Howard Dean, Everyman

Amid all the bigtime fundraising news and the surging polls and the very Presidential statements from the campaign on the Plame affair and other issues...let us pause for a moment and appreciate the Everyman side of our candidate.

Two recent articles do a great job of showing the low key, human side of Howard Dean. Although my favorite article in that vain remains the February 2003 New York magazine expose, in which Dean allowed a reporter to "feel free to look around" his family's (rather messy) house and meet their cat. No doubt the other Dr. Dean was thrilled. :-)

Anyway, the Burlington weekly Seven Days profiles Howard Dean, Hockey Dad. According to one of his fellow hockey parents:

“Six-thirty in the morning on the little rink at Leddy Park and half of us are still asleep and trying to figure out how to motivate the kids — there was never any question who was going to lead them. What Howard brought to Saturday and Sunday mornings — to this day I remember it vividly — is that he always had that smile on his face and was a motivator of the kids.”

And the Burlington Free Press recaps Dean's transition from "rock star," as he arrived at the Burlington meetup last night, to "Everyman," as he quietly walked back to his car and drove away all by himself:

In Vermont, it takes only a minute to transform from leading Democratic presidential hopeful to Everyman. Former Gov. Howard Dean made that transition Wednesday night.

Just minutes after Dean delivered a short, emotional speech to a crowd of cheering supporters at Nectar's in Burlington, he set off on foot toward his car, alone. He walked quietly, along Main Street, through City Hall Park and to his car, which he drove himself, parked at the corner of College and St. Paul streets.