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
"I didn't go to Iowa because there were a whole bunch of problems in Burlington," Trippi told U.S. News . "Who was going to keep the Internet going? When I left the building, it didn't work, and when I was in the building, it did." Others think Trippi is just making excuses. "We spent three weeks of rolling discussions trying to get Joe to go to Iowa," a source close to the discussions said. "We said go in there and impose some order and discipline in Iowa, and basically do what Michael Whouley did for John Kerry." But Trippi wouldn't, and what was baffling to everyone was that the people urging Trippi to go were his friends, people he knew and trusted. Trippi did have people on the campaign who didn't like him, and these people used Trippi's refusal to bolster their argument that he never should have been hired in the first place. It led to some serious verbal brawls. "If Howard wants to get rid of Joe Trippi, Howard should get rid of Joe Trippi!" one of Trippi's backers shouted during a heated discussion in Burlington. "But we all enable Joe Trippi, because we all understand the benefit to this campaign of having Joe here. It is profound! It's huge, and we wouldn't be here if it weren't for Joe! Now we clearly have to make some adjustments to work around Joe's deficiencies, which, I'll admit, are many." So a structure was created to "work around" Trippi. "Since his relationship with Dean didn't exist," said one senior Dean aide, "a group of three or four of us decided we would make major decisions with Joe through regular daily conference calls, and twice a week those calls would include Howard." Even this plan had to be presented to Trippi with the utmost care, however. "We are not trying to run the campaign," the group told Trippi. "We are trying to make the campaign run." It was a nifty line, but Trippi was not about to cede power to any committee. The conference calls would be made, but Trippi would sometimes refuse to join the call. "Then he announced one day there could be no meetings that he was not part of," a source said. For a campaign to succeed, information needs to be shared, but there was little sharing in the Dean campaign. So little that, in December, a group of top aides found to their horror that the campaign was going to be out of money in January. "So we had to cut spending in Iowa," one Dean aide said. "Don't get me wrong; we didn't lose Iowa because of money. But we were spending money so fast that it was clear that we would be down to $5 million in January and we would need $9 to $12 million for the period from January 1 to 19 and then $7 to $8 million more for the period that followed." In terms of using the Internet for political campaigns, Trippi may be the nation's leading expert. But in terms of classic campaign management skills, Trippi was, in the words of one of his longtime associates, "remarkably dysfunctional." Trippi now says that Ford warned him against going to Iowa, warned him that if he left Burlington there would be a coup and he would be replaced. Ford puts it a little differently. "The bottom line was that in Howard's mind Joe was the best Iowa guy we had, and he wanted Joe to go and me to fill in at headquarters," Ford said. "My sense was that if I did that, it would stay that way, and that's what I told Joe. I think Joe was uncomfortable with leaving his post in Burlington and saw going to Iowa as a downsizing of his job." Ford also contends, however, that those people who think Trippi could have made a dramatic difference in Iowa don't really know Trippi. "If he had gone to Iowa, he would have spent all his time with the press corps and not the campaign, anyway," Ford said.
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