The Race for Chairman of DNC - Howard Dean: One year ago tomorrow came his third-place stumble in Iowa & the rant & scream & flameout that followed.

Excerpts from:

Howard Dean: He Still Has The Power
Bid for DNC Chair Recharges Failed Presidential Candidate

By Mark Leibovich
The Washington Post
01-18-05

Howard Dean keeps fidgeting onstage.

He comes well known to this race -- and with baggage. He would make a disastrous party chairman, many Democrats believe, for the same reasons he would have been a disastrous nominee for president last year. He is too liberal, too blunt and too unpredictable to be the chief spokesman of the party. The same things that won Dean such a fervent following as a presidential candidate could also violate the on-message orthodoxy that is traditionally demanded of party chairmen. Better to elect a more sober, centrist, non-lightning rod of a chairman -- like former representative Martin Frost of Texas . . . .

It's hard not to wonder something a lot of hard-core Deaniacs keep wondering themselves:

Why is Howard Dean here? Does he really want this job?

Yes, Dean keeps saying, he really does want to succeed Terry McAuliffe as titular head of the Democratic Party. But it's telling that people keep asking if he really does. Dean keeps raising the question himself. "People ask me, 'Why are you doing this?' " Dean says Friday night at a rally of 400 supporters at another airport hotel here. "They say, 'You ran for president, and now you want to do this?' "

"It's about reform," Dean says, answering his question. He mentions the successes of his grass-roots organization -- Democracy for America. He mentions the money its members raised, the winning candidates they supported and how he can apply this energy to the central party apparatus.

"Hey, what other candidate for DNC chair can get 400 people to come hear him on a freezing night," says Vicki Walker, a former state representative from Kansas City, Mo., who is supporting Dean. Like everyone in that crowd, Walker says she wants her man to run for president again. But Dean says he will not do it if he is elected chairman. If he is not elected chairman, Dean says he will rule nothing out.

No, Dean says, being the DNC chair would not feel like a step down after the headiness he enjoyed as a presidential candidate. He gets this question a lot, too.

"Obviously I'd rather be president of the United States, but that's not going to happen. So my question is: How can I bring America back to where it ought to be, both for the party and the country's sake?"

He gives people his cell phone number, home number and e-mail address. "Keep in touch with me, by all means," he says.

Running for DNC chairman mirrors the process of trying to win over Iowa caucus-goers, but on an even smaller scale, if one can imagine that. It essentially involves a lot of sucking up -- in the form of phone calls, private meetings and handwritten notes -- to the 447 DNC members who will vote on the chairmanship next month. It means constant flattery of DNC'ers such as of Jason Rae, an 18-year-old high school senior from Rice Lake, Wis., who checks his voice mail after school every day to find a flood of messages from the candidates.

As he leaves the stage, Dean is swarmed, as he typically is. "Great job, sir," says supporter Don McAnulty of St. Louis. "I just wish I could call you Mr. President."

[M]any wonder if Dean is a good fit for such a party-line job. What if Dean were chairman when Sharpton went off-script? "You deal with that when you deal with that," he says.

What if Dean disagreed with the Democrats' popularly elected leaders -- as he did two years ago, when his opposition to the Iraq war ran counter to Tom Daschle, Dick Gephardt and nearly every major Democratic presidential candidate?

"I don't think it's possible to stifle your opinions," Dean says . . . . But if he's elected chairman, Dean says, he plans to hold regular meetings with the party's congressional leadership to ensure that "everyone's on the same page."