Dean's needs. Mr. Gore was "not sure there was a lot of there there," this person said. "They were sort of winging it."
Jenny Backus, a Democratic consultant unaligned in the presidential race, said the Dean team "was sort of like the eBay candidate."
"The problem with eBay is that sometimes when you get it home and you put this thing on your shelf, it's not as big as you thought it was," she said. "You feel ripped off."
After Iowa, the fissures within the campaign staff grew. Mr. Trippi went back to Burlington, Vt., to brainstorm, while Ms. O'Connor and Bob Rogan, another Vermont veteran who controlled the campaign's budget, tried to have Dr. Dean return to the humble roots of his once-quixotic quest.
Like many front-runners, he had seen his message adopted by rivals. Opposing the war no longer seemed like a winning issue. So, finally, he acquiesced to staff pleas and reminded voters repeatedly that he is a doctor. His wife made a splash on the trail and on television.
But biographical tidbits could not make up for months in which opponents ran advertisements highlighting their backgrounds while Dr. Dean used commercials to sell message more than man.
"Howard never built a relationship with the voters on a fundamental, gut level," one major supporter said. "When Howard needed to make the sale, I believe that required him to be more human, more self-revelatory, more personal with people, and Howard is a very private person."
When Mr. Kerry won New Hampshire by 12 points, Dr. Dean hired Roy Neel, a longtime Gore aide, to steady his careening campaign. They have put together a new longshot strategy, counting on friendly states like Wisconsin and Washington for a second surge.
On Friday in St. Louis, a woman sharing an elevator with Dr. Dean told him: "Whatever happens, you've changed the Democratic Party."
Ms. O'Connor said: "I was there when we first started. I have a different perspective on where we were and how far we've come. He's had an impact on this country. We're not giving up." |
