Can Dean Beat Bush?

Well, first, we should note, for the record, that the conventional wisdom about this campaign so far has usually been wrong. John Kerry was the obvious man to beat. Dean was a fringe-ish also-ran who'd be done in by his strident anti-war stance. Dick Gephardt was certain to nail down every major union endorsement. Tarheel charisma-monger John Edwards was sure to take off at some point. Wes Clark, once he entered the race, would quite possibly render the rest of the field immediately irrelevant. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong and, you guessed it, wrong.

I think most pundits have gotten Dean wrong, and continue to miss the point, for one simple reason: They think too much about ideology. Political writers seek ideological explanations first. It's understandable; it's how we think. So, Dean's success must be about his opposition to the war.

Obviously true in part. But it actually explains little about Dean's somersault over his competitors. It has become apparent in recent weeks -- to pundits and to Deaniacs -- that Dean is no flaming liberal at all.

Dean's appeal is not chiefly ideological.

He's the only one of the Democratic nine who is what sports commentators would call an "impact player." He understands how to make an impact on people. He thinks big. He saunters into battle without fear -- and sometimes with less judgment than one might prefer, but even that helps make him interesting. Notice how he managed to prevent his refusal to accept public financing from turning him into a plaything of the fat-cats, instead converting it into yet another glorious manifestation of his ingenuity and his sacred connection to the people.

See him with a crowd and it's not hard to glean the basis of that connection. At the endorsement event, his speech (pretty much his standard stump speech) was about American history, the political culture today and, most of all, the people in the room. Scarcely two sentences were devoted to himself. In an age when Clinton-imitating pols ache to cull the life-shaping events from their past to establish the perfect bio, Dean does none of that. The impact he has on people when he speaks to them is bio enough.

Can this carry -- to swing voters, and into the South? I have no idea. But I do know that Dean's been consistently underestimated, and that there's only one Democratic candidate who's fun to watch.