BAI ON DEAN. Matt Bai's piece in The New York Times Magazine about Howard Dean's tenure at the Democratic National Committee bodes well for Bai's upcoming book on the Democrats, the lead time on which I do not envy him, since I can see about three perfectly valid, if mutually exclusive, premises for such a project all going completely up the spout in the next three weeks. The magazine feature was nuanced, subtle, and, for the first time in a long while, treated Dean as someone who might actually know what he's doing. (OK, there was this one over a year ago, but modesty must occasionally prevail.) The piece even redeemed the cover photo, which made Dean look very much like someone who flunked the audition for a death-metal band from New Jersey. (What is it with these guys? Earlier this year, they ran a picture of Mark Warner that looked like it had been done by Hanna-Barbera.)
The respect given to Dean therein is another small bit of evidence -- as opposed to the huge honking forensics evidence that is Bob Woodward's new book -- that the conventional wisdom inside the Beltway is shifting in a serious manner. That said, I have never read any long magazine feature in which an ancillary figure came off as badly in his own words as Rep. Rahm Emanuel did here. Forget about a campaign committee. You wouldn't hire this guy to park your car. There is certainly a long monograph to be written about how the Clinton Administraion managed to put so many insufferable people together in one place at the same time. The late, great Abe Lemons once said of one of his fellow basketball coaches, "Real nice feller. Likes to make waitresses cry." Abe saw Rahm Emanuel coming from a long ways off.
--Charles P. Pierce
