As early readers of the Penny Ante may recall, last summer I wrote a number of postings on the formerly red-hot campaign of Howard Dean. One of the highlights of this last summer was going to see Dean, along with 10,000 other good Seattleites, give a campaign rally/political throw down at the downtown Westlake Center where I stood about fifteen yards from the stage. At the time, I’d been touting his candidacy since February, when I heard him on the radio give a fiery speech at a Democratic National Committee event where several of the other candidates were present, including John Kerry and John Edwards. This was not too long after the Iraq war resolution was passed, and the people in attendance greeted the two senators with boos after they explained why they had voted in favor of the Iraq war resolution. And then Dean, then an unknown former Vermont governor who inexplicably thought he could be president, gave a speech that was absolutely electric and floored the crowd in attendance. I told a number of friends, “Look for a buzz to start on Howard Dean.”

We’ve seen his anonymity turn to buzz turn to grassroots phenomenon turn to front runner turn to whipping boy to media caricature turn to ruin, all within a lifespan that cycled at electrifying speed. Think of this: A month ago, Dean had a 30 percentage point lead over John Kerry in pre-primary New Hampshire polling. A couple weeks later, he finishes down by 13%. That’s a swing of 43 percent.

All of the political pundits have been writing analytical pieces on why the Dean campaign momentum disintegrated when, if you had asked most of them two months ago, he should have been coronated the Democratic party nominee by now. They point to the gaffes and angriness that has become the caricatured common perception of Dean. But when you give an honest reckoning of those things, they just don’t hold water, especially not to the extent necessary to destroy a campaign. This was character assassination by the media, pure and simple. They might have felt the right; positive coverage of the guy I’m sure swelled his polling numbers during last summer. However, this was simply tearing down a guy who’d been on top for too long; schadenfreud at his demise. The media givith and the media taketh away.

Two months ago I stated to a friend that Dean had a lock on the nomination. What evidence was there to the contrary? More money, bigger polling percentages, plus after plus after plus. No skeletons in the closet. And unlike Kerry, the aloof, big haired Senator from Massachusetts, I thought that a frank talking centrist doctor and with executive level experience as governor, not to mention alpha male good looks, would appeal to voters outside of the nose-ring and gray pony tail crowd that was his supposed base. Maybe its because I’m in Seattle, but when I stood with those 10,000 other people at Westlake Center, a hell of a lot of those people were soccer moms and baseball coach dads. And they loved it. I overheard one, “I think we can really do it.”

The weird paradox at this point in the primaries is that the centrist, plain speaking doctor from Vermont with the adorable, family practice physician wife has been dismissed as a wacko, gay-lovin’, nose-ring coddling, unelectable screamer. And the aloof Senator from Massachusetts, who has a far greater liberal streak than Dean (but has also been prone to the shifty positioning of politicians – PATRIOT Act anyone?), with the long face, big hair, and boring speeches, and who also shares a bed with a loony bird wife who’s the heir to a $500 million ketchup fortune in Theresa Heinz-Kerry. John Kerry, populist hero, go figure. I guess skippering a gun boat in Vietnam buys you a lot of branding power.

I don’t have anything against John Kerry. I’ll vote for him if he’s the Democratic party nominee. Besides, I like that outrageous head of hair he has and the fact that The Beatle’s “Abbey Road” is his all-time favorite album. Plus, he’s admitted to smoking weed. But the guy is stiff, aloof, arrogant, boring, and shifts positions on the issues like a true career politician. John Kerry’s current image is the creation of what I call “image bites”, which is like a sound bite but instead of short phrases of words it is shorts snapshots of images. The Viet Nam war hero, founder of Vietnam Vets Against the War, U.S. senator. All these things add up to populist hero, and that equals electability. Let’s not forget he’s the tallest candidate as well. But let’s call a spade a spade: if he didn’t have Nam front and center on his resume, what would we know about him? What has he accomplished? What does he stand for? People talk about his foreign policy experience, by which I’m assuming they mean he fought in the Nam and then became a senator. But let’s be clear on John Kerry: Pro Iraq war, pro PATRIOT act, pro No Child Left Behind, pro Bush tax cut and he’s accepted more special interest money from lobbyists than any other senator, Republican or Democrat, in the last 20 years. Just remember that none of these candidates had a set of balls before Dean demonstrated that in order to raise money you needed a pair in the current political environment. The fact that the Democratic Party has any momentum at all is directly attributable to Dean, and he deserves a lot more respect than he’s been given.

I think the true casualty of the Dean disintegration will be the reluctance of people to join grassroots campaigns around candidates. After watching Dean, who raised $40 million in campaign contributions from hundreds of thousands of followers, who’s candidacy was disintegrated by the national media replaying his Iowa concession speech over and over, I don’t know if I’d want to spend my time in such a way. I gave money to the Dean campaign again this morning, and I don’t feel it was wasted. I just wish people would’ve stopped and actually listened to the man before central casting assigned him the role of the angry latte sipper that would only be good for embarrassing the party come November. On the online webmagazine Slate.com, one of the columnists, Mickey Kaus, said that if Kerry becomes the nominee of the Democratic party, then there will be the biggest case of consumer regret in the history of modern politics. While that might be hyperbole, when the Republican party starts their “education of the public” regarding Kerry, he’d better hope that Viet Nam carries the day for him, because that’s the only trump card that he holds.

The American people want platitudes. They don’t want to hear that you have to roll back a tax cut if you want to pay for reconstructing Iraq. They don’t want someone who speaks frankly. Well guess what, none of the platitudes are going to come true. They never do. All we can hope is that the Democrats put someone in office that stops the bleeding. These are times that require confrontation, not platitudes, because the Republican party doesn’t play nice.

Washingtonians have their caucus this Saturday morning. Hopefully they’ll give Howard Dean at least one win for his campaign. For what he did for the party he deserves at least that. America is asleep at the wheel. Maybe this car has to crash in order for us to wake up. If that happens I want to be able to say, “Don’t blame me. I’m from Washington.”