Howard Dean
Howard Brush Dean III (born November 17, 1948) is an American Democratic politician who served as Governor of Vermont from 1991 to 2003. While initially favored to win the 2004 Democratic Party Presidential nomination, after failing to win a single primary he suspended his campaign on February 18, 2004; on March 2 he did win the primary in his home state of Vermont, the only state not won by John Kerry on Super Tuesday.
Dean's presidential campaign was remarkable at the time for its extensive use of the Internet to reach out to its supporters. The candidate and his staff frequently "blogged" while on the campaign trail and even delegated important campaign-related decisions to the outcomes of polls conducted on his website. By soliciting contributions online, mostly in small donations from individuals, the campaign shattered previous fundraising records for the Democratic presidential primary. Dean has thus been credited with being the first national candidate to play to the strengths of the Internet, in particular by engaging the American public directly in the political process.
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2 Early political career 3 Campaign for Democratic nomination 4 Post Campaign & Democracy for America 5 Views 6 Quotes 7 External links |
Howard was born in New York City to Andree Dean, art appraiser; Howard Brush Dean Jr (deceased), former Dean Witter Reynolds top executive. He graduated from Yale University in 1971 and spent the next few years working as a stock broker. Dean received his doctor of medicine degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1978 and practiced as a physician until he became Governor of Vermont upon the death of Richard A. Snelling. Raised in the Episcopal Church, he became a Congregationalist in 1982.
Dean married Judith Steinberg Dean, M.D. She uses her maiden name (Judith Steinberg) in their joint medical practice to avoid confusion with her husband. Elsewhere she goes by Judith Dean or Judy Dean. She has raised the couple's two children, Paul and Anne, in her Jewish faith.
On May 31, 2002, Dean declared himself a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination in the 2004 U.S. presidential election cycle. Though he began his bid as a "long shot" candidate, his campaign's unconventional embrace of the Internet propelled his candidacy forward. By autumn of 2003, Dean had become the undisputed frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, outpacing his rivals in fundraising (mainly from individual contributions on his website) and performing strongly in most polls.
Dean began his campaign by emphasizing health care and fiscal responsibility. However, his opposition to the U.S. plan to invade Iraq (and his forceful criticism of Democrats in Congress who voted to authorize the use of force) quickly eclipsed other issues, resonating with disillusioned Democrats and using momentum from the burgeoning anti-war movement to build an impressive online campaign. Early on in the campaign, Dean repeatedly contrasted his positions with those of other Democratic candidates by claiming that he came from "the democratic wing of the Democratic Party" (implying that the other candidates' positions barely differed from those of their Republican opposition). The phrase was first used by the late Senator Paul Wellstone.
Much discussion and criticism focused on Dean's perceived electability. Critics (including fellow candidate Joseph Lieberman and the centrist Democratic Leadership Council) claimed that Dean's positions appeared too liberal and his rhetoric too strident to appeal to moderate voters in the general election. Dean and his supporters responded by arguing that the Democrats will never win with "Bush light," and that the party needed a candidate who would stand up to George W. Bush and energize the Democratic base. (Some pundits have cited national polls showing a unusually polarized electorate going into 2004, suggesting that voter turnout will be particularly important.)
The media began in 2003 to more closely scrutinize Dean's record as governor of Vermont, which appeared arguably more moderate than his new national profile: "Dean's emerging national reputation as a liberal tribune [...] obscures the centrist course he steered during his tenure as governor of Vermont" (Washington Post, Aug. 3 2003). As Dean told Salon.com: "I don't mind being characterized as 'liberal'—I just don't happen to think it's true."
Some, most notably fellow candidate Dennis Kucinich, attacked Dean from the left, challenging his credentials as an anti-war candidate due to his refusal to support the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and cuts to the Pentagon budget. Kucinich further criticized Dean for his failure to support a universal single-payer health care system (which Dean rejected as politically impossible).
Dean received the endorsement of Al Gore, former United States Vice-President and 2000 presidential candidate, on December 9, 2003. In the following weeks Dean was endorsed by former U.S. senators Bill Bradley and Carol Moseley Braun, unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidates from the 2000 and 2004 primaries, respectively.
On January 19, 2004, Dean's campaign suffered a blow when a last-minute surge by rival John Kerry led to an embarrassing defeat for Dean in the Iowa caucuses, representing the first votes cast in primary season. Dean had been a strong contender for weeks in advance in that state, battling with Dick Gephardt for first place in the polls. To the surprise of the Dean and Gephardt campaigns, Dean finished third in Iowa behind John Kerry and John Edwards (Gephardt finished fourth).
At a post-caucus rally in Iowa, Dean gave an animated speech intended to cheer up those in attendance. However, many in the television audience criticized the speech as loud, peculiar, and unpresidential. [1] [1] In particular, this quote from the speech was aired repeatedly in the days following the caucus:
On January 27 Dean again suffered a defeat, finishing second to Kerry in the New Hampshire primary. As late as one week before the first votes were cast in Iowa's caucuses, Dean had enjoyed a 30% lead in New Hampshire; accordingly, this loss represented another major setback to his campaign.
Iowa and New Hampshire were only the first in a string of embarrassing losses for the Dean campaign, culminating in a disappointing third place showing in the Wisconsin primary on February 17, 2004. The next day, Dean announced that his candidacy had "come to an end," though he continued to urge people to vote for him, and he later won the Vermont primaries on Super Tuesday, March 2, 2004.
