This is from May 22, 2005.

Video - Howard Dean On Meet The Press - Parts 1-6

Audio - Howard Dean On Meet The Press - Parts 1-6

A nice little piece that tells us a lot of what we already know about Howard Dean's Internet-savvy campaign. I'll never get tired of reading about it :-)

How the Internet Invented Howard Dean
Forget fundraising (though his opponents sure can't). The real reason the Doctor is in: He listens to the technology - and the people who use it.
By Gary Wolf for Wired.

Neither policy nor pragmatism alone drove MoveOn to Dean; his key advantage was that his bloggers were already deeply interlinked with bloggers friendly to MoveOn. Dean's network made it easy for his supporters to vote in the MoveOn poll, while offering MoveOn members an opportunity to influence the Democratic race, even if their own state's primary was irrelevant. Participation, not policy, was key.

Joi Ito, founder of Neoteny, a venture firm, and former chair of Infoseek Japan, has joined a group of technologists advising Dean (others include Ross Mayfield, Clay Shirky, and Lawrence Lessig, also a regular contributor to Wired). After looking at a paper Ito and some of his colleagues have been working on called "Emergent Democracy," I contact him to ask if he thinks there's a difference between an emergent leader and an old-fashioned political opportunist. What does it take to lead a smart mob? Ito emails back an odd metaphor: "You're not a leader, you're a place. You're like a park or a garden. If it's comfortable and cool, people are attracted. Deanspace is not really about Dean. It's about us."

Here is the full text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.01/dean.html

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How the Internet Invented Howard Dean

Forget fundraising (though his opponents sure can't). The real reason the Doctor is in: He listens to the technology - and the people who use it.

By Gary Wolf

It is 83 days before the Iowa caucuses, and I'm sitting at a small table on a private jet above Colorado getting a pure dose of Internet religion from Howard Dean. "The Internet community is wondering what its place in the world of politics is," Dean says. "Along comes this campaign to take back the country for ordinary human beings, and the best way you can do that is through the Net. We listen. We pay attention. If I give a speech and the blog people don't like it, next time I change the speech."

The biggest news of the political season has been the tale of this small-state governor who, with the help of Meetup.com and hundreds of bloggers, has elbowed his way into serious contention for his party's presidential nomination. As every alert citizen knows, Dean has used the Net to raise more money than any other Democratic candidate. He's also used it to organize thousands of volunteers who go door-to-door, write personal letters to likely voters, host meetings, and distribute flyers.

Naturally, bloggers everywhere are thrilled. Even those who hate the candidate love the way the campaign is being managed. "I'd vote for SpongeBob SquarePants over Howard Dean," writes Derek James in his political blog, Thinking as a Hobby. But Dean's organization, James admits, is being run "in a very smart, very democratic way." Bloggers are fascinated by Dean for philosophical and also parochial reasons. They feel they have a right to be proud. Dean has become the front-runner by applying their most cherished rules for attracting attention and building a social network on the Internet.

"We fell into this by accident," Dean admits. "I wish I could tell you we were smart enough to figure this out. But the community taught us. They seized the initiative through Meetup. They built our organization for us before we had an organization."

Meetup is a Web tool for forming social groups. In early 2003, Dean himself was lured to an early New York City meetup where he found more than 300 enthusiastic supporters waiting to greet him. Meetup quickly became the engine of Dean's Internet campaign. Back then, the leading group on the site was a club for witches. Zephyr Teachout, Dean's director of Internet outreach, describes sitting across from campaign manager Joe Trippi in the early weeks and hitting Refresh again and again on her Web browser. "I was obsessed with beating Witches," she says. "Witches had 15,000 members, and we had 3,000. I wanted first place."

Three thousand is a small number. But all campaigns depend on a feedback loop, and 3,000 passionate supporters who are connected via the Internet are influential in a way that an equivalent crowd would never be if you had to gather it via direct mail or a telephone survey. Dean's Meetup members quickly recruited others, and by late March Dean had beaten Witches. Growth followed an exponential curve; Dean's new supporters contributed money, his piles of money won respect from the media, and media attention pushed Meetup numbers higher. Most of the Democratic candidates who polled in the low single digits a year ago still poll in the low single digits. They never gained momentum. Dean's early use of Meetup lowered the feedback threshold, just as a good supply of kindling makes it easier to light a fire. In the third quarter of 2003, Dean raised nearly $15 million - most of it in small donations - setting a one-quarter record for a Democratic candidate in a presidential race.

