At the Keene Library later that night, crowds of the dissatisfied turn out in ponytails and ask him about the minimum wage and yell "power to the people" (seriously). They may not know that he was endorsed by the NRA for eight straight elections (Dean says such matters should be left up to the states, though he supports closing the gun show loophole and keeping the Brady Law and assault weapons ban in place), or that sometime in the mid-'90s he changed his mind and began supporting the death penalty (for kid- and cop-killers, he specifies now). They surely don't know that during Vermont's welfare-to-work debate in 1993, Dean snapped that certain "recipients don't have any self-esteem. If they did, they would be working," a comment he later apologized for. They certainly don't know that some of the ugliest fights he got into were with the liberal wing of his party -- especially over budgets he deemed too profligate.

"I thought they were spending too much money," Dean tells me. "I vetoed more bills in the history of the state than anyone else, and I never was overridden." Not all were out of principle, he allows. "Some of the vetoes I regret, they were really more petulant than based in fact. These were small bills that didn't mean much, but I was just angry with them and trying to prove a point."

He paid a small price for it. In 2000, the Progressive Party fielded a candidate who sucked 10 percent of the vote away from Dean, whom many liberals at that point were beginning to tire of. Others saw political savvy in such petulance. "At times he loved to pick on the extreme liberals in the state sort of as a foil, to build allegiances as a moderate and to pull in Republican supporters," says Sam Hemingway of the Burlington Free Press. "He knew they'd have nowhere else to go." According to professor Gary Nelson, a liberal political science professor at the University of Vermont and no fan of Dean, while Bill Clinton was forced into triangulation after the 1994 Republican revolution, "Howard is a natural triangulator. I think at heart he's a Rockefeller Republican."

Dean does emphasize his balanced budgets and -- especially in property tax-sensitive New Hampshire -- his opposition to the Leave No Child Behind Act, which he calls an "unfunded mandate" that will raise New Hampshire taxes by $109 million. Like Iraq, it's an issue that distinguishes him from the four members of Congress he's running against, and he's convinced that it's a winner.

That said, the hype has yet to jump-start his national numbers. According to the latest Quinnipiac University poll that ended Feb. 3, Dean is dead last with 3 percent, behind Lieberman (27 percent), Kerry (18), Gephardt (16), Edwards (14) and Sharpton, who doubled Dean's score with 6 percent. In Iowa, Dean -- with 8 percent -- can take some comfort in that he surpassed Sharpton's 2 percent, but he is still a distant fifth.

And the most important numbers at this stage are similarly disappointing. Dean ended 2002 with about $200,000 in the bank, though he says he raised about $300,000 in January. By comparison, Kerry had $3 million in his campaign coffers as of Dec. 31, $2.6 million or so coming from his Senate campaign. The Nov. 25, 2002, Federal Election Commission reports showed Gephardt with $2.4 million transferred from his congressional account, and Edwards with $2.4 million.

"You don't compete on money," Dean says when I ask him about this, "you compete on ideas. John McCain and Gary Hart demonstrated that over the years."

But they didn't win, I point out.

"Jimmy Carter did," he says, unabashedly citing the Democratic albatross who first got him interested in politics in 1980.

Speaking of quixotic elected officials, I mention to Dean, as we drive back to Vermont after a long day of campaigning, how intriguing it is that Sen. Jim Jeffords, I-Vermont, is such a supporter. (Dean was "a very sensible and a good thinking governor," Jeffords tells me, saying that he hasn't formally endorsed him yet but ultimately will.) During the 2000 presidential election, after all, Jeffords endorsed Bush, and now he's endorsing arguably the most liberal elected official in the race.

"Now why would you say that?" Dean bristles, citing his fiscal conservatism and his support for the death penalty. "What makes me a 'big liberal'?" he asks.

I say that I thought he might be arguably the most liberal of the five elected officials who are candidates.

"What makes me the 'most liberal of the five --'"

I point out that he often talks of how the Democratic Party has lost its way, how the party seems to be trying to be Republican Lite, or Bush Lite, and how he definitively is trying not to be that.

"That's true," he says.

He ends up agreeing that calling him the most "un-Bush" candidate is a fair characterization.

"I don't mind being characterized as 'liberal,'" he says. "I just don't happen to think it's true."

When Governing magazine named him one of its Public Officials of 2002, the magazine said he "made his political mark by defying easy labeling."

And yet, this sensibility, to avoid labels, to be unpredictable, to revel in his maverick side, has limitations, and invites some confusion. Dean's confidence, combined with his doctor's love of precision, could lead him down a path of arguing details and irrelevancies that won't well serve any attempt to convey a grander vision.

Take the single issue Dean will probably be hammered on most should he win the nomination, the one the Republican National Committee is already highlighting: Vermont's 2000 law permitting civil unions between gay and lesbian couples. In 1999, the state Supreme Court ruled that gay couples were entitled to the same rights as straight ones, and Dean marshaled the Democrats in the state House and Senate to sign a law to comply with the ruling. As a result, in the next election, the Democrats lost control of the state House. Dean signed the bill into law in a closed-door ceremony, but since it's the only law of its kind in the country, it's what he is perhaps best known for.

Intriguingly, however, Dean seems to spend quite a bit of time steaming about newspapers that call his civil union bill "gay marriage." It's not gay marriage, he says, since marriage is a religious covenant between a man and woman while civil unions grant same-sex couples the same rights as straight couples -- hospital visitations, say -- but don't involve religion. To me it seems like a distinction without much of a difference, but Dean says that when reporters refers to civil unions as gay marriage "it drives me nuts."

"It's shorthand," he says. "The press does it all the time and I don't say anything about it, but it's shorthand. It pigeonholes you, and I don't think that's what the press's job is. It makes me think of someone who's just trying to rush through and get home for dinner on time."

Recent Stories