Sunday, October 05, 2003

On a front porch in Squirrel Hill the other night, Vic Delle Donne, a Howard Dean campaign operative and his former college chum, wagged his head patiently at what he doubtless finds an increasingly annoying question:

Is Dean, the reliably strident Democratic presidential candidate, having fulfilled the useful purpose of ratcheting up the left's anger in national political discourse, about to be exposed as too angry for his own good?

"The media have described him as quick-tempered," said Delle Donne, the former Vermont governor's Yale cohort and longtime family friend. "My personal experience is that that's not the case at all. I don't see him having any difficulty on that front, no trouble at all."

That's good, because Dean seemed particularly peevish during last week's New York debate, when Dick Gephardt accused him of being on the Newt Gingrich side of the Medicaid debate circa 1995. Dean looked away and mouthed "false" as Gephardt finished his comment, then sprang on the diffident Missourian like a pit bull that had snapped its chain.

Fortunately for Dean, 10 Democrats talking Medicaid history 13 months before the general election penetrates fewer American attention spans than the Stanley Cup playoffs. This week has brought, on balance, very good news.

The Dean campaign, still fueled by disaffected former voters and non-voters wandering cyberspace, took in $15 million in the third quarter, eclipsing the record of $10.3 for one quarter set by the Bill Clinton campaign in 1995. Barring an unforeseen avalanche of cash covering late-starter Wesley Clark, Dean will enter the primary season as the Democrat to beat for the nomination because he does something the others don't.

"He motivates people," said Becky Burgwin, who with Dr. Pat Kane hosted one of more than 1,400 simultaneous Dean house parties the other night at which the candidate spoke via conference call.

Burgwin got interested in Dean when she assessed the Democratic field during the ramp-up to the Iraq boondoggle.

"I was thinking about Dick Gephardt, John Kerry and, you know, snooze," she said. "I thought, 'I wish we had somebody with some fire, some intelligence. Because these guys in this administration, they're not just incompetent, they're sociopaths. I had gotten to the point where I had to go see someone because I was so depressed and so frightened by these guys. It was just eating me up. The kids were saying, 'Don't yell at the TV, Mom, it makes us all uncomfortable.'

"What Howard Dean did for me is give me a voice. Here's someone who is as angry as I am, and then he was up there on the world stage saying these things."

Dean had just said many of them again through a speakerphone situated amid some 50 supporters in Becky's living room.

"This country does not belong to John Ashcroft and Dick Cheney and Jerry Falwell and Rush Limbaugh," he said. "It belongs to everybody. So we're getting a lot of support -- I've just heard there are 1,441 house parties right now -- support from people who are demoralized by the process and want to take the country back."

Dean doesn't let any opportunity pass to remind his audience that "you can't beat Bush by being Bush Light." It's now his entry line for explaining why he advocates rolling back the entire Bush tax cut, for which he's gotten severe criticism, especially from Kerry.

"For those who say this would eliminate the middle-class tax cut," Dean said, "I say, 'What middle-class tax cut? Some people got a check for $600. We're going to have a fair tax rate for the middle class, but we're going to balance the budget."

Burgwin kind of stayed in the background as her guests reflected on Dr. Dean's prescriptions. Since she started e-mailing friends on Dean's behalf last winter, the campaign has rewarded her with access to the candidate whenever he's been to Pittsburgh.

"It was the most incredible experience," she said. "He's just so focused -- called me by my name the whole time, and he was so appreciative. I saw him address the United Steelworkers, and it was just amazing that he was so unafraid to say exactly what was on his mind."

As the campaign progresses, that will become a two-edged sword. But to this point, there is no tangible evidence that Howard Dean is not the right swordsman for his time.

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