By mid-November, the Howard Dean group on Meetup would have more than 140,000 members, though Meetup would matter less. After demonstrating his fundraising prowess, Dean bagged endorsements from two of the country's most powerful labor groups, the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.

But for today, the Internet remains the key engine of Dean's election bid and he has yet to merge his grassroots movement with the traditional Democratic power structure. I'm here to learn more about what makes his Net campaign work.

I like Dean's pugnacity, his antiwar stance, and the way he is challenging the timorous leaders of his party. A couple of months ago, before I took this assignment for Wired, I sent him a hundred bucks over the Web. But the Contribute button on Dean's Web page hardly accounts for his dominance. One key to his online popularity is the harmony between his message and the self-image of the Internet community. "A lot of the people on the Net have given up on traditional politics precisely because it was about television and the ballot box, and they had no way to shout back," he says. "What we've given people is a way to shout back, and we listen - they don't even have to shout anymore."

Dean has been reluctant to take a position on core Net issues like copyright law and peer-to-peer file-sharing. But that didn't matter. The power of Dean's campaign does not come from his appeal to Net users as an interest group but from a fateful concurrence of other forces: a strong antiwar message; a vivid, individualist candidate; a lucky head start with Meetup; an Internet-savvy campaign manager in Joe Trippi; and, most important, a willingness to let a decentralized network of supporters play a tactical role. With these assets, Dean gained a potent lead. The very structure of the networks his campaign has built - a structure that enhances the power of feedback - creates obstacles even for a rival flexible enough to challenge Dean on his own ground.

The intersection of political analysis and Internet theory is a busy crossroad of cliché, where familiar rhetorical vehicles - decentralized authority, emergent leadership, empowered grass roots - create a ceaseless buzz. But the Dean organization has embraced this language of Web politics passionately. Below, I've used five popular Internet axioms to give a snapshot of his campaign during the heady days when it first pulled into the lead.

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Make the network stupid.

The Dean campaign is a network rather than an army, and that is one of its strengths. But it's a stupid network, and that's also a strength. Stupid is meant in the technical sense, defined by David Isenberg in his classic telephony paper, "The Rise of the Stupid Network." Isenberg advanced the principle that under conditions of uncertainty, a network should not be optimized for any set of uses presumed to be definitive. Instead, the network should be as simple as possible, with advanced functionality and intelligence moved out to its edges. For the Dean campaign, this means that hundreds of independent groups are organizing with very little direction from headquarters.

In February 2003, there were 11 Dean meetings around the country organized through Meetup.com. By late fall, there were more than 800 monthly meetings on the calendar. At first, meetups were loosely tracked through intermittent emails to a list of known organizers. But as long as responsibility for tracking organizers fell to Dean's paid staff in Burlington, Vermont, there was a problem. "We were inadvertently allowing bottlenecks in the network through some power-hungry coordinators who thought they were the only ones who could have contact with the campaign," says Michael Silberman, Dean's national Meetup coordinator. "We added or removed coordinators only through email or phone, and there's a limit to our human ability to manage the growth of such a large network."

In October, the campaign switched to an automated, Web-based system that keeps the selection and management of meetup coordinators out of the hands of the campaign. Supporters can nominate themselves to coordinate a meetup. Responsibility for success of the meetup rests with the individual organizers. Many regions have more than one meetup, so there is the possibility of competition and splitting, but this tension brings advantages. The Dean network relies on the good sense of the users to select a meetup that is working well. Organizers have a monthly conference call with Trippi and receive sample agendas and organizing materials. Ultimately, what happens is up to them.

"In the old telephone company, central planning was needed before the network could grow," says Isenberg, when I call to talk to him about the campaign. "If you are willing to let things happen from the bottom up, you can scale without doing all that planning."

Let the ants do the work.

In the past, early enthusiasm in western states was meaningless to a primary candidate except as a source of donations. The first contests were on the other side of the country, where face-to-face politics and idiosyncratic issues (such as the value of ethanol as a gasoline additive) played an absurdly outsize role. No campaign dedicated to winning Iowa could waste time building an organization elsewhere. But today, Dean supporters build their own nodes.

