"His Meteoric Days Gone, Quiet Dean Leads Party"

NY Times:

There has never been a Democratic chairman with as much firsthand knowledge about running for president as Howard Dean.

Four years ago, at this stage in the race, he was flying high. Now, Mr. Dean is being sued by Democrats in Florida and second-guessed over how he is spending the party’s money. He seldom receives so much as a call seeking advice from this year’s candidates.

The rise and abrupt fall of his campaign now seems to hold lessons for some of the current contenders, from what it means to assume an air of inevitability to the dangers of counting on grass-roots energy to translate into votes. But Mr. Dean also sees ways in which the field has adopted elements of his candidacy, like its strong opposition to the war in Iraq.

“I often find myself ahead of the curve,” he said, a satisfied smile falling over his face. “Unfortunately, ‘I told you so,’ is an incredibly unsuccessful campaign slogan.”

For Mr. Dean, this could be a moment of great prominence, a chance to tower over the party at a buoyant moment. But most days, he conducts business in near obscurity, rarely appearing on television or at public events. It is a sharp departure from chairmen like Ronald H. Brown, a power broker known for firing off strategy memorandums in 1992, or Terry McAuliffe, a highly visible figure and one of the party’s most successful fund-raisers, who stepped down in 2005.

Mr. Dean travels the country without an entourage, often stopping in state capitals like here in Minnesota, inspecting the progress of projects like a door-knocking program that encourages people to stop by 25 houses three times before Election Day. To a room filled with activists, he declares, “We need to knock on most of the doors in America in the next year!”

Mr. Dean appears content with his role, talking about the past and the present with a relaxed air of confidence. For more than an hour, over lunch at the St. Paul Grill, he scoops up details about the race, asking questions only a former candidate who spent months in Iowa and New Hampshire might know.

“The only wistful moments I’ve had are at the debates,” said Mr. Dean, who has been seated in the audience for many of them. “I relish the combat and I miss it.”

He avoids mentioning specific names of Democratic candidates — “I try to stay out of the business of the campaigns,” he said — but ultimately slips in a reference to Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware.

“I know what it’s like to be where they are — all of them, from Biden to Clinton,” Mr. Dean said, pushing his fork through a platter of Caesar salad. “Because I’ve been in all of their positions: bottom, middle and top.”

A conversation today with Mr. Dean is a study in discipline compared with his offhand remarks that were prone to generate headlines four years ago. He does not disagree with the assessment, saying he is “unlike the old me.” Why such caution? “You live and you learn, right?” he replies.

So a string of questions are answered with a fresh, yet telling, caution:

Should Al Gore get into the race? “I’ve never discussed that with him, and I don’t plan to. My bailiwick is to stay out of that stuff.” (Mr. Gore, of course, endorsed Mr. Dean four years ago.) After 26 seconds of silence, he changes the subject and asks his lunch guests, “Coffee, strawberry shortcake, anybody?”

If Democrats want the best nominee possible, why not weigh in? “What I tell Democrats is do not vote with your head, vote with your heart.” Did that happen four years ago? “I’m not going to get into that — at all!”

At this point in the race, how do the candidates compare with those 2004? “They’re starting to look presidential, which is how you win.” Pausing for a moment, he laughed. “I’m not sure I ever looked presidential,” he said.

And the campaign? “It’s not as hard-nosed as a race as it was four years ago. The candidates are much more polite to each other.”

While his advisers are in frequent contact with aides to the eight Democratic campaigns, Mr. Dean has spent little one-on-one time with candidates, with the exception of courtesy calls most of them paid to him when the race began. Since then, Mr. Dean has largely watched from afar, overseeing a streamlining of the party’s voter database and other technological upgrades at the committee.

“Most people are only involved in presidential campaigns to the extent that candidates want them to be involved,” said Joseph Andrew, who served as party chairman in 1999 and 2000. With eight candidates, as well as Democrats in control of Congress, Mr. Andrew said the chairman was bound to have a less prominent role.

While the candidates do not publicly criticize Mr. Dean, their aides are furious with what they see as his inability to set and stick to a primary calendar, given that the voting is scheduled to start in less than three months.

Mr. Dean, they said, has failed to avoid the hopscotching among states seeking to increase their influence in the process, and has made matters worse by getting into a showdown with states like Florida, which set an earlier primary date than party rules allow. Mr. Dean’s vow to strip away delegates from the state prompted the lawsuit.

His critics also worry that the Democratic National Committee will lack the money necessary to support the party’s candidate in the long months after a nominee emerges but before the general election formally gets under way. The party chairman’s duties include overseeing how the party spends its money and helping set election rules.

Mr. Dean brushes aside the criticism, calling the Florida situation “a spat between politicians.” As for worries about the committee being able to broadcast television commercials to support the party’s nominee, he snapped, “There will be plenty of money.”

He vigorously defends his signature program, trying to build the party’s strength in all 50 states, but still finds himself responding to criticism for investing millions of dollars hiring party workers in Republican-dominated states like Alaska.

“Having more people in Alaska doesn’t look so stupid this year, does it?” Mr. Dean said, noting a Senate and House seat that suddenly turned competitive as two longtime Republican incumbents face federal investigation. “Chance favors the prepared mind. Never forget it.”

While Mr. Dean said he intended to stay on as Democratic chairman until his term expires in 2009, he is slowly preparing to relinquish authority to the party’s nominee. “As long as they continue the 50-state strategy, which they have already agreed to do,” Mr. Dean said, “I see a relatively frictionless takeover.”

This summer, presidential candidates signed an agreement, put forward by state party leaders, pledging their support for continuing the program. While few Democrats argue with trying to bolster the party across the country, several campaign officials say it is too expensive.

The Democratic Party’s presidential candidates and its Congressional re-election committees have raised more money than their Republican counterparts. The Democratic National Committee, though, has fallen behind the Republican National Committee. In a disclosure report filed Saturday, the D.N.C. said it had $3.25 million in the bank, compared with $9.71 million heading into the presidential race four years ago.

Still, throughout the lunch, Mr. Dean pronounced himself happy with the state of the Democratic Party, its field of candidates and his tenure as chairman.

“I’d say there are more people who don’t like me,” he said, “than there are skeptics.”With that, he ordered a decaf cappuccino and the waitress brought the check.

Howie P.S.: If anybody understands that last quote, please let me know.