But with the anger angle on the decline, the gaffe narrative is clearly gaining momentum, with obvious echoes of the press's obsession with Gore's exaggerations. Just as there was with Gore, there is often a nugget of fact that gets a much larger press story going: Dean did, in fact, wind up apologizing for his remarks about "wanting to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags on their pickup trucks," and he's had to spend a lot of time explaining his comment about believing that if Osama bin Laden is caught, he deserves a trial to determine his guilt for 9/11.

But looking at just one staple of the gaffe stories -- Dean's remarks to radio host Diane Rehm about the "theory" that Bush was warned about 9/11 -- shows the way the media has sometimes colluded with the RNC and Republican pundits to distort Dean beyond recognition. When Rehm asked Dean in a Dec. 1 interview why he thought Bush wasn't more forthcoming with the commission investigating the terrorist attacks, Dean replied, "The most interesting theory that I've heard so far -- which is nothing more than a theory, it can't be proved -- is that he was warned ahead of time by the Saudis."

For days Dean's 9/11 comments drew little or no press attention. Reminiscent of Gore's Internet legend "gaffe," it wasn't until the RNC research department stepped in, and conservative outlets hyped the incident, that the story took root in the mainstream press. Dean gave the interview Dec. 1, and it was ignored until Dec. 5, when Charles Krauthammer hyped it in his Washington Post column. On Dec. 7, Chris Wallace pressed Dean about the comment during an interview on "Fox News Sunday." On Dec. 9, the RNC issued a press release ("Dean Sinks to New Low"), hoping to spark more interest in the story. On Dec. 11, Republican-friendly columnist Robert Novak weighed in, citing Krauthammer's column approvingly and condemning Dean for having "neither apologized nor repudiated himself for passing along this urban legend." By Dec. 18, the 9/11 episode had been embraced by reporters, serving as the Post's lead example in a huge Page 1 story about Dean gaffes. Today, the episode is routinely included in media shorthand accounts of Dean verbal miscues.

But if December represented a kind of zenith in Dean-gaffe reporting throughout the media, the Washington Post still managed to stand out, with a month-long negative focus on the Democratic front-runner in its news and Op-Ed pages as well as in lead editorials. It began with Krauthammer's Dec. 5 column, when the columnist, eager to prove Dean mentally unstable, was reduced to doctoring TV transcripts in hopes of transforming humorous banter into paranoid ravings. One week later, Post columnists Richard Cohen and David Broder teed off on Gore on the same day for endorsing Dean. Cohen belittled Gore for having "knifed [Sen. Joe Lieberman] in the back," while Broder dubbed the endorsement "one of the more eccentric developments in modern political history."

The Post signaled the arrival of gaffes as a big-time theme when the paper went Page 1 on Dec. 18 with an exposé examining Dean's history of "making statements that are mean-spirited or misleading." Worse, huffed the Post, "he made allegations -- some during his years as governor -- that turned out to be untrue." But just as with the Gore exaggeration scandal, some of the paper's proof seemed thin. The story cited a mundane back-and-forth disagreement between Dean and Rep. Gephardt over their competing healthcare proposals, the sort of dispute that's a staple of every presidential campaign, as well as a 6-year-old comment Dean once made about a Vermont farmer who may have had too many cows in his barn. Dean dutifully apologized to the farmer.

That very same day, the editorial page uncorked what ABC News' the Note dubbed "a button-popping, eye-bugging anti-Dean editorial." In it, the Post leveled the ultimate insider insult, labeling the candidate's views on foreign policy "beyond the mainstream," with the paper hinting that Bush's new policy of preventive wars was the new American mainstream. (The next day Dean told reporters voters can believe him "or they can believe the Washington Post.")

Ten days later, the Post flipped the coin on the Dean-is-angry angle and, in an argumentative article, mocked Dean's optimistic campaign call for a return to '60s idealism. The same day, yet another unsigned editorial appeared, informing readers, "We are troubled by aspects of Mr. Dean's character and personality."

