Portrait of Howard DeanThe Vermonster gets the soft-focus treatment in
the Washington Post. It's risible in parts, as in the long sections that are dedicated to talking about how frugal Dean is:
One would not expect the DNC chair to fly coach. But he does. He rides the New York subway and the Washington Metro. He generally refuses car service, because he doesn't like to waste money or time in traffic. Also, he can't stand luggage carousels. "Anyone who travels with me has to do carry-on," he says. His travel bag is a beaten up Tumi with red masking tape jacked around the handle. It contains exactly one suit.Which would be a whole lot more impressive if Dean didn't famously blow through some $40 million in Iowa and New Hampshire last year, which netted him a fourth and second place finish, respectively.
The Ankle-Biting Pundits
were pretty annoyed at this part:
Dean's task would seem to be this: to take back his party from the left without pandering to the right or infuriating various Democratic "constituencies" -- from George Soros, to labor, right down to and including unlicensed ceramicists -- while also rebuilding dilapidated party infrastructure in 50 states.And indeed, that's just plain silly. Dean seems to be more interested in delivering his party to the left, rather than rescuing it from them.
The actual way Dean won his party's chairmanship is glossed over:
Dean burrowed deep into the DNC membership with a grass-roots campaign that echoed his presidential bid. He outworked eight other candidates with a one-on-one charm assault on the committee's 447 members, lobbying for votes with phone calls and visits. "He got the job the old-fashioned way," Reid says. Dean won critical endorsements from three Southern state party chairs: Florida, Oklahoma and Mississippi. One chair he won over was Oklahoma's Jay Parmley, who initially opposed him. "The last person I thought should be chairman of this party," Parmley says, "was Howard Dean."Actually, Dean, with the help of left-wing bloggers like the Daily Kos, dug up dirt and sabotaged his rivals for the DNC chairmanship. And note as well the brain from
Florida who endorsed him is in a little trouble nowadays for running the local party into the ground.
