The Lessons of Howard Dean

Howard Dean's campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination stirred the passions of millions of people. It was a progressive, grassroots campaign that was anti-war at its core and anti-establishment in its orientation. The former Vermont governor may not have been as progressive as his followers, but he seemed to move toward them during the run-up to the primaries. And he distinguished himself with his candor. Though his campaign foundered in the cornfields of Iowa (with a push and a shove from the mainstream media), Dean did not give up his hope of establishing an enduring organization to carry forward some of his goals.

That organization is Democracy for America. It hopes to elect candidates around the country, and it vows to promote grassroots democracy, to campaign for progressive policies, and to fight against "the far right wing and their radical, divisive policies, and the selfish special interests who for too long have dominated politics." I had the following telephone interview with Dean on April 19. He was his old blunt self.

What happened to your campaign in hindsight?

Howard: Oh, I haven't spent a lot of time delving into all that. Everybody makes mistakes, but probably the biggest one was the spat with Gephardt at the end. He attacked us, and we chose to respond to him.

Is going negative a response that doesn't work anymore?

It always works, but never in a multicandidate race. The ones who aren't going negative get the benefit.

There is some speculation, perhaps idle in the press, that you were self-sabotaging, that you really didn't want to win, and the closer you came to getting the nomination, the more gaffes you committed.

That was pretty silly. That's one of the problems with the media. There's a lot of opinion pieces under the guise of news, and once one person comes up with it, it gets repeated. Most of that started out in gossip columns in The Washington Post. The idea that someone is going to spend two years and $50 million and doesn't really care is pretty silly.

What do you make of the way the press treated you?

I think the press in general is a failed institution in this country. For two reasons. This has nothing to do with the race. I'm not sure it would have made any difference. But the biggest problem with the media is first that 90 percent of Americans get their news from eleven corporations so that the loyalty in the editorial staff and higher up is principally to the shareholders rather than to the public. And the second problem is that entertainment has supplanted news value.

A lot of your supporters feel the press had it in for you, or did you in. Do you agree?

You know, I don't know. I think the older supporters may feel that way. The younger supporters tend to ignore the press. The pitfall of what's happening in the media is if you're under thirty, you get your news from the Internet and The Daily Show, and there's not much discrimination between what they find on the front page of The New York Times and what they find on the Internet. That's not a bad thing, in the sense that people don't get spoon-fed anymore.

The Daily Show may be savvier than some of that other stuff.

Oh, I don't know, I don't get to watch The Daily Show.

I don't think there's much legitimacy to that. I'm sure there were personal factors involved, but I'm not one who buys the notion of a media conspiracy. I think there are different views in the media, from Fox News to The New York Times, from The Weekly Standard to The Nation. But I don't think there's an ideological conspiracy in the media to keep certain candidates out. I really don't.

Can any candidate tell the truth on a controversial topic like the capture of Saddam Hussein and not get burned?

I don't really think that hurt me all that much. Most people in America knew it was true. I think the media is very much like the inside-the-Beltway crowd. They're not average Americans themselves. They're under a lot of pressure from editors and publishers. And I don't think they relate to most ordinary people. When I said that I didn't think the capture of Saddam Hussein made us any safer, though I congratulated the troops for doing it, average Americans thought to themselves, yeah, that's probably right. And certainly, two weeks later they certainly thought that was right since we had just lost an additional thirty troops.