The doctor from Vermont stands out in the Democratic pack by eschewing the personal and focusing on the political

Wednesday, September 10, 2003

Here are two remarkable sentences -- inconceivable a year ago, unavoidable today -- to contemplate: A majority of Americans now feel it's time for a new person in the presidency. Former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont leads the gaggle of Democratic presidential contenders.

	David M. Shribman is executive editor of the Post-Gazette (dshribman@post-gazette.com).

Let's not misinterpret what these sentences, drawn from the latest poll results from Zogby International, mean. They do not indicate that the constant stream of criticism by Dean -- who is now comparing the Iraq war to Vietnam and who this week described the president's Oval Office address on Iraq and terrorism as "outrageous" -- is driving down Bush's popularity. Hardly anybody outside Iowa, New Hampshire and maybe South Carolina knows much about Dean in detail. Nationwide, voters have only (a) the vague notion that he's the president's most ardent critic, which is true; and (b) the unsettling notion that he's from the unpredictable precincts of that redoubtable mother of presidents, Vermont, which is also true.

These poll findings show something quite different and, when you think about it, maybe not all that remarkable after all. They suggest that Dean's drive, the most unlikely development of the presidential race, is being powered by impatience with the president.

You don't need to delve into the messy statistical innards of poll results to figure this out. The country is basically split evenly between Republicans and Democrats. Half the country is skeptical of the president's performance. Since Republicans are politically inclined to sympathize with Bush's assumptions and policies and temperamentally inclined to stand by their man anyway, it stands to reason that the dissent is coming from the Democrats.

Easy conclusion (though not so easy that all the presidential candidates haven't drawn it yet): Beating up on the president is really, really good politics if you're a Democrat and if you're running for the White House.

Dean was the first to figure this out and remains the most artful in carrying it out. The political establishment is having a grand time plotting the trajectory of Dean's progress, as if he were a tropical storm bearing down on Bermuda, and the current meteorology suggests that, now that Hurricane Dean has made landfall, he is veering right. Maybe he is, maybe he's not. It doesn't matter. He hasn't lost sight of the main game in the surprisingly narrow world of primary politics, which this year turns out to be making an issue of taking issue with Bush.

These poll results also suggest something separate and potentially significant about this peculiar presidential race. They suggest it is possible that American politics may be entering a new phase, shorn of the personality and celebrity aspects that powered these contests in the recent past.

Presidential races since 1992 have taken on many of the production values and themes of country-music songs. Bill Clinton's rise was replete with stories of rusticated ruin (an overachiever hungry for love, an alcoholic mother who was a serial marrier and was physically abused by one of her husbands, plus the added advantage of a wife who actually used the phrase "stand by my man" in a nationally televised interview). George W. Bush flirted with, and maybe briefly succumbed to, alcoholism before finding sobriety and salvation with the guidance of a strong woman. Al Gore repeatedly told the tale of his sister's death from cancer and his son's brush with death in a Baltimore automobile accident.

Into every life wander some strains of C&W, and in truth the campaign narratives of Clinton, Bush and Gore were real stories from real American lives. But in this atmosphere -- real economic distress, real worries about United States military personnel in Iraq, real jitters about security at home -- the country lines don't seem so catchy, or at least aren't catching on.

Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri ran for president in 1988 as a plain-vanilla candidate (he was Dick, his wife was Jane and all they lacked was the dog named Spot). This time he may be overcompensating with stories about the recent death of his mother and the heroic struggle of his son against cancer. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, too, has experienced tragedy (the loss of a son) and has a compelling personal story (grandson of a sharecropper, son of a mill worker). He, too, is struggling.

The candidate who has caught fire is the really boring guy, the country doctor with none of the bedside manner of the country doctor of legend and lore. He does, however, have the self-assurance of just about every medicine man you've ever encountered.

On the surface there's little similarity between Calvin Coolidge, Vermont's only president, and Dean, Vermont's only presidential candidate in a generation. Coolidge believed that four-fifths of all the world's troubles "would disappear if we would only sit down and keep still." Dean believes that there is no problem in the world that cannot be ameliorated if he would only stand up and talk for a while.

But the two men, both onetime governors, have a very important thing in common: They are all business.

No fluff in Dean. No black-and-red checkered shirt, no peanut brigade, no tales from Project Mercury, no rhyming couplets about self-esteem. And that just might be the point behind his rise. Dean benefits subliminally, perhaps, from the doctor bit, and he may get a bounce from Vermont's reputation as a flinty, plain-spoken mountainous redoubt on the frosty frontier hard by Quebec. But mostly it is what he says that has made the difference. In 2004, that rarest of political years, the premium might be on the political, not the personal. Miracles do happen.

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