Dean able to show he was same person who attacted many 2 years ago: the plain-spoken, blunt Dem. who wasn't fraid to take a stand & state it bluntly.

From Ashes of '04 Effort, Dean Reinvents Himself

A funny thing happened to Howard Dean on his way to becoming a losing footnote in the Democratic Party's past: he gained a winning foothold on its future. So there he was at Café Milano, Georgetown's power joint, buying a pounded veal paillard on Wednesday night for Terry McAuliffe, the man he is all but certain to succeed as party chairman next week.

"A lot of people came by the table to congratulate him," recalled Mr. McAuliffe, who said Dr. Dean had invited him to what became a three-hour dinner to discuss the party's operations. "And he said, 'No, no, not till the vote's over.' But I did tell him, 'You are about to become a human fire hydrant. You will get blamed for every loss. You will get zero credit for any win.' "

Dr. Dean, the former governor of Vermont, is no stranger to blame. His presidential campaign flared, then flamed out over questions about his judgment, temperament and discipline, and he left the race without winning a single primary.

Then, as now, some party elders worried that his tone was too sharp for a national spokesman, and then, as now, they tried to stop him. This time, he stopped them.

He declined to be interviewed for this article, aides said, because he wants to avoid public comment before the Democratic National Committee's vote for chairman next Saturday. But he has already succeeded in rewriting the first dependent clause of his obituary.

At first, almost nobody in the Democratic establishment wanted Dr. Dean as chairman - not senators, congressmen or governors, most of whom looked askance at his insurgent presidential candidacy last year and tried to field their own candidates for party chairman this winter. Only the people - more precisely, a critical mass of the 447 members of the national committee - liked Dr. Dean. They are generally liberal state and local grassroots activists eager for a party leadership that will take on President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress.

By Friday, Dr. Dean said he had rounded up more than 240 votes on the committee, after a dogged courtship of cold calls to committee members and networking with longtime supporters. Two rivals, Simon Rosenberg, the head of the centrist New Democrat Network, and Donnie Fowler Jr., a party operative from South Carolina dropped out on Friday. His remaining opponent, former Representative Timothy J. Roemer of Indiana, does not claim support that is more than in the double digits.

"I think how it happened is that people came to a judgment that he has national standing, he's a strong spokesman, a proven fund-raiser," said Harold M. Ickes, a longtime aide and friend to Hillary and Bill Clinton who considered running for chairman but endorsed Dr. Dean instead.

"He understands the importance of rebuilding parties, and he can really connect with average people and bring them into the system," Mr. Ickes said. "I think his biggest challenge is, will he understand that he's no longer a governor or a presidential candidate, but that he is the head of the party, and as such he'll have to consult very widely and represent many views."
So does he?

"I think he understands it," Mr. Ickes said. "But understanding something and changing long habits are two different things."

Already, the Democratic Congressional leaders, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, have tangled from a distance with Dr. Dean over who should take the lead in setting, and articulating, party policy on questions like cabinet nominations or Supreme Court vacancies. Republicans have been quick to mock him.

But Dr. Dean has also won surprising converts, like Representative John P. Murtha,* a hawkish Democrat from western Pennsylvania who disagrees with him on numerous issues but decided to endorse him after Dr. Dean called to ask for his support.

"I just like the way he operates," Mr. Murtha said. "I like what he's saying as far as the organization goes. He believes in winning from the bottom up, and I've always believed that's what we Democrats have to do, pay more attention to the individual districts we represent and then relate that to the leadership. He realizes how important the next midterm election is going to be."

Mr. Murtha also liked something else about Dr. Dean: "When I talked to him, he assured me he was not running for president."

Indeed, some prominent Democrats said that Dr. Dean's proven skills on the campaign trail in 2003 - his ability to inspire voters and to raise money through small donations over the Internet - were desirable traits in a party chairman, while his proven deficits - a sometimes loose tongue and hot temper - mattered less for a partisan leader than for a president.

"I think what people want in their party - I'm talking about grassroots activists - is someone who will fight, who is a proven, effective political communicator," said David Wilhelm, a former chairman who was anything but a firebrand during President Bill Clinton's first term. "In the age of the Internet, money flows from that, volunteers flow from that."

Mr. Wilhelm noted that "15 years ago, you might have thought, 'Well, somebody like that will alienate the money people' " - the big donors who have traditionally served as the Democrats' financial backbone. The paradox is that Dr. Dean himself has now become one of the party's most important money people. Even after he dropped out of the presidential race last year, he helped raise about $3.5 million for Democrats around the country.

On a moment's notice, aides said, Dr. Dean managed to raise some $250,000 for Senator Tom Daschle's unsuccessful re-election campaign in South Dakota, and a similar amount for one of the recounts in Washington State that eventually led to a narrow Democratic victory in the governor's race there.

"If you could boil it down, Dean is seen as a soldier's general," said Representative Jim McDermott of Washington, one of the comparatively few Congressional Democrats who supported Dr. Dean's presidential bid.

"He's a guy who sleeps in the trenches with the troops."

"Howard Dean learned an awful lot in that short time he was in the presidential campaign," Mr. McDermott added. "He made some mistakes. Nobody's going to say he didn't. But he learned a great deal."

One lesson some of Dr. Dean's associates say he apparently learned in recent months was that he missed the spotlight. He considered whether he should just keep working with the grassroots organization Democracy for America that succeeded his campaign group, Dean for America.

Joe Trippi, who helped shape his presidential campaign, urged him to run for the Senate from Vermont, or for president again.

"I just never thought this was what he wanted to do," said Mr. Trippi, who had supported Mr. Rosenberg for party chairman.

But in the end, Dr. Dean came to believe "that he could have a greater impact" from inside the party organization, said his longtime media adviser, Steve McMahon, "even though it might be harder to get there." Running for chairman then "became an interesting challenge," Mr. McMahon said.

As governor of Vermont, Dr. Dean headed the Democratic Governors' Association as well as the National Governors Association, so he has experience running political trade groups. Aides say they expect him to commute to Washington from his home in Vermont, travel around the country on weekends as needed and take a hands-on approach as chairman.

People said to me it's kind of remarkable the way he's transformed himself from the guy that people remembered for the Iowa speech to the guy that people are looking to as leader of the party," Mr. McMahon said.

"Really, the only thing that happened is that he was able to sit down in various forums and be the Howard Dean that everybody was attracted to two years ago: the plain-spoken, blunt Democrat who wasn't afraid to take a stand and state it bluntly."

(2-6-05 The New York Times.)
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As I am eating my crow this weekend -- which by the way the bank would not accept -- I note in going back over from previous posts that I thought this was the first significant endorsement, one that I wrote about in my 1-6-05 post entitled "Pass the salt & pepper please. I may need to be eating some crow. - Screaming Dean gets unexpected endorsement of Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.)." In that post I wrote (excerpts):

This is truly an interesting development. I still cannot believe this hawk has come out for Dean in the first place, but also, how strong he has come out for him. We don't expect but sure love it when politicians talk straight, and such language as the follows sure sounds like straight talk:

“I am not with him on all the issues, but he understands the party’s problems, what we need to do and how to get there,” said Murtha. “And he has executive experience. . . . A lot of people in the party don’t understand just where we are. We need a change. We need something different.”

Although many others are also shocked with this development, it no doubt will result in some taking a harder look at Dean.