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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
How and why did the Vermont juggernaut implode so quickly?
Feb 3, 2004 | After suffering double-digit losses in both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, Howard Dean's presidential campaign is now on its heels.
Although it continues to raise money at a furious pace, Dean has spent most of the $41 million he raised in 2003. In a major shake-up, campaign manager Joe Trippi departed last week after Roy Neel, a shrewd and capable Al Gore loyalist, was hired as chief executive officer of a campaign that is suddenly unsure of itself. Consider that in a matter of less than 10 days, the message from the campaign's leadership went from Trippi snidely asking how Dean's competitors thought they could compete nationally with the Dean juggernaut in the seven primaries held on Feb. 3, to Neel's concession that Dean is unlikely to win any of those seven contests.
Nobody can doubt that the Trippi-led Dean campaign transformed forever the ways in which public support for political candidates is cultivated. The campaign's pioneering effect is obvious to anyone who watched the other candidates' Web sites gradually morph into Dean for America imitators. So how and why did the Dean campaign implode so quickly?
Trippi achieved rock-star status as the prophet of the new politics, and it is tempting to simply blame him and his consultancy partner, Steve McMahon, for Dean's reversal of fortunes. Trippi may find it equally tempting to shift the blame to other campaign operatives, or even to Dean himself. When the inevitable finger-pointing begins, both Trippi and Dean would be wise to remember a maxim that coaches often use to remind their athletes of its perils: When you point a finger at somebody else, you always have three pointing right back at you.
I have openly supported Howard Dean's campaign. I attended meetings, house parties and rallies during 2003. I contributed money and encouraged friends to do the same. I have spoken at length with some of the campaign's key backers and strategists, and in Iowa and New Hampshire I observed the campaign's operations at the ground level. Although none of what follows reveals information or reactions provided to me off the record, these are the conclusions of a participant-observer who wishes things had turned out differently.
The first mistake Trippi made was in confusing the qualitative value of Dean's political support with such quantitative indicators as the Dean Web site's ubiquitous fundraising "bat" totals, the latest Meetup.com and house party attendance figures, or the campaign's growing list of official endorsements. These innovations did not enable Dean to translate his support into the only electoral commodities that ultimately matter: votes and victories.
Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) -- which bolstered Dean's candidacy and the legions of foot soldiers when it joined the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) last fall to co-endorse Dean -- distinguishes between "activity" and "movement." During a New Hampshire bus ride, as he reflected on Dean's disappointing third-place Iowa finish, Stern told me that the Dean campaign had shown a capacity for the former but not the latter. Sen. John Kerry had won in part because his campaign focused its more limited resources on a far more effective and efficient field campaign that emphasized "hard counters" -- local precinct captains with the credibility and connections to generate movement.
Overconfidence induced by the sheer level of campaign activity begat Trippi's second trip-up: The misallocation of resources spent to satisfy the campaign's supporters rather than to search for votes. The most glaring example of this meta-campaign was the "Perfect Storm" program developed to flood Iowa with thousands of volunteers in the days before the caucuses. To get a firsthand view, I participated in the Storm's training program; it was quite impressive in its format, although many of the trainers were themselves volunteers who clearly had less field experience than I did.
Worse, the abundant orange hats in Iowa created the impression that the Dean campaign was less concerned with the issues that mattered to Iowa's Democrats than the enthusiasm of the non-Iowa political tourists. The campaign wasn't oriented in the local, native way that best resonates with actual caucus-goers. In an obvious change of tone, Dean's New Hampshire state director, Karen Hicks, made plain to the media that the only orange hats in her state arrived on the heads of people who came from Iowa.
Trippi's final error -- and the one that Dean loyalists at the highest level of the campaign forgive the least -- was his decision to use negative television ads to revive Dean's plummeting fortunes in the final days before the Iowa caucuses. Those ads were intended to regain Dean's singular status by reminding voters that his three main Iowa opponents -- Kerry and fellow Sen. John Edwards, and Rep. Dick Gephardt -- all voted for the Iraq resolution.
But the ads backfired because they reinforced a growing impression that Dean had a surly temperament and was easily goaded (by Gephardt, especially) into the ugly campaigning that many voters disdain. Some inside the campaign were upset with Trippi and McMahon about the quality of the ads but have defended them and the firm's billing rate for placing them.
Many of the amazing successes of the middle six months of 2003 -- most notably the record-setting fundraising dollars generated online -- are rightfully Trippi's to claim.
Trippi is also correct to complain about the destructive forces that remained beyond his control, especially Gephardt's attacks and the media's often too harsh scrutiny. Still, Trippi's core failure was his inability to figure out how to convert the activity he had helped Dean generate into real movement.
Trippi's tactical oversights were compounded by three very costly mistakes Dean himself made.
Obviously, Dean's first failure was not recognizing the limitations of Trippi's stewardship. Had he done so, he might have supplemented Trippi's work by appointing a Neel-like manager to supervise the small but critical details that Trippi was either unable or unwilling to execute. The campaign had the resources; plenty of able applicants would have jumped at the opportunity. Although the media would have hammered Dean for the hypocrisy of hiring a Beltway insider at the same time he was mocking his Washington opponents, that kind of negative press would have been manageable and would have quickly blown over. Twenty-point losses in Iowa are a much tougher spin and leave no time to recover.
Asked by "Meet the Press'" Tim Russert on Sunday about Neel's hiring and Trippi's departure, Dean said:
"It does help to have somebody who knows something about how to run campaigns organizing your campaign. It had been my hope that Joe would have stayed on because he's such a brilliant strategist, and he built the campaign. And I think that would have been a tremendous team -- to have Roy running the inside stuff for the campaign, making sure that the trains run on time, and having Joe's brilliant strategy from the outside."
What's more, Neel almost certainly would have checked Dean's impulses to pick unnecessary fights with, well, whatever target piqued his momentary interest. In the longer run, Neel's insider savvy would have dulled the press knives a bit. And anybody who suggests that Neel's arrival would have turned off the Dean faithful doesn't fully comprehend the nature of Dean's followers.
