Having fallen precipitously from Democratic frontrunner status to that of a discredited loser, one might not have expected to hear again from the former Vermont governor anytime soon. Surprise, surprise, then – far from being exiled from the Democratic Party, he is now running it.

            And still saying outrageous things. In mid-March, at a gathering of Democrats Abroad in Toronto, the new Democratic National Chairman remarked that his party had lost the election to “brain dead” Republicans. It was particularly inflammatory because it came at the height of a national frenzy over the case of Terri Schiavo, the severely-brain damaged Florida woman whose relatives – and all of America – were fighting over whether she should be kept on life support. Dean said Republicans are much better at staying on message while Democrats often offer overly long explanations.

            Dean, 56, doesn’t have that problem. He gets right to the point, and stays there. He is incredibly dogged. Which helps explain Dean’s election in February to run the Democratic Party – one of the more striking acts of political resuscitation in recent years.

            Some suspect that the Democrats gave the chairmanship to Dean as a way of sidelining him from the 2008 presidential race. But talking to insiders, there’s little evidence of that. Many seem to genuinely admire the man.

            “He worked hard to get back to this point and he has shown that he is the right person to do it,” says Jim Jordan, a former campaign manager for John Kerry. “After what must have been a tough personal blow he has stayed involved energetically and publicly.”

            That’s America. Forgiveness is a national creed, made easier when enough suspect that the penitent’s crimes were exaggerated to begin with. Even more so when that person has a fan club made up of millions of young and otherwise disenfranchised Americans eager not only to participate in the political process, but to pump cash into Democratic coffers.

            From a relative unknown in a field of big-name presidential hopefuls, Dean soared in a short time to Democratic frontrunner status – chiefly by vociferously criticizing the war in Iraq and the Washington Democrats who voted for it, who happened to be his chief opponents. Rather than relying on big donors, Dean’s campaign pioneered Internet fundraising, an inexpensive way of amassing piles of cash. Even early in his 2004 run, half of Dean’s funding was coming from the Internet – a previously unheard-of feat.

   Average contributions of under $80 came in so fast that by the end of 2003, Dean had a whopping $41 million, enough for him to become the first-ever Democrat to reject federal primary funding that would have required him to cap his own spending at $44.6 million. Like much else about Dean’s campaign, this was a collective decision. The campaign website polled thrilled supporters, who couldn’t quite believe their newfound sense of power and belonging.

   Endorsements followed, from big labor unions to the likes of Al Gore and Jimmy Carter (who tacitly gave his blessing). A euphoric Dean started talking about the “$100 revolution,” raising enough money to match George W. Bush’s $200 million through $100 donations for the general election. But the confidence was premature. In the Iowa caucuses, where it’s all about dragging real bodies through the snow to cast ballots in classrooms and union halls, Dean got out-organized and came in a devastating third. That’s when, in a concession speech intended to rally a boisterous crowd of the faithful, he emitted what came to be known as “the scream.” Endlessly replayed on TV, radio and the Internet, it would turn out to have been unfairly manipulated to exaggerate Dean’s volume and decrease the background crowd noise. Nevertheless, it was Dean’s Waterloo, the “evidence” that he lacked the comportment of a would-be president. Eight days later, in the crucial New Hampshire primary, what was once a 30-point lead over Kerry turned into a second-place finish. And three weeks and 17 primary and caucus losses hence, on February 18th, it was all over. Dean bowed out.

   Despite the string of losses, Dean had undeniably accomplished a great deal. Coming from virtually nowhere to grace the covers of Time and Newsweek, he seemed to embody the beliefs of millions of disaffected Americans who backed him. And, he had built that army of supporters almost entirely on his positions, while his opponents leaned heavily on their personal profiles.

WHAT NEXT?

Given the ignominious plunge, folks would have understood if Dean had decided to retire to a Ben & Jerry’s franchise. Instead, he surprised many by proving a remarkably good trouper for the Democratic cause. He earned an appearance at the Democratic Convention, where he was warmly received; and in widespread general election appearances on behalf of his highly effective and enduring political action committee, Democracy for America, he always urged support for Kerry.

            With George Bush’s electoral triumph on November 2nd, the Democrats went into a deep despond. Those who weren’t proposing to move to Canada, it seemed, were wearily renouncing politics. Assuming Dean himself wasn’t going to chuck it all, he had options. As a still-popular outsider figure on the national scene, he could have continued to develop a grassroots base for a 2008 bid via Democracy for America.

