Howard Dean's Low-Rent Allure

Another hint that the media is beginning to recognize the populist roots of Dean's appeal.

Slate

"I was actually surprised at how many people came up and said they were going to support us." At a barn in Chariton, Dean spoke to about 40 people, the kind who wear trucker hats and American-flag belt buckles unironically. One supporter gave Dean a $5 check. "That is not the educated, cultural elite" that the national media say comprises the bulk of his supporters, Dean emphasizes.

"People have no idear"—Dean always says "idear"—"what kind of politician I am," the candidate continues. "Because they have no idear what governing Vermont is like for the most part, because they've never come up and seen it. That [crowd in Chariton] was classic Vermont. Farmers, working people, smart, maybe not so well-educated, but they read a daily newspaper every day. Literate, product of good high-school systems. Work with their hands, rural. Conservative social values, but open-minded." Later, Dean returns to the point. "It took me about three minutes to figure out what that crowd was like, and it was rural Vermont." He smiles and raises his eyebrows in a self-satisfied way.

The man clearly feels he's on a roll, and it's hard to disagree. On his two-day journey through southeastern Iowa, Dean continues to draw unexpectedly large crowds.

Everywhere he goes, Dean offers up a Unified Field Theory of Bush Lies: If Bush will lie about the Iraq war, he will lie about anything. No Child Left Behind is "an ill-conceived bill which turns out to be just like the Iraq war, built on misinformation." Because Houston's high-school dropout rate turned out to be inaccurate, "The whole Texas record on education was fraudulent." Bush's estate tax cut is actually "the largest inheritance tax increase in our history" because the increasing national debt will have to be paid for by our children. Bush's tax cuts aren't even really tax cuts because they've led to increases in local property taxes on the middle class. Bush is a "promise everything, do nothing" president.

"I've known the president," he says. "I knew him when he was governor. And I believed him when he said he was going to be a compassionate conservative. I believed him when he said he was going to increase AmeriCorps. The only thing the president has kept his word on, as far as I can see, is he said he was going to invade Iraq. And he did, but he wasn't even able to be truthful about why."

During our talk, Dean doesn't say anything really shocking or provocative, but he doesn't appear to be doling out canned b.s., either (even when he is). It's the approach he takes with voters, and it works.

At the speeches I've watched Dean give, he attacks the president quite a bit. (He began one speech, "We're going to have a little fun at the president's expense.") But he reserves his real fury for his own party. His face reddens and his voice raises when he delivers one of his biggest applause lines, that Democrats need to "stop apologizing for who we are." Why does this part of the speech make him so agitated?

"Well, I wouldn't call myself agitated about it," he says, preferring—of course—the word "passionate." Of Democratic leaders, he says: "They're consumed by the notion that they have to win, whatever the cost is. And that's why they don't win." Of his fellow candidates, he claims that "their fundamental analysis of the election is wrong. They're doing what Bill Clinton did, but they're not Bill Clinton, and neither am I."

At this point in the trip, I'm in the midst of a full-fledged Dean swoon. Sure, I think he's pandering on ethanol, his claim that he's going to bring in 3 million to 4 million new voters to win the election sounds far-fetched, and his idea to raise $100 each from 1 million voters sounds perilously close to Orrin Hatch's "skinny cat" flop from four years ago. But I like him anyway. Barring an implosion like the one McCain had when he attacked Pat Robertson in Virginia Beach, I think Dean has a real chance to win the nomination.