Then on Dec. 31, Post columnists rang out the year with a double-fisted round of Dean bashing. "At long last, the revelation I've been waiting for: the reason why -- beyond the prospect of epic, McGovernesque defeat -- I feel so uneasy about Howard Dean," wrote Marjorie Williams. (The answer was he's a doctor.) On the same page came was this nearly identical, McGovern-referencing lead from Harold Meyerson: "I've got this Howard Dean problem, and it's not that I think he's George McGovern. Actually, I think he's John Wayne." (Apparently Post columnist E.J. Dionne never got the memo about Dean; he continues to defend the Democratic front-runner.)

One staple of news and opinion stories that cast Dean as headed for a McGovern-style drubbing is a fair-seeming grounding in Democrats' worries that Dean can't win. But it's worth noting that such stories almost never name these Democrats -- except the other candidates for the nomination -- who are allegedly wringing their hands over Dean. For its 2,800-word cover story last week, Newsweek found just one for an on-the-record quote: former Clinton aide James Carville. Syndicated columnist Novak filled an entire Dec. 22 dispatch about the "Dean dilemma" by referring vaguely to "thoughtful Democrats," "a sage Democratic practitioner," "a party loyalist" and "Democratic savants," all anonymous, who were all sick about Dean's surge. Novak never bothered to tell readers if any of those unnamed Democrats had ties to Dean's campaign competitors.

And yet, with all the focus on electability, most stories seem short on data that proves their thesis. Last week's Time story on Dean seemed to bury its lead, waiting until the 23rd paragraph in a 27-graph story to inform readers that, according to the magazine's own new polling data, Dean trails Bush by just six percentage points in a head-to-head matchup. That, despite a recent wave of good news for Bush on the economic and foreign policy front. It was a key fact that undercut the guts of the Time story (and every other Dean feature of late), which dwelled on doomsday scenarios for the Democrats if Dean is nominated. Others polls have shown the race to be less competitive, but the most recent Newsweek survey conducted Jan 8-9 found Dean trailing Bush by eight percentage points. That's hardly the making of an automatic rout, considering exactly four years ago Gore trailed Bush by 17 points, according to a January 2000 CNN poll.. In the end, of course, Gore earned more votes than Bush.

To be sure, part of this winter's negative press barrage stems from the media's natural push to create a closer, more interesting horse race as votes in Iowa and New Hampshire approach, just as the press worked hard to prop up Sen. Bill Bradley's long shot against Gore in 2000.

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal breathlessly uncovered "signs of shakiness in front-runner Howard Dean's once commanding lead." The proof? A new poll by John Zogby that showed Dean leading Rep. Dick Gephardt by just two points in Iowa. But every pol knows Dean has never held a commanding lead in Iowa, which has always been considered a tossup state, since Gephardt hails from neighboring Missouri. The Journal also vaguely reported that "a separate poll showed retired Gen. Wesley Clark inching closer to Mr. Dean in New Hampshire." Since the paper doesn't bother to say which poll it's citing, perhaps it was the most recent American Research Group tracking survey, which does indeed show Clark inching up ... and still trailing Dean by 16 points. That's not to suggest Dean has the nomination wrapped up. He doesn't. But for some reason the Journal, out to prove Dean's commanding lead is gone, fails to reference his 16-point lead.

After his defeat in 2000, a bitter-sounding Gore talked to the New York Observer about the media's rightward drift, and the way reporters piece together negative narratives for Democrats: "Something will start at the Republican National Committee, inside the building, and it will explode the next day on the right-wing talk-show network. And then they'll create a little echo chamber, and pretty soon they'll start baiting the mainstream media for allegedly ignoring the story they've pushed into the zeitgeist."

In Dean's case, it's a little more complex: Sometimes the narrative starts with the mainstream media and gets picked up by the RNC, sometimes it's the other way around. What's beyond debate is that there's a media echo chamber -- and its focus has been on Dean's flaws. And if the trend continues, more voters may agree with Gore about the rightward bias of the media. In a remarkable poll released Monday, the Pew Research Center found that 29 percent of Democrats think campaign coverage is tilted toward the GOP, up from 19 percent in 2000. If Dean is the nominee and the media trend continues, you can expect that number to jump again sharply by 2008.

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