Why Dean is not winning, and should

Near the end of a question-and-answer session Thursday morning with voters at the 19th-century Oshkosh Opera House, a man in the balcony tossed a softball in Dean's direction. Identifying himself as a disgruntled 2000 Bush voter, the questioner lamented the president's failure to lessen partisan enmity in Washington and asked Dean what he would do to end gridlock on Capitol Hill.

The standard political answer would have been to piously vow to recreate the Era of Good Feeling in Washington, despite provocations from the opposition party. But such gooey prattle about fostering bipartisanship simply does not fit Dean's nature.

Squinting at his questioner through the glare of the TV lights, Dean said bluntly, "I haven't promised to go to Washington and unify everybody. And there's a reason for my not making that promise. I think it's important to stand up for what you believe in."

Then Dean uttered a few combative lines that encapsulated the strengths and weaknesses of his boom-or-bust campaign: "I'm not going to Washington to be a nice guy. I'm going to Washington to kick the right wing out."

Dean insists that has gotten through what he calls "the difficult times" by applying a stoical outlook that he absorbed from hockey, a sport he loves and his teenage son plays. "Maybe you got a bad call from the referee? So what?" the former front-runner asked rhetorically. "That's the way it is. The game's over. I don't see the point in sitting around complaining that if the media hadn't done this, if my opponents hadn't said that."