Two questions swirled around the Democrats as their national committee assembled yesterday to select a new party chairman: Can Howard Dean cure what ails the party, or is Howard Dean symptomatic of why those ailments may be so difficult to cure?
The former Vermont governor is poised to claim the party chairmanship tomorrow. His victory represents a personal triumph one year after his presidential campaign was in ashes and symbolizes the strength of the party's revitalized grass roots in the aftermath of John F. Kerry's loss to President Bush in November.
But for a party grappling with the question of how it can become more competitive in the red states of the South, Midwest and Mountain West, the decision to elect as its chairman a confrontational New Englander with a liberal identity and a penchant for making controversial statements sends a message in the view of some Democrats that little has been learned from the losses in 2004.
His supporters say Dean will rebuild moribund state parties, keep the grass roots energized, raise money, and keep Bush and the GOP on the defensive. Others fear he will push the Democrats' image farther to the left and drive moderate voters into the hands of the Republicans. That is a particular concern among some grass-roots Democrats in the red states.
A stiff challenge for Dean
"I think Howard Dean would be viewed as synonymous with being upper-East Coast liberal, and that just makes the burden on southern Democrats that much more difficult," said James F. "Jim" Kyle Jr. (D), the minority leader of the Tennessee Senate. "Hopefully he will try to be chairman of the entire party and not the chairman of a niche of the party members."
That challenge awaits Dean and the rest of his party's leadership as he makes the transition from more than a decade in elective politics, in which he was often in the limelight, to chief technician of an institution in which he will be expected to get the machinery ready for the elections of 2006 and 2008 while deferring to congressional and gubernatorial leaders and eventually to the party's presidential candidates in 2008.
But as the newest face in the party's constellation of leaders, Dean symbolizes two of the major challenges Democrats have in regrouping after Bush's victory. He represents the antiwar wing of a party debating where it should stand on national security issues, and he offers a secular vision of the world at a time when Democrats worry that they have ceded the values of faith and spirituality to Republicans.
Harold Ickes, deputy chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, supports Dean's candidacy for party chairman but said Democrats must find a way to talk differently about such issues as abortion, gay rights, guns and the environment. "We're on the right side of those issues, but they have hurt us with a lot of people in too many jurisdictions," he said. "We have to learn how to talk about those without ceding our principles."
Lots of advice for Dean
There is no question that Dean's ascendance worries the party establishment, whose members tried without success to field an alternative for chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and they have offered Dean lots of advice.
Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said explicitly last week that Dean should take his cues on policy from congressional leaders, and yesterday Dean met privately with Reid and Pelosi and pledged to avoid raising issues that were not part of congressional Democrats' agenda, according to a Senate aide. Dean also vowed to spend much of his time in southern and western states.
Gerald W. McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said, "He's got to remind himself, in terms of discipline, that he is the national chair of the party and there are other people in the party that should speak on issues as opposed to the national chair."
Another labor official put it more bluntly: "The question for all of us is, will he act as chairman of the Democratic Party or president of the Democrats, and what makes people nervous is the latter."
As the DNC begins its winter meeting here, Dean has no remaining challengers in his quest to become party chairman. He capitalized on his prominence and then outworked and outmaneuvered his opponents, concentrating on the 447 voting members of the committee and convincing them he could put the party in shape to win elections.
His success has muted some of his former critics. Two years ago, centrist Democrats were at war with Dean. Asked this week whether he worried about Dean as party chairman, Bruce Reed, president of the Democratic Leadership Council, said: "The job of party chair is different from party nominee. The party chair needs to be an ardent partisan. You can't send a vegetarian to do a red-meat job."
But if Democrats are looking for an attack dog in their new chairman, Republicans see that as a gift that will keep Democrats in the minority. "This is akin to [the idea] that you've got to get sicker before you get better," said Matthew Dowd, chief strategist in Bush's reelection campaign. "This is the final stage before they realize they've got to start taking vitamins and get healthy again. . . . It's reflective of a problem they have, which is they haven't arrived with a positive, proactive vision."
Setting the ideological tone
Strategists in both parties say that too much may be made of the role of any party chairman, even one as prominent and controversial as Dean. "The job is not to set the ideological tone for the party," said Mike McCurry, who served as Clinton's press secretary.
Jeff Harris, Democratic leader in the state House in Missouri, where Democrats have lost the presidential race, the governor's office and a Senate seat in the past two elections, said the ideology of the party chairman matters little. "Certainly he has demonstrated some strong organizational skills, and that will be helpful to the party," Harris said of Dean. "The more important question for us in Missouri is our candidate for the presidency in '08."
One historical parallel underscores that view. Sixteen years ago, after a Massachusetts liberal lost the presidential race to a Republican named Bush, Democrats selected as their chairman a man with deep roots in the liberal wing of the party.
Republican strategists claimed the election of Ronald H. Brown Jr. showed that Democrats did not care about the concerns of ordinary Americans, and southern Democrats worried that the party was writing off their region. Four years later, under Brown's chairmanship, Clinton won the presidency.
Few Democrats are ready to suggest that with Dean history is about to repeat itself, but McCurry, who served as DNC communications director under Brown, said Dean has much more to work with than Brown had to rebuild the party.
Outgoing chairman Terence R. McAuliffe leaves a solid foundation, having updated the party's voter lists and technology, renovated the headquarters building, and revamped fundraising. "Never again will money be a crutch for this party," McAuliffe said. "The money problem is now solved for our party forever."
Dean's successful race for chairman highlights the new importance party officials place on maintaining the enthusiasm of grass-roots activists, whose energy and wallets Dean first tapped in his presidential campaign and Kerry and the party later took advantage of in the general election campaign.
"It's a party that's transformed for the good by the 2004 election," said Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin. "Despite the disappointment and frustration of the election outcome, the core assets that were developed in 2004 are still quite strong and vibrant. [Those activists] see Dean as the kind of person who will continue building a strong grass-roots party that's better able to take on the Republicans."
Dean has said the party chairman is not the chief messenger for the Democrats, but he comes in with a determination to make good on his pledge of two years ago to "change this party." In a recent interview, he described it this way: "I think we have to be the party of reform, reforming our dreadful fiscal situation, reforming our budgetary process, reforming our electoral politics, reforming health care, reforming education, reforming our foreign policy."
But he said he sees no need for the party to change its message. "The real message of my campaign was stand up for what you believe in and pursue the politics of conviction," Dean said. "That's frankly why George Bush was successful, because he gave the appearance that he had some deep-seated convictions. If you want to excite people in politics . . . you've got to be a party of convictions."