In describing himself, he searches for a better word than "straightforwardness," worrying that it suggests his opponents are lying. "Bluntness, maybe. Directness -- that's a more neutral term." Dean says that he himself doesn't "say I'm the most passionate, but if you ask people at the NARAL dinner or in Linn County, Iowa ..." His voice trails off.

This does seem to invite the most candid of questions, so I go through the checklist. Does he have any "Clinton" problems? He says he's tempted to say it's none of my business, but adds, "I've been extremely happily and faithfully married for 22 years. That one you can investigate." Speaking to a high school class in 1996, Dean admitted to past marijuana use, but left it at that. Now, he only will say, "I'm going to take the Bush approach. My exuberant youth was my exuberant youth and it has no relevance towards the presidency."

That's not all he has in common with Bush. At the age of 32, when he got married, Dean says he quit drinking alcohol altogether and hasn't had a sip of even wine ever since. "What was very funny when you were 18 wasn't very funny when you're 30," he says. "So I quit. I just got sick of it. I got sick of doing stupid stuff."

He told that 1996 high school class that he "used to get hammered on weekends, and it was really bad for me, and it really did ruin a lot of relationships." But when I ask him to elaborate, I don't get nearly that much. "Nnnhhhh!" he bellows, making the sound of a game-show buzzer. End of the topic.

Then I ask about race. Despite his Vermont-rustic image and his marriage to the physician Dr. Judith Steinberg of Roslyn, Long Island, Howard Brush Dean III is a Hamptons blueblood whose father was a stockbroker who once managed the campaign of Rep. Stuyvesant Wainwright, R-N.Y. When Dean's grandmother got married, President Bush's grandmother was a bridesmaid. The Deans trace their roots back to 17th century Sag Harbor, N.Y. When I ask how he -- governor of the second whitest state in the union -- can possibly hope to appeal to the Democratic base of African-American voters, who alone are anticipated to comprise 40 percent of the electorate in the crucial South Carolina Primary, he expresses no concerns and offers a curious reason.

"I have in some ways a special relationship with the African-American community because of my college career," he says.

How so?

"I had two African-American roommates in college."

Huh?

"I don't think people today understand what that means," Dean says, seeming to sense my skepticism, "but when I walked into my freshman dorm I was rooming with two people who didn't know anything about white people and I didn't know anything about black people. It was a very important year for me." Dean compares rooming and having intense discussions with two black teenagers -- Don Roman from Memphis, Tenn., and Ralph Dawson from Charleston, S.C. -- during his freshman year to former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley's decade playing in the NBA.

To be Dean-ly blunt, it all sounds preposterous. Lieberman went down to Mississippi in 1963 to help register black voters around when young Jewish men were getting killed for such things. He, Kerry and Gephardt have decades of legislative work for and outreach to the black community. Edwards did the bidding of the NAACP by leading the charge against the nomination of Judge Charles Pickering; he and Sharpton -- who, well, actually is black -- are making aggressive pitches to the black community and are the only two candidates to support the NAACP's economic boycott of South Carolina because of the Confederate flag issue. And Dean thinks he's going to sell because he roomed with two black men at Yale?

When I suggest that such a pitch might sound far-fetched, one of these black Yalies, Don Roman, agrees. "No question, I would roll my eyes too, probably," Roman says. "But you really have to understand Ralph and me more to appreciate" that Dean actually has a point. Roman and Dawson were very active in the Black Students Government and were in the first class able to major in black studies, Roman says. Moreover, the year they lived together was 1967-1968 -- during the Vietnam War, race riots, the trial of Bobby Seale, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.

"He was the son of a Republican investment banker, and he could not get his hands around the political views Ralph and I brought to the table at that early age," recalls Roman, now a financial planner in Atlanta. "We weren't Panthers or Weathermen, but believe me, we were definitely on the outskirts of the political spectrum at Yale."

Dawson, a New York city attorney, agrees that the "I had two black roommates" pitch itself isn't enough. "I don't know that [black voters] will care about that so much as I think that if they interact with him they will sense a level of comfort and understanding that comes out of that experience." Dawson cites the enthusiastic responses to Dean he's seen from black South Carolinians who met the Vermonter on their own, without Dawson's prodding -- like Rep. David Mack III, South Carolina chairman of Dean for America, and chairman-elect of the General Assembly's Black Caucus.

OK, that's one.

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