            Instead, he offered to put his own presidential aspirations on hold in order to take on the thankless and arduous task of rebuilding a party that can’t seem to compete anymore.

            After losing the House, the Senate and the presidency, and then in the last election, surrendering even more ground in Congress, the Democrats needed new ideas and new faces. “We need to research what we talk about, and how we talk about it,” says Carol Butler, a Democratic consultant. That opportunity, plus the fact that legions of Deaniacs wanted him to stay in the game, made up his mind for him.

            Besides, the party chairmanship is “a nice place for exploring his options,” says William Mayer, a Northeastern University professor specializing in party politics, and author of In Pursuit of the White House 2000: How We Choose Our Presidential Nominees. “When Kerry lost he was still in the US Senate,” notes Mayer. “Dean didn’t have that luxury. It is a huge advantage for him to have a platform… it’s a great place to meet activists and fundraisers. Gives him an excuse to travel all over the country.”

THE CONTEST

But the chairmanship was hardly Dean’s for the asking. He’d never been an insider, and here was the ultimate insider job. He’d have to prove to the many doubters among the 447 voting delegates that he could be a remarkably well-behaved bull in a china shop. And he did – in a methodical, measured way that observers say bodes well both for his future and for that of the party.

            “The arc that most people went through to the idea of Dean at the DNC,” recalls McMahon, “was from scoffing to fearing it, to beginning-to-get-comfortable-with-it, to welcoming it.”

            The contest played out at a December annual meeting of Democratic state chairs in Orlando, and in regional DNC gatherings, breakfasts and cocktail parties, culminating in a February vote. The process itself was remarkable. “DNC members haven’t had this kind of power in a long time, because the position wasn’t contested,” says Butler, who worked on former Texas Rep. Martin Frost’s DNC bid.

            But these are remarkable and desperate times, and a host of party notables who thought they had an idea of how to reverse the Dems’ slide into oblivion entered the fray. It soon resembled a barroom brawl from a B-grade Western. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, peeved at ex-Rep. Frost for having challenged her for her leadership post, tried to block his DNC candidacy by nudging Indianan Tim Roemer into the race. But Roemer’s pro-life views hobbled him. Organized labor suckerpunched several union-loyal hopefuls by deciding to make no endorsement. The comparatively youngish Donnie Fowler of South Carolina, 37, and Simon Rosenberg of New York, 41, argued about who was the most Internet-savvy, an increasingly important consideration in any executive position. Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton had a stalking horse; so did John Kerry.

            And then, on January 11th, after six others were already in the race, Dean announced his candidacy. Compared to Dean the presidential hopeful, Dean the would-be party chairman struck a far more measured pose. “He got too taken with himself in the presidential race,” says Eddie Mahe, a former Deputy Republican National Chairman. “By mid-December he thought he had won the nomination. His tone changed, and voters got turned off of him. I think he learned a lesson. He focused on this one without getting ahead of himself.”

           Dean was not only smart, but lucky. “The fight was so fast and furious between [the others] on a segment of the vote, they were losing sight that Howard Dean was pulling away,” says consultant Joe Trippi, a former Dean campaign manager who initially backed Rosenberg. “Everybody talks about a ‘Perfect Storm’ that didn’t work for Howard in Iowa. But there was one that worked for him in the chair fight.”

            Dean’s forces polled DNC members and discovered two things. (1) The DNC rank and file did not buy the leadership’s rhetoric about a need to put a moderate face on the party; and (2) they had a celebrity on their hands. “When Howard walked into a room, people wanted him to sign T-shirts and pictures,” says McMahon. “No other candidate had that, they didn’t even notice when others walked into a room. We knew it and we used it.”

            Hardly any of the past DNC chairs have been celebrities, most far from it – obscure small-state governors, inside-the-beltway lobbyist-lawyers and so on, and few have gone on to greater glory. (One notable exception for either party was George Herbert Walker Bush, who presided over the RNC’s Watergate defense in 1973, and years later led the Republicans to the White House as the nation’s 41st president.)

            “Howard only wanted to be DNC chair if the delegates wanted him, not as a hostile takeover,” says Steve McMahon, a Dean friend and advisor.

