The Doctor Is In

The next few weeks will determine whether or not the year's most extraordinary political story has legs. Not twelve months ago, Howard Dean was a nobody, the former governor of a tiny state -- Vermont -- who was launching the kind of candidacy that usually appeals to the kinds of liberals who write about politics, and no one else. But there was something in the intensity of his demeanor and the bluntness of his message -- a full-frontal attack on the administration of George W. Bush -- that fired up millions of potential voters who were sick of the usual haircuts churned out by the party machinery. Dean attacked Bush on the war. He attacked Bush on the economy. And then he attacked his fellow Democrats on the war and the economy. And by the time the nation started paying attention, Dean was suddenly not just a guy running for the White House - he was an insurgent leader around whom a movement was coalescing, the first political leader to harness the power of the Internet. More than 500,000 donors have signed up for the Dean campaign, primarily through his Web site, Deanforamerica.com. But that in itself hardly speaks to the significance of his online achievements: What Dean has really done is use the Internet to build a community among his supporters.

In person, the Yale-educated Dean seems an unlikely avatar of change. He's handsome, but in the way people were handsome in the Fifties. Unlike most politicians, who work hard to seem like your best friend, Dean, a physician by training, projects a refreshing quality of seeming not to really care if you like him. In conversation, his whole body is clenched, his manner making it clear that getting his views across is work, that he's doing a job, not trying to reach out or seduce. When you ask him a question, he doesn't so much answer it as snap it in two, relaxing a little only when he's sure that he has broken its back.

This interview was conducted in two sessions. We first met up with the candidate in New Hampshire, where he was speaking at an AFL-CIO rally near Manchester, the day after he received the endorsement of former Vice President Al Gore. A week later, we met up again, in Los Angeles, the day it was announced that Saddam Hussein had been caught.

You've really been getting attacked by your opponents out there on the campaign trail -- how does it make you feel?

Interestingly enough, I personalize things less now than I did when I was governor, in terms of attacks from other opponents and so forth. A lot of these attacks come across as personal, but they are mostly theater. But when they first started going after me, I couldn't believe it, because I knew a lot of those guys.

In Iowa, an unnamed Democratic group was running ads against you that somehow implied that your policies would help Osama bin Laden.

I'm disturbed by the Democratic attack ads. When we find out who's running them, they're going to be unelectable, and they'll have no future in politics.

Why's that?

Because they're being funded by enormous special-interest groups -- we don't know who they are yet. That is the old Democratic Party, the Democratic Party that can't possibly win. If you're a politician who relies on special interests, trying to run against the president, who relies on special interests, you really don't have much of a case to be president.

Are you surprised at how far you've come?

I think that the reason that we've done as well as we have is because people really are sick of politics as usual. The Democrats caved in after George Bush became president. And he had 500,000 fewer votes than Al Gore, and yet they supported the war. When the first Bush tax cuts came along, Bush said he wanted to cut $1.2 trillion. And they said, "Oh, no, you can't do that. How about $900 billion?" They have not been an effective opposition party. It's not [Senate Minority Leader] Tom Daschle's fault; he's doing the best he can.