Nation-Building >> Short-Fused Populist, Breathing Fire at Bush | return to front page

The Washington Post has been publishing what it calls the Contender Series in which it profiles each of the Democratic candidates running for president. This weekend, the paper printed the sixth profile of the series on Gov. Howard Dean, MD.

He says he is running for president because he is too upset at the direction the country is heading not to do something about it. Howard Brush Dean III, 54, a Park Avenue-bred medical doctor, is the Democrats' angry Everyman, heading to Washington to make things right.

The article, as most have to date, recognizes the progress and growth the the Dean Campaign as experienced over the last several months.

After six months of full-time campaigning, he has gone from being the asterisk to the rising star of the nine Democrats vying for the nomination to challenge Bush. In aggressively confronting the administration, Dean has tapped the discontent, and even anger, among the party's ranks with the self-assurance of the doctor he once was and the combativeness of the governor he became. Now Dean, the shortish (about 5-foot-8) contender with the flushed face and the rolled-up sleeves, is the one with the buzz and the blogs.

It also sheds some light on the nick name "Ho-Ho."

"Sometimes Howard's tongue is faster than his brain," said Peter Freyne, a columnist for Seven Days, a weekly newspaper in Burlington, Vt. It doesn't help matters that Dean speaks off the cuff; out of hundreds of campaign speeches he has delivered, only four were written in advance. The rest were ad-libbed. "He's smart and energetic," Freyne said. "I've been calling him Ho-Ho for years, because he's like the little engine that could."

And it's always refreshing when you see the media recognize the fact the the conventional liberal/conservative labels can't be fairly put on Howard Dean:

"His being called a liberal is one of the great white lies of the campaign," said Tom Salmon, a fellow Democrat and governor of Vermont for two terms during the Nixon-Ford era. "He's a rock-solid fiscal conservative," Salmon said, "and a liberal on key social issues. But we're talking key issues."

The story traces Dean's history and politics. It's worth the read. There will probably be a few tid bits of information in it that you haven't heard about the governor before.