            The big problem was his infamous Iowa scream, played interminably on television during the presidential primaries. “A lot of people saw the 9-second clip and wondered if this was the face we needed for the party,” says McMahon. “We had to convince people that there was another Howard worth connecting to.”

            The strategy was consistent and two-pronged: work the insiders, and have your supporters blitz them from the outside. “At all the regional meetings, people saw a very reasoned, thoughtful guy who had a sense of humor about himself, who joked about the ‘scream,’” says Butler. He also proved himself as adept at one-on-one persuasion as the king of political charm, Bill Clinton. Meanwhile, delegates were bombarded with calls and e-mails. “People said, ‘I can’t ignore having heard from 200 to 300 young people who want to be part of the process, that he is their pick’,” says Butler.

            With every candidate promising an end to the defeatist strategy of conceding the so-called “red states,” Mr. Vermont was looking mighty blue. So Dean and his team went on the offensive, recruiting support from states where his candidacy was perceived as weakest, as a way to build inexorable momentum. The entire Florida delegation endorsed Dean on January 17th and then within a day or two Oklahoma, Utah and Mississippi all came out for Dean.

           Wayne Dowdy, a former congressman and DNC member, got a call from Dean at his office in Magnolia, Mississippi. “We had a frank discussion about my fear that if we continue on this track of writing off the huge majority of Southern, Western and Mountain states, we can’t win presidential elections – and we grow weaker in those states.”

            Dean was hardly alone in agreeing on this point; virtually every candidate noted how the Republicans in the House had increased their numbers by electing more GOP candidates on the local level, who, in turn, designed more GOP-friendly House districts. But folks like Dowdy believed Dean in particular could and would do something about it – in part because Dean, too, is from a small, rural state. And in part because Dean doesn’t seem the sort to say anything unless he really means it.

            Suddenly, Dean’s old allure was back and irresistible. “When I was working on Kerry’s presidential campaign, I thought [Dean] was a fabulous candidate,” recalls former Kerry campaign manager Jim Jordan, “a wonderful person and the right person to catch lightning in a bottle.”

            Dean officially won the DNC post by acclamation, the last of his challengers having dropped out before the February 12th vote. With the bang of his gavel Terry McAuliffe, the ultimate insider moderate, relinquished the DNC reigns and handed them over to Howard Dean.

WHITHER CHAIRMAN DEAN

Some wonder whether Dean has the chops for what is in good part a management position. “My sense of it is that he is not a great organizer,” says professor Mayer. “He will stir up a lot of things but I’m not sure follow-through is going to be good.”

            Republican Mahe, who first met Dean years ago at a governor’s conference, disagrees. Mahe cites Dean’s consistently balancing budgets. “You need to know what you’re doing to run a state government,” Mahe says. “I imagine he’ll bring those skills to the DNC day to day. I don’t remember anyone during the presidential campaign criticizing the way he ran things up in Vermont. That leads me to believe that his record was pretty good, much as I hate to admit it. People were attacking him on some of his positions but not on his record.”

            Likewise, though some worry that Dean has a big mouth, his muscular, unapologetic style strikes plenty of people as just the blunt instrument to begin hammering away at the GOP’s political lock. It’s emblematic of the challenge that the chief opposition to Dean’s DNC candidacy came from the Capitol Hill leadership, minority leaders Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi. “They are great congressional leaders, but sometimes there is a philosophical debate as to whether to stand and fight or make a deal,” says McMahon.

            Certainly Dean still isn’t running from a fight – in fact, he continues to favor candor over caution. In February, he spoke before the DNC Black Caucus and remarked that Republicans couldn’t get that many people of color in a room unless they included the hotel employees. It made some nervous. “We spoke with him about it, and he wasn’t apologizing,” says Dowdy. “That fortified his image as someone who speaks his mind.” It also may be helping congressional Dems grow some backbone. Recently, we’ve heard utterances from Reid and others that sound like things Dean would say – suggesting either that craziness is contagious, or that Dean is on to something.

            Speaking at New York City’s Roosevelt Hotel at the final DNC candidates’ forum, Dean drew criticism for saying that he “hate[s] Republicans and everything they stand for, but I admire their discipline and their organization.” Implicitly criticizing not just the GOP but its millions of supporters as well seems risky. And yet, in underlining profound differences between the two parties, Dean may have good instincts – that, as America becomes more divided over basic principles, Democratic positions are more in line with those of most citizens.

