The Softer Side Of Dean Rhetoric

On the campaign trail, Dean's throw-down-the-gauntlet mantra is woven with another message, one strikingly different in tone, that preaches the virtue of community and the evil of corporate behemoths unconcerned, he says, with the collective good.

"Bigger and bigger corporations might mean more efficiency, but there is something about human beings that corporations can't deal with, and that's our soul, our spirituality, who we are," Dean told a breakfast crowd in Sidney, Iowa. "We need to find a way in this country to understand and to help each other understand that there is a tremendous price to be paid for the supposed efficiency of big corporations. The price is losing the sense of who we are as human beings."

Dean's message is tactically sharp, capturing what his campaign believes could be an important factor in the 2004 presidential election: Americans' anxiety about the future -- about jobs and financial security -- born of corporate mistrust and an attendant craving for more control over their lives.

The message dovetails with a larger critique of "special interests" -- a loosely-defined group of rich, powerful, entrenched corporations, institutions, and lobbyists -- that virtually all the Democratic presidential hopefuls have been assailing. In California, Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger campaigned against special interests in unseating Gray Davis as governor.

Dean, in particular, has used the anti-special interests idea as a battering ram. At a rally in Houston this month, the former governor of Vermont railed against the bankrupt Enron and called for greater regulation of industry.

But in the quieter settings, Dean often launches into the theme of uncontrolled power to highlight social policy issues. He points out the importance of structuring the sale of Canadian drugs in the United States without enriching middlemen, so that Main Street pharmacies can be saved. He talks of the need to do away with "No Child Left Behind" legislation, to give control back to local school boards.

Joe Trippi, Dean's campaign manager, insists Dean's call for community is not a message dreamed up by political consultants. "He was talking about how we had lost a sense of community in this country," Trippi recalled of a talk Dean gave in Iowa last spring, one he said propelled him to sign on to the campaign. "How it's not good enough for me to want health care for my kid. We as Americans have a responsibility to fight for every kid in this country to have health insurance."

Dean points to a visit of his own to Iowa as the genesis of the theme, recalling the eureka moment at a recent brunch with reporters, "I couldn't believe that here was this solid group of Iowans and they are not ranting and raving . . . about evil corporations. They were just calmly telling me the underpinnings of their lives were collapsing under them.

"There was a fundamental fear for the future. They felt that American corporations weren't American anymore and the people they work for didn't value them. They could move their jobs anywhere in the world for the bottom line. It was a complete revelation to me."