While his presidential bid ultimately ended in failure, his supporters felt it was not a lost cause, serving to frame the White House race by tapping in to voters' concerns about the war in Iraq, in the process energizing Democrats and sharpening criticism of incumbent George W. Bush. At present, many political pundits affirm that Dean's contribution was "cathartic" for the party.
In the "invisible primary" of raising campaign dollars, Howard Dean led the Democratic pack in the early stages of the 2004 campaign. Among the candidates, he ranked first in total raised ($25.4 million as of September 30, 2003) and first in cash-on-hand ($12.4 million). However, even this performance paled to next to that of George W. Bush, who by that date had raised $84.6 million for a primary campaign in which he had no real challenger.
Many commented on the Dean campaign's unprecedented success with fund-raising over the Internet. While presidential campaigns have traditionally obtained finance by tapping wealthy, established political donors, Dean's funds came largely in small donations over the Internet; the average overall donation size was just under $80. This method of fundraising for the campaign offers several important advantages. First, next to virtually any other method of fundraising (events, telemarketing, direct mail), raising money on the Internet costs virtually nothing, netting a greater amount. Second, because donors on average contribute far less than the legal limit ($2,000 per individual), the campaign can continue to resolicit them throughout the election season - which importantly improves mindshare: the more times people contribute, the more investment they feel they have... and not just financially.
In November 2003, after a much-publicized online vote among his followers, Dean became the first Democrat to forgo federal matching funds (and the spending limits that go with them) since the system became established in 1974. (John Kerry has since followed his lead.) In addition to state-by-state spending limits for the primaries, the system limits a candidate to spending only $44.6 million until the Democratic National Convention in July, which sum would almost certainly run out soon after the early primary season. (George W. Bush declined federal matching funds in 2000 and has done so again for the 2004 campaign.)
In a sign that the Dean campaign was starting to think beyond the primaries, they began in late 2003 to speak of a "$100 revolution" in which 2 million Americans would give $100 in order to compete with Bush.
Following Dean's withdraw after the Wisconsin primary, he pledged to support the eventual Democratic nominee. Though many supporters encouraged him to the only remaining "non establishment candidate", John Edwards, he remained neutral until John Kerry became the presumptive nominee. Dean endorsed Kerry on March 25, 2004.
On March 18, 2004, Dean founded the group Democracy for America. This group was created to house the large, internet-based organization Dean created for his presidential campaign. Its goal is to help like-minded Democrats get elected to office, though some suggest it is merely a front for a 2008 presidential bid.
Dean has strongly urged his left-leaning, maverick supporters to support Kerry as opposed to Ralph Nader arguing that a vote for Nader will only help to re-elect Bush.
Personal background
Early political career
Campaign for Democratic nomination
"Not only are we going to New Hampshire, Tom Harkin, we're going to South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico, and we're going to California and Texas and New York...And we're going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan. And then we're going to Washington, D.C., to take back the White House! Yeeeaah!!!"
Dean conceded that the speech did not project the best image, jokingly referring to it as a "crazy, red-faced rant" on The Late Show with David Letterman. In an interview later that week with Diane Sawyer, he said he was "a little sheepish, ... but I'm not apologetic". [1] Sawyer and many others in the national broadcast news media later expressed some regret about overplaying the story, especially after comparing the broadcast feed of the speech (which failed to capture the crowd noise because Dean used a noise-cancelling microphone) to recordings from within the crowd. From the latter recordings, it becomes clear that Dean was struggling to be heard. [1]Campaign timeline
Fundraising
Post Campaign & Democracy for America
Views
Dean says: "I will support affirmative action, from which we have all benefited, because it has strengthened our institutions and provided opportunity. I will work to ensure that racial profiling ends and I will direct my Attorney General to use regulatory authority under existing anti-discrimination laws the 1964 Civil Rights Act to define racial profiling as discrimination, and to withhold federal funds from state and local law enforcement that violate those regulations. I will appoint an Attorney General who sees our constitution not just as a document to be manipulated, ignored, and violated, but who recognizes and respects it as the fabric that binds the American community together. I will oppose expansion of the Patriot Act, efforts to remove sunset clauses included in the act, and I will seek to repeal the portions of the Patriot Act that are unconstitutional. I will put the weight of my office behind the Innocence Protection Act, proposed by Senator Patrick Leahy, which would expand access to DNA testing and strengthen the quality of lawyers for defendants facing the death penalty. I will protect the civil rights of immigrants detained by the Department of Homeland Security. I will work for federal legislation to restore the right to vote in any federal election for ex-felons who have paid their debt to society."
Quotes
"We are the great grassroots campaign of the modern era,
built from mousepads, shoe leather and hope."
"I've resisted pronouncing a sentence before guilt is found. I still have this old-fashioned notion that even with people like Osama, who is very likely to be found guilty, we should do our best not to, in positions of executive power, not to prejudge jury trials."
"As governor, I came to believe that the death penalty would be a just punishment for certain, especially heinous crimes, such as the murder of a child or the murder of a police officer. The events of September 11 convinced me that terrorists also deserve the ultimate punishment." --Howard Dean, Dec 2003
"Some would argue, you know, in some of the books of the New Testament, the ending of the Book of Job is different. I think, if I'm not mistaken, there's one book where there's a more optimistic ending, which we believe was tacked on later."
External links