Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Doctor is Out

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. I remember interviewing Dean in June or July 2003 and he confessed he had no idea who these kids were, nor really why they were so passionate about his candidacy. Everything was a bit of a surprise. But the use of Meetup and other web tools, created a sense of momentum that at one point made Dean the front-runner for his party’s nomination.

Opposition to the war was part – indeed, much – of it of course. Dean helped seal his fate when he commented that the arrest of Saddam Hussein, while welcome, had not made the United States any safer. This was not a message the country wanted to hear in December 2003. That subsequent events would suggest Dean was more or less correct proved immaterial. The damage had been done.

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