"We consider it our job to deliver Marin County for Dean," says Katy Butler, a volunteer I talk with at a Seniors for Dean meeting in San Francisco. Under normal circumstances, this would be a worthless contribution. Small, rich, liberal Marin County could hardly matter less. But because the entire Dean system is densely linked, the distant work of all the local groups feeds back into the campaign. Local letters to the editor are copied and sent around by email, graphics and videos are shared among groups, and technical assistance is distributed. A local and national volunteer infrastructure arises with almost no help or supervision.

"It's the swarm that drives the story, not the queen ant," says Steven Johnson, author of Emergence. For months, local meetups, including the regular Dean meetups in Marin, have been composing handwritten letters to Iowa Democrats, asking them to support Dean.

This past summer, polls showed Dean behind Dick Gephardt in Iowa. After 30,000 handwritten letters went out from the July 2 meetups, Dean surged, and by August the polls had him tied with Gephardt or pulling into the lead. In New Hampshire in midsummer, Dean was behind Kerry. At the August 6 meetups, tens of thousands of letters were mailed to New Hampshire. By the end of the month, Dean was in first place with a double-digit lead he has maintained ever since. By taking a set of widely dispersed supporters and converting them into a swarm of personal advocates, Dean's campaign almost instantly changed the dynamics of the race in the earliest states.

Leaders are places.

The first political swarm of Democratic politics was not the Dean campaign but MoveOn.org, whose 2 million members donate money to run advertisements against the Bush administration and engage in massive telephone and petition campaigns. Last summer, MoveOn held an online vote to determine which Democratic candidate, if any, the organization would support. About 317,000 votes were cast. Because no candidate won more than 50 percent of the vote, MoveOn did not make an endorsement. But Dean was the big winner, taking about 44 percent, nearly twice as much as the runner-up, Dennis Kucinich.

The high number for Kucinich, who barely registered in national polls, confirmed what any observer of MoveOn already knew - its supporters were well to the left of the party's mainstream. Nonetheless, Dean - who is pro-gun, pro-death penalty, far more economically conservative than Kucinich, and argues for keeping US troops in Iraq - beat him by 2 to 1. Was this because Dean was believed to be more electable? Unlikely. The Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist group, was loudly proclaiming that Dean's nomination would lead to a debacle.

Neither policy nor pragmatism alone drove MoveOn to Dean; his key advantage was that his bloggers were already deeply interlinked with bloggers friendly to MoveOn. Dean's network made it easy for his supporters to vote in the MoveOn poll, while offering MoveOn members an opportunity to influence the Democratic race, even if their own state's primary was irrelevant. Participation, not policy, was key.

Joi Ito, founder of Neoteny, a venture firm, and former chair of Infoseek Japan, has joined a group of technologists advising Dean (others include Ross Mayfield, Clay Shirky, and Lawrence Lessig, also a regular contributor to Wired). After looking at a paper Ito and some of his colleagues have been working on called "Emergent Democracy," I contact him to ask if he thinks there's a difference between an emergent leader and an old-fashioned political opportunist. What does it take to lead a smart mob? Ito emails back an odd metaphor: "You're not a leader, you're a place. You're like a park or a garden. If it's comfortable and cool, people are attracted. Deanspace is not really about Dean. It's about us."

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Links attract links.

Throughout the fall, the number of people signed up for Dean meetups has been more than three times as large as the number of people signed up for Clark meetups. The Wesley Clark list is almost three times as large as the Kerry list. The Kerry list is almost 30 times as large as the Gephardt list. In Linked: The New Science of Networks, the physicist Albert-László Barabási describes the factors that influence the size of competing nodes in a network. His research shows why Dean's Internet lead has been so hard to overcome.

Barabási gives a formal model for what everybody already knows: Popularity breeds more popularity; links are made most quickly to Web sites that have the most links. One of the major factors determining who will win in a race for links, therefore, is time. The first sites gain an early lead, and the lead tends to grow. But, of course, late arrivals sometimes take command. This is because time is not the only factor. The other factor is what Barabási calls "fitness."

Defining fitness is an abstract exercise in Barabási's work, because he is a physicist attempting to give a general description of network behavior in all its forms. In the earliest stage of the Democratic primary runup, however, fitness can be specified more concretely. Fitness at the beginning of this campaign was closely linked to a candidate's antiwar stance. Dean was first to the Web, while sharing the best fitness position with a number of candidates from the party's left wing.

