Wilgoren writes an excellent "Obit"
Dean Makes His Exit From Campaign but Vows, 'We Are Not Going Away'
By JODI WILGOREN - NYT
BURLINGTON, Vt., Feb. 18 — For once, Howard Dean stuck to the script.
He stayed behind the lectern, reading the speech he had jotted, by hand, on pages ripped from a spiral notebook. He kept an even tone until his voice cracked near the end, as hundreds of staff members and supporters stifled their tears with cheers. He left no room for interpretation, saying, "I'm no longer a candidate."
He remembered to thank his wife, and when he had finished signing autographs and shaking hands, he walked away from a local television reporter's microphone before she could frame a question.
But if Wednesday's words were the long-awaited denouement to Dr. Dean's rollicking ride through this year's Democratic presidential nominating process, the hand-lettered signs in the hotel ballroom here foreshadowed his next chapter. "It's not over until you stop believing," one said.
Dr. Dean — who was largely unknown outside this state when he became the first to enter the presidential race two years ago and then spent months as its high-flying leader in the polls before failing to win a single primary or caucus — seemed to be trying to convince himself as much as anyone when he said, "There are a lot of ways to make change."
"We are leaving one track, but we are going on another track that will take back America for ordinary people," Dr. Dean said, closing out his candidacy but promising to transform his organization, and its database of 318,884 donors, into a force to oust President Bush and elect local Democrats. "This is the end of Phase 1 of this fight, but the fight will go on, and we will be together in that fight."
Defiant until the end, Dr. Dean did not release his delegates, instead urging supporters to find his name on their ballots in the upcoming primaries and meet him at the nominating convention. He made no mention of his opponents except to claim credit for pushing them to speak out strongly against Mr. Bush and promising he would not let them ease up.
Promising not to run as an independent or third-party candidate — and urging his supporters not to back one — Dr. Dean, 55, declared: "We are not going away. We are staying together, unified, all of us."
It was a distinguished end to a roller-coaster campaign that experts say will be etched in memory both for its revolutionary use of the Internet and for its stunningly swift collapse. Eric Davis, a political scientist at Middlebury College in Vermont, called it "one of the most rapid declines of any candidate in American political history."
The unraveling of Dr. Dean, a Park Avenue-bred former governor of Vermont who wore the same suit for weeks on end, came from a confluence of weaknesses in the candidate, his campaign and the contours of this year's contest. In the end, the very things that made him attractive and his operation impressive were the ones that hastened his demise.
As the soaring insurgent-outsider in a crowded field with a front-loaded nominating calendar, Dr. Dean drew intense criticism from all corners, and whenever he responded to one attack, he risked helping the others in the field. His vaunted decentralized movement of political newcomers lacked experience and agility, failing to quickly make or clearly communicate critical decisions.
The campaign became obsessed with itself, focusing less on the issues and more on the number of supporters signed up on its Web site, on letters written to voters, on house parties in New Hampshire or volunteers canvassing Iowa in orange hats. In the end, the determination to take the country back was unmatched by a blueprint for what to do with it. And Dr. Dean, whose outspokenness was part of his allure, never learned to watch his words, nor grow into a skilled statesman who could reach beyond his base.
"The Bad News Bears went to the World Series, and instead of playing with a couple of free agents, they played with the Bad News Bears, and they got thrashed," a senior aide said. "He never became the Alex Rodriguez, never became the full-fledged All-Star that you need to compete at all levels."
Democrats inside and outside the Dean camp point to any number of mistakes: Not taking time for intense policy briefings to layer substance under the lines of Dr. Dean's stump speech; having a one-note schedule of rallies and forums rather than a range of activities to build a three-dimensional profile; ignoring brewing problems in the Iowa field operation as early as last summer.
In addition, aides failed to find controversial statements Dr. Dean had made over decades on the small stage of Vermont that would come back to haunt him. Energetic 20-somethings were put in charge of critical realms like field organizing and politics, and the staff failed to exploit the experience of endorsers.
But mostly, Democrats say, the campaign was hypnotized by its own hype, swayed by the external signs of success. For months, Dr. Dean led in most polls, broke records in fund-raising ($50.3 million altogether), drew unheard-of crowds and dominated news coverage nearly every day. Why change what seemed to work?
"We didn't really fall down until so late in the game that we couldn't learn from it," said Karen Hicks, the New Hampshire state director. "The first real bump in the road was Iowa, and by then the calendar is such that you can't recover."
It would be unfair, in assessing what went wrong in the Dean campaign, to ignore its many accomplishments. Politicians throughout the country are trying to mimic its use of the Internet, for both raising money and mobilizing people. Many Democrats credit Dr. Dean with defining the presidential debate, providing talking points deftly borrowed by the remaining contenders, and leading the angry and the alienated to the polls.
"I guess imitation is the most sincere form of flattery," said Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, the first of more than 35 members of Congress to back Dr. Dean's bid.
