BURLINGTON, Vt. -- On a sun-drenched, 90-degree day in the small, lakeside town of Burlington, a visibly fatigued former governor Howard Dean threw down a marker recasting his candidacy around the theme of restoring American values and community in a nation under attack from special interests, corporations and a president who appeals "to the worst instincts within us, instead of that which is good in all Americans."
"We can do better than this!" Dean told a crowd of several thousand cheering supporters. The mass of true believers and curious onlookers gathered in the town's center, thronged side streets, hung out of windows and lined up on the edges of three floors of an outdoor parking garage -- all to catch a glimpse of the former governor of Vermont officially declaring that he is running for president, after a year of campaigning in less official terms.
Supporters came from throughout Vermont and from as far away as South Carolina. "Next year I'll be old enough to vote for him," said an excited 17-year-old Shaheen Ahmad from Springfield, Va., who had taken a 10-hour bus ride to Vermont for the announcement. She certainly wasn't the only youngster on the scene; the crowd was filled with students on summer break and young families with small children. At Dean's campaign headquarters in South Burlington, a veritable athletic team of young men and teens loped around the halls, proving the power of Dean's message to engage those not normally drawn to electoral politics.
Dean's declaration of his candidacy (which you can read here and which former Clinton speechwriter David Kusnet analyzed for TAP Online here) repeated many of the themes and phrases he has been sounding in stump speeches, through online appeals and before interest groups for at least the past six months. But it differed in that the speech, which was written by the governor himself, in consultation with his campaign manager Joe Trippi, tied a number of Dean's ideas for the first time into a broad, thematic vision for the campaign.
Though Dean started his race focused on the issues of health care and balanced budgets, his campaign caught fire in the press only after his position opposing unilateral American military action in Iraq made him a hero in anti-war circles. Now he's adding larger questions about American identity and the conservative assault on American democracy to his list of pet themes.
"Something changed along the way as I listened to Americans around this country," Dean said to the assembled, his shirt-sleeves rolled up. "And so for me, the long journey of a presidential campaign has begun with the people that I have met affecting me far more than any effect that I may have had on them. Because of that, the reasons why I seek the presidency have changed."
"This campaign is about more than issue differences on health care or tax policy, national security, jobs, the environment, our economy. . . . It's about who we are as Americans," said Dean. It's about restoring "the ideal of the American community," he continued, a place where each person isn't only looking out for himself or herself, but where people look out for each other and recognize their obligations to and responsibility for their fellow citizens.
Dean also moved to reclaim the sort of patriotic, pro-American rhetoric most commonly associated with Republicans and more conservative Democrats. For instance, he called his speech "The Great American Restoration" and held the announcement on Church Street in Burlington, where the eponymous church's steeple rose in the background and lampposts were draped in American flags. The last "American Restoration" was part of the "Great Awakening," the early 19th-century flourishing of religious sentiment that swept small New England towns. It was a restoration movement in evangelical Christianity that opposed the splintering of Protestant denominations as well as slavery.
Furthermore, Dean's call "to return greatness and return high moral purpose to the United States of America" is reminiscent of the rhetoric of "national greatness conservatism," as advocated by insurgent presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2000 and later by The Weekly Standard magazine. As neoconservative writer David Brooks put it in the Standard, if Americans "think of nothing but their narrow self-interest, of their commercial activities, they lose a sense of grand aspiration and noble purpose."
Now, when Howard Dean says something quite similar, conservatives may well dismiss it as a populist or liberal sentiment. But Dean has always been good at co-opting the language of those who oppose him from the right. In urging his followers to "take back the Democratic Party" and "take back our country," Dean isn't just sounding a populist note -- he's taking back the language of "Take Back Vermont," the group of social conservatives who tried to unseat him in his 2000 race for governor of Vermont because of their opposition to civil unions for gays.
He pulled the same neat trick yesterday. "I speak for a new American century," Dean said. "Our foreign and military policies must be about American leading the world, not America against the world." The outfit best known for the phrase "new American century" is the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, which is highly influential with the Bush administration. The group is known for its aggressive unilateralism and support for preemptive war, which Dean opposes. Leaving no doubt about where he stands on foreign policy, Dean called for a "restoration of American values" and "our nation's traditional purpose in the world."
During the singing of "The Star-Spangled Banner," before Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.) spoke, the young singer's solo was joined by an at-first quiet harmony about halfway through the song. Voice then added onto voice until much of the crowd was singing with her, softly but intently. At "the land of the free," a small wave of applause and cheers rippled across the crowd. After "home of the brave," loud applause and enthusiastic shouts burst out, as if those clapping and yelling could now feel in the words of that most familiar of songs new meaning. It wasn't just their national anthem; it was their personal anthem, too, telling them, as Dean often urges, to "stand up and fight."
On the stage with Dean were his wife Judith Steinberg Dean, wearing a red suit, and his daughter Anne, a freshman at Yale who's been volunteering part-time with the campaign on her summer break, according to campaign aides. Paul Dean, the governor's 17-year-old son who was recently arrested with some of his friends for allegedly trying to steal cases of beer from a cooler in back of the Burlington Country Club, skipped the announcement because of a prior work commitment, according to his uncle, James Dean. Paul spent the afternoon at his summer job at a soccer camp, where he is a counselor. The governor's mother, Andree Dean, was visiting a sick relative in California and didn't want to pay to get her ticket changed. Frugality "runs in the family," James Dean explained, tying his mother's absence to his brother's passion for balancing budgets. After the announcement, Judith Steinberg Dean returned to her medical office to complete her day's work and hold patient visits.
Garance Franke-Ruta is a Prospect senior editor.
