In Madison, Wisconsin, on the night before Howard Dean pulled out of the Democratic presidential primary, I met a man selling beanbags at a Dean rally. The bags, each about 6 inches tall, bore the likeness of Dean in three different versions: "Doctor Dean" wore a white coat and stethoscope; "Classic Dean" wore brown slacks and a tie; and "Iowa Dean," a stalk of corn clutched in his hand, was dressed in winter boots, a barn jacket, and a “Perfect Storm” orange knit hat. The beanbags, dubbed "Deanie Babies," were made, their maker told me, from organic soybeans and assembled by Hmong workers in Minneapolis. He'd financed their creation himself, and was trying to unload his remaining stock while there was still a market for them.
The defining moment of the Dean campaign differs for many people. For some, it was the scream. For others, it was his "what I want to know” speech at the 2003 DNC winter meeting. For me, though, the thing that most characterized everything that was right and wrong at the same time about the Dean campaign was these cute little Deanie Babies. They were unexpected, original, creative, politically correct, a little cult-of-personality-ish, produced by grass-roots loyalists independently of the campaign, a great story -- and totally useless at getting anyone elected. I don't think the campaign even got any proceeds from their sale.
That, in a nutshell, was the problem at the heart of the Dean campaign. In the end, it was unable to direct and corral the tremendous creativity and enthusiasm it had unleashed. Though people sometimes seem to forget this, Dean lost Iowa before the scream, not because of it. Dean finished third in that all-important leadoff state for many reasons, but some of the most important ones were organizational. The campaign that pioneered Internet fundraising and raised more for a primary battle than any Democratic one in history blew that money on a massively ineffective Iowa operation that left it strapped for funds heading into the later contests. The out-of-state Perfect Stormers scared off the locals, the get-out-the-vote callers called too often, and Dean's Iowa television ads were notable for their low production values. Certainly there were deep and genuine conflicts among the candidates over ideas and Dean's own controversial statements. But the structural and technical problems were not irrelevant, either.
I don't rehearse this history to ally myself with the “stop Dean” forces in the race for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair. Far from it: Dean remains one of the most compelling speakers in the Democratic Party and has clearly learned to operate with a level of sophistication and -- thankfully -- caution beyond that which he brought to his race for the presidency. In some ways, this bid for the DNC chairmanship -- which, by all accounts, Dean has pursued systematically, innovatively, and inclusively -- may be a better harbinger of what Dean-as-party-chair would look like than was his presidential campaign. That said, what happened in 2003-04 is not yet ancient history. And so it is worth recalling and seriously considering at a moment when Dean is, once again, the front-runner to head the Democratic Party.
It's not always a pleasant history, a former highly visible Dean-headquarters employee reminded me recently in an offhand comment. This person retains great personal respect for Dean and his values, but nonetheless volunteered that Dean was "a horrible manager" and told me, "I wouldn't trust him to run a company.”
Curious, I called around and talked to some of his other former campaign aides and advisors, who, like the first individual, would only speak on condition of anonymity. Dean “went out and gave great speeches, but in terms of management style, there was none,” another operative told me. As a manager, Dean was “just a disaster.” Like John Kerry, he was torn between groups of warring advisers, several former staffers said. One of them, who backs Dean for DNC chair, acknowledged that the presidential campaign had its organizational problems, but blamed them less on Dean than on his campaign manager, Joe Trippi. Yet another former Dean worker laid the blame at the feet of Dean's Vermont loyalists, who ultimately controlled access to the candidate and the campaign's purse strings, while praising Trippi as the source of much of the campaign's innovative spirit (even as he lost control of its practices). “Dean's campaign was a disaster, but his governorship was really, really well run,” said this former “Deaniac,” reflecting on Dean's management history. “If he's chair and gets the right people around him, and the right CEO who is a good manager, it could be great… A really great manager who can run an organization like the DNC is a really rare person, and I just hope Dean finds one.”
That is something worth considering. What, after all, is the purpose of the DNC chair if not to be that manager? The job has historically been about the two big Fs: fundraising and field. And the DNC, despite outgoing Chairman Terry McAuliffe's valiant efforts, faces some profound management challenges in the next four years. McAuliffe did a heroic job shepherding a debt-ridden party into solvency, new housing, and an era of new technical capabilities. But the big challenges ahead for Democrats continue to be organizational as much as ideological. They lie in helping every state party become as solvent, secure, and technically proficient as the national DNC is itself capable of becoming. They lie in bringing the party up to where the Republican National Committee (RNC) is -- and making up for the RNC's head start in technology and in, especially, the field.
It was never really clear to me how much of what happened in the Dean presidential campaign, both good and bad, was a result of Dean and how much was a result of his campaign manager, media advisers, and other staffers. Certainly Dean had the foresight to approve much of what Trippi proposed for online mobilizing, and Dean was the only candidate in the race with the charisma to routinely gain supporters through C-SPAN. But in the end the campaign became as much a political “movement” as an effort to get a single individual elected. The net result was that the individual (Dean) was not elected. And while the movement survived this loss, Dean was so tarnished by the race -- and by the dawning realization, even among the party's most liberal stalwarts, that the nation has become more conservative than it once was -- that today only 27 percent of Democrats, according to a Wall Street Journal poll, look upon him positively. That's a sharp drop from the already low 48 percent who saw him positively one year ago.
If selected to head the DNC, as now looks likely, Dean's first task will be to overcome the deep skepticism of members of his own party about his leadership. Those who have opposed Dean have suggested he be confined to a nuts-and-bolts management role at the DNC. But it has been as a movement leader that he has had the most success in recent years. Finding the right balance between being a leader and being a manager will be critical for Dean. Rank-and-file Democrats are starved for leadership and a person who will fight for Democratic ideals; they want someone who will modernize, reinvigorate, and build the party. But it will ultimately only be through being a good manager -- or hiring people who can back up his tough talk with strong operations that achieve results -- that Dean will be able to be the leader they really seek.
Garance Franke-Ruta is a Prospect senior editor.