"It's a groundbreaking phenomenon that I think will change American politics forever," she said of the campaign. "He will not be the nominee, but I'll make this prediction: He will be a force in American politics, along with the people he's brought into this, for a long time to come."
Senator John Kerry, who has been Dr. Dean's main adversary but who must now court his support, said on Wednesday that "it's impossible not to express admiration and respect for the campaign that he's put together and what he's achieved."
"He has done an extraordinary job of invigorating a whole group of people who were divorced from the political process and bringing them in, and of being innovative and creative in the way in which he's done it," Mr. Kerry said, "and I have great respect for that."
Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, a black congresswoman from Texas, who campaigned alongside Dr. Dean or in his stead during his downfall, compared the campaign to the civil rights movement, noting that Jim Crow did not fall with the first sit-ins.
"It did not work when you count the numbers in states," Ms. Jackson Lee said of Dr. Dean's campaign. "But these things sometimes have to be seeded, grown and watered. He has placed the seeds."
Others saw in Dr. Dean's surge and slide a squandered opportunity. The longtime campaign manager, Joe Trippi, according to several of his acolytes, was an inspirational but dysfunctional leader, who held authority close to his messy office, left problems to fester and never built a close enough relationship with Dr. Dean.
Some supporters fretted over advice ignored and help rebuffed by an organization more likely to adopt ideas from the blather on its Web log than from people on the payroll.
"The director of the campaign in New York seemed to think elected officials were only good for endorsements and two-minute speeches," said Representative Major R. Owens of Brooklyn, an early backer. "Volunteers were swarming around, but every situation should have had local people to guide things."
It could take months to get a decision from the Burlington office, where college graduates — or not — rode scooters past Mr. Trippi's office, the beehive of activity and authority. But Mr. Trippi insisted it was a myth that he was running the campaign, and staged innovative online votes by supporters for important decisions like whether to accept public financing to prove his point.
Now, critics say he was right — nobody was running things at all.
"There was no decision-making process, there was no structure, there was no one in charge," a senior member of the team said.
Mr. Trippi, for his part, points out that he never had control of the checkbook, and says he and others struggled to communicate with Dr. Dean and his traveling entourage, which lacked a senior policy or political aide with national know-how until Thanksgiving, and then got one who did not know Dr. Dean well.
During the critical month of December, much of the staff was consumed with responding to attacks, and Dr. Dean put forward few new policies, doing nothing to change the subject — except when he would say things that caused trouble.
It is easy to focus on Dr. Dean's notorious "I Have a Scream" speech after the Iowa caucuses. But that came after his third-place showing in a state he had been counting on to catapult him to the nomination.
And that followed his comments that Saddam Hussein's capture had not made the United States safer and that Osama bin Laden should not be put to death without a fair trial. He promised to "plug a hole" in his résumé with a vice-presidential candidate. He was hurt further when he shouted at an Iowa voter to sit down, and when film of him insulting the caucus process four years ago was broadcast on the national news.
"There was a certain sense that if you tried too hard, if you gave him media training, or if you over-prepped him — they felt that the worst thing you could do was say, `Don't say X' because it will get you in trouble,' " a staff member said, noting that the campaign rarely did formal debate preparation. "You had to let Howard be Howard."
After his third-place showing in Tuesday's primary in Wisconsin, where he had hoped to resuscitate the campaign, Dr. Dean arrived here about 1:30 a.m. Wednesday and was soon feted by scores of his employees, eyes red both from drink and sobs, chanting his name on the tarmac. A few hours later, he ate breakfast at home with his son, Paul.
Dr. Dean's inner circle — his two closest aides from Vermont, Kate O'Connor and Bob Rogan, and his new campaign chief, Roy Neel — visited him at home about 9:30 a.m. to discuss the day's announcement. Then Dr. Dean went to the headquarters, where his voice broke as he explained the plan to the senior staff.
At noon, Dr. Dean dialed into a conference call with his Congressional supporters, in which he said he believed that Senator John Edwards of North Carolina was a stronger candidate than Senator Kerry, and promised to inform them before he endorsed anyone.
Then he went to the hotel ballroom with his wife of 23 years, Judith Steinberg Dean, a doctor who made her political debut last month in Iowa, and whom he thanked for igniting a debate "about whether a woman needs to gaze adoringly at her husband."
When someone from the crowd yelled, "We believe in you," Dr. Dean responded: "Believe in yourself. All together, we can believe in ourselves."
He ended the way he always ends, suggesting that the lines — originated by Mr. Trippi for a long-ago speech to a Democratic Party meeting — had even more meaning on this, his final day as a presidential hopeful.
"You have the power to take our country back," he said. "And together, we have the power to take back the White House in 2004 — and that is exactly what we're going to do."
Michael Janofsky contributed reporting from Washington for this article.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |
