The Economist’s Democracy in America blog raises a good point: whatever happened to Howard Dean? That is, why does the former chairman of the DNC receive so little credit for the party’s resurrection? And why is he not being considered to be Secretary for Health and Human Services, given that, as governor of Vermont, he did assemble a track record on healthcare reform?
Dean’s eclipse is partly a matter of personality clashes: he has feuded with both Rahm Emanuel and David Plouffe. Certainly Dean has an abrasive, even arrogant, side to his character that hasn’t helped him; nor has he ever really been trusted by the party’s establishment. And yet Obama owes Dean more than is sometimes recognised.
Though John McCain had made tentative use of the internet in his ill-fated 2000 campaign, it was Dean’s 2004 run for the Democratic nomination that truly showed how transformative the web could be. The enthusiasm Dean’s long-shot campaign generated took the candidate himself by surprise.
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