Turning Point
After nearly everyone had written him off, John Kerry turned a limping campaign into a force that couldn't be beat. Here's How
By late fall, Trippi had concluded that even though his title was campaign manager, the Dean campaign was not manageable. "We were an insurgency," he said in an interview. "You cannot manage an insurgency. You just have to ride it." On the Dean campaign, this was not jargon. The Internet success of the Dean campaign was based not just on thousands of contributors falling in love with Dean or his empowerment message. What they were also in love with is that the campaign was not controlled from the top. They felt they were the campaign. The campaign website was not run by political people, as in other campaigns. The website was designed to allow the voices of the Deaniacs to be heard and allow them to talk to one another. It was not top down but bottom up. And one of Trippi's strengths was to see its potential and let it happen. But this philosophy has its limits on a presidential campaign. "It works fine when you're talking about how the Internet campaign should be run," Ford said. "But it doesn't work so fine when it comes to deciding who goes to Iowa."
But if Trippi had gone to Iowa, would it have made a difference? Some say his appearance in Iowa would have been a dramatic morale boost for his dispirited troops. He also could have played precisely the role Michael Whouley played for Kerry in Iowa: an organizer who simultaneously cares about the details while maintaining a big-picture overview. Further, Trippi could have assessed the Iowa situation and used his authority as campaign manager to get Iowa what it needed, which was coordination with Burlington. "There were pretty significant flaws in the campaign and how it was run both in Des Moines and Vermont," said Tim Dickson, who had been an executive director of the Iowa Democratic Party and went to his first caucus in 1976. Dickson was one of those sent to Iowa by the Dean campaign to try to salvage the situation, but Dickson arrived after Christmas. "The road show [i.e., Dean's appearances, speeches, etc.] was problematic," Dickson said. "The intersection of campaign and field, well, the national campaign didn't always meld the message and the schedule." These complaints are not uncommon in presidential campaigns, even in winning ones. The field never believes that headquarters really understands what's going on and vice versa. But what Whouley was able to do for the Kerry campaign is instructive. Whouley had the clout, the muscle, the influence with headquarters to get what he needed for Iowa. And because he was on the scene, because he had gone to Iowa, he could learn firsthand what Iowa needed. He even had enough clout to influence the most closely guarded element of the campaign: the message. "Everybody played a role, and we all worked together," Whouley said. "I was telling Shrum [Bob Shrum, top Kerry aide, speechwriter, and one of the most sought-after operatives in Democratic politics], 'You know, here is the speech I want,' and Shrum was like saying, 'Whatever you want.' And I gave him my ideas for the speeches. I'm just saying it was a cooperative. Nobody had weak knees, OK? I don't know about the Dean campaign, but we were pretty cohesive." The Dean campaign was not cohesive. And Trippi would not go to Iowa.
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