            As promised, Dean seems determined to cede no ground, not even in the reddest of the red states. He has raised money in Kansas and traveled to Mississippi for a fundraising dinner, where he drew a full house. “We had enough chicken for 900, and we were 150 plates short,” Dowdy recalls, noting that even cautious moderate and conservative legislators showed up, curious.

            Democrats like Dean the populist, but still haven’t quite figured out a way to reinvest the term “liberal” with the same pride Republicans apply to “conservative.” When Mississippi Republicans tried to spin Dean’s visit as proof that Democrats are hopelessly liberal, Dowdy pointed out that Dean shares views on abortion and gay partners with Rudolph Giuliani, who was feted by the Mississippi GOP. And Dean’s buddy McMahon pointed out that Dean was endorsed eight times by the NRA, and repeatedly balanced his state’s budget.

            Dean’s own instinct is not to back down, and not to let Republicans frame the debate. His arrival at the DNC may be none too soon. With a Republican monopoly on decision-making, corporations and the rich are largely abandoning their traditional bet-hedging, ie, their tendency to spread at least some of their largesse to Democrats with whom they may disagree philosophically. At least until the Democrats figure out how to even out the numbers in Congress and elect one of their own to the White House, the party will have to depend on funding from true believers. Howard Dean was well ahead of the curve on that. “Grassroots support is the only reason we were even competitive in 2004,” says Trippi, the former Dean manager.

            Democrats had raised more than $10 million as of March, though that is still half of what the GOP had hauled in. It’s hard to gauge Dean’s direct influence, but in just three weeks early in his tenure, the DNC raised $3.4 million – more than double what it took in during the same period in Bush’s first term. A real test of Dean’s pull will come as the DNC rolls out an eagerly-awaited Internet fundraising campaign, likely before summer.

THE FUTURE FOR HOWARD:

HOW VS. HIL

For Dean, being DNC chair is a difficult act with both apparent benefits and liabilities. He gets a chance to rebuild the Democratic party while establishing his own credibility, and to reassure the mainstream media, which in its typically fickle fashion treated him as a conquering hero one moment and a has-been the next.

            At the same time, he’s supposed to let elected officials set the party’s policy agenda and stick to organizing and rallying the faithful. So far, Dean has kept his word. Since he won, he has granted hardly any interviews – though he hasn’t abandoned the limelight altogether, as indicated by reaction to some of his more provocative speeches.

            So far, there’s been no occasion for a policy clash within the party. “The only real issue that is on the table is Social Security reform, where there aren’t many differences between him and the congressional wing,” says prof. Mayer. “There might be more problems if there arises a foreign policy issue.” But Dean’s outspoken aversion to unilateral military action and global big-footing is a key reason that the grassroots liked him in the first place. And his bracing directness is what will keep him the desired standard-bearer for millions. Which presents a problem: In gaining the chairmanship, he had to foreswear a 2008 presidential bid. Will he keep that promise?

            “I take him at his word that he will not run in 2008,” says Jordan. “He’s been pretty forthright about everything and I have no reason not to believe him.”

            Not so fast. With Hillary calculatedly tacking right, Dean remains the primary voice for liberal Democratic values. And that voice will probably not be stilled. “I do think Dean will run for president,” says Trippi. “If this guy does a good job for a couple of years, and we pick up a few seats, I fully expect a ‘Draft Dean’ website to go up. I do believe him when he says he does not intend to run, but if there’s a draft, I think he will go for it. There isn’t any force on earth that can stop thousands of grassroots supporters. [Dean] is not a guy who sits on the sidelines. He would jump in.”

            During the 2004 campaign, the GOP’s master strategist, Karl Rove, told the press that Republicans relished a Dean nomination because the man was so liberal. But Rove is the acknowledged spin king, and many thought that he was employing a classic tactic: undermine the most deadly opponent. Without knowing what Dean will do, it’s likely that Republican leaders’ expressed jubilation over Dean’s election at the DNC masks an underlying nervousness.

            Equally discomfited must be the other potential Democratic candidates for 2008, who face a bizarre dilemma. Those hopefuls, who at this juncture seem to include not just Hillary but also Kerry and John Edwards, need their party revitalized if they are to win. So they must wish Howard Dean well in his current job – but not too well.

– Ruthie Wahl provided research assistance