He was too good to be true
Let's face it: insurgent candidates make for great stories. Guy comes out of nowhere, with absolutely nothing, no one behind him. He preaches passionately to anyone willing to listen. He's a novelty at first. Then, all of sudden, he's a movement. He gets lots of press, then lots of money. Throw in the legions of blogging and Googling Internet introverts, and he's a virtual phenom. It's boffo stuff, this story line: Maverick topples Establishment. Beats all odds. Gotta love it. Too bad it hardly ever happens.
Exhibit A: Howard Dean. All that early anger against the war in Iraq, against the "Washington Democrats," all that talk about "taking our country back," and who ends up the golden boy? John Kerry--a 19-year Senate veteran handpicked by the Washington Establishment. And to whom does Dean then turn to reactivate his stalled insurgency? None other than Al Gore's former chief of staff. A Washington insider! An Establishment eminence! Or is it emigre?
If the Deaniacs are outraged, they should look at their own hero. A successful insurgency requires a dominant mood in the party and a candidate who can express it skillfully. Dean began like gangbusters, but pretty soon he wasn't the only guy out there calling to take the country back. Establishment candidates excel at sailing with the prevailing winds, so they out-Deaned Dean. By the time folks voted in New Hampshire, Kerry sounded positively antiwar, even though he had voted for it. "Everybody on this stage . . . [has] now embraced my message," Dean whined at last week's South Carolina debate. "The truth is, I stood up for that message when nobody else would."
That gets Dean brownie points, but it doesn't buy him any votes. Particularly when Kerry, a Vietnam War hero, surrounds himself with veterans and rails against Bush's unilateralism. Kerry, er, pivoted, as they politely call it in politics. The question was no longer "Did you vote for the war?" Instead, it became "How would you avoid the next one?" And Kerry looked so good on that point that he even beat Dean among those Democrats who said they were "strongly opposed" to the war, by a 40-to-36 percent margin. Kerry's campaign consultants deserve a bonus.
Oddly enough, Dean tapped into voters' anger too early. As the unknown insurgent, he had been pounding the war in Iraq for more than a year. When Democrats finally voted, they were over it. Or at least beyond it--and into pragmatism instead. "Electability" became Kerry's margin of victory: He decisively won the votes of those who said that beating Bush was key, trouncing Dean 56 to 14. "The voters moved on," says one Democratic strategist. "They're still mad, but they got practical." If Dean had broadened his message and curbed his infamous scream, the story might have been written differently.
Down and dirty. Sure, insurgents sometimes triumph. In 1972, George McGovern won the Democratic nod on his antiwar stance. And Jimmy Carter found his "I will never lie to you" platform a winner in the 1976 post-Nixon world. The waves they were riding--disgust over the Vietnam War and Watergate--carried them to the nomination. They both had perfect pitch, and it worked. But even the popular maverick John McCain couldn't sustain his New Hampshire momentum when he was up against George W. Bush's machine. "We didn't have the money, and we got off message," recalls Mark Salter, a top McCain aide. It got dirty, and McCain lost.
Dean lost his message, too. The maverick became the dissonant candidate--endorsed by Gore, blessed by Jimmy Carter, embraced by Iowa favorite son Tom Harkin. Then he battled down and dirty with Dick Gephardt, and both lost. When he turned to the domestic issues voters care about--healthcare, jobs, the economy--others had already beaten him to the punch. Worst of all, the insurgent caricatured himself with his post-Iowa rant.
So now Dean replaces his original Svengali, Joe Trippi. He's forced to admit that the big boys have done him in and turns to a big boy of his own: Roy Neel, a Gore ally, former lobbyist, and ultimate insider. All while front-runner John Kerry rides his "Real Deal" bus, promising to give power back to the people.
This story appears in the February 9, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.