The most important thing to notice about Barabási's model is that the advantage of arriving early and offering adequate or superior fitness increases exponentially over time. This means we would not expect to find lots of competing sites clustering closely around the leader. Instead, the graph has a steep curve. This is exactly what we see when we look at the relative size of the online campaigns, whether measured by links, traffic, or Meetup numbers.

Allow the ends to connect.

Local Dean groups are not obsessed with passing their messages to the candidate. They are busy talking among themselves. "The goal is not necessarily to have messages flowing up and down," says David Weinberger, a consultant for the campaign and author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined. "Democracy is supposed to be about people talking with each other about what matters to them."

In terms of real political power, the end-to-end architecture has complex implications. Tactically, the local Dean groups are very powerful. "Ideas from the grass roots don't have to go back up to headquarters to be adopted," says Weinberger. "The Dean campaign instead gives you the tools to instantiate your ideas without involving headquarters." But since none of the grassroots groups are officially tied to the campaign, there is no guarantee of influence over policy. Dean is free to ignore the political wishes of any of these groups, and he often does. In many conversations with Dean supporters, I find them arguing against his positions on guns, on the death penalty, on trade. But other, more important factors bind them strongly. They admire Dean personally, they despise the current administration, and they love the structure of the campaign, which brings them together, gives them an opportunity for political conversation, and offers them the pleasure of collaborative work.

On Halloween, I attend a series of Dean meetings with Zephyr Teachout and Ryan Davis, another young Dean staffer, who have just embarked on a cross-country trip in a rickety Airstream they picked up somewhere in Los Angeles. (The Airstream, puking green fluid, will die two days later in Nevada, and the two of them will continue by rental car.) Their goal is to observe local groups and exchange ideas.

I meet them at their first stop, a café near UC Davis. The students are planning to set up a Dean table at the local farmers market, among other outreach events. The goal is not merely to win votes, but to "sign people up." They are building a database. They're recruiting volunteers. And they will be back for money. Teachout urges the students to consider coming to Iowa for the last weeks before the caucuses. In 1988, Gephardt set a record by bringing 500 volunteers to Iowa, according to Trippi, who managed Gephardt's campaign that year. The Dean campaign wants to bring 5,000.

The day turns into an endless series of encounters with Dean enthusiasts, and what interests me most is to see at meeting after meeting the speech-making function of the candidate distributed among the participants. The speakers are often diffuse and sometimes sentimental; nonetheless, these are hot political speeches, not support group-style confessions or narrowly personal tales. Accustomed as a I am to the low style of television and talk radio, to the mumbling of recalled California governor Gray Davis and the swaggering of recently installed governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, I am stunned to hear such high-quality mini-rants in the living rooms and restaurants where random Dean supporters have gathered for mutual encouragement and tactical coordination. These are the Dean blogs come to life.

In Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam argues that the decline of civic participation is related to the general collapse of group activities. Instead of going out with friends, people are isolated in their homes. One of the readers of Bowling Alone was Scott Heiferman, who in response to reading the book founded Meetup.com. Out of Meetup came Deanspace. Out of Deanspace, a political movement that eerily recalls the cracker-barrel debates and the torchlight parades that characterized presidential campaigns of the distant past. Before television, politics was a type of active recreation. On the foundation of a new technology, Dean has revived an outdated form.

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The Howard Dean Reading List
How a bunch of books about social networking rebooted the Democratic system.

Out Of Control by Kevin Kelly
KEY POINT: The most powerful information systems of the future will be grown, not made.
DEAN TAKEAWAY: Turn every supporter into a potential organizer. "Grow" the grass roots.

The Cluetrain Manifesto by Chris Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger
KEY POINT: The Net undermines respect for authority.
DEAN TAKEAWAY: Participate: Blog daily, link to indie blogs, and allow open comments; reflect the tone of the community.

Emergence by Steven Johnson
KEY POINT: Our media and political movements will be shaped by bottom-up forces, not top-down ones.
DEAN TAKEAWAY: Let the ants do the work, not the queen; allow local groups to function independently.

Small Pieces Loosely Joined by David Weinberger
KEY POINT: The loose structure of the Web encourages social experimentation and is a balm for alienation.
DEAN TAKEAWAY: Encourage face-to-face contact.

Smart Mobs by Howard Rheingold
KEY POINT: Mobile mobs linked by electronic devices could change history by intervening in politics spontaneously.
DEAN TAKEAWAY: Hold events, such as Dean Visibility Days, where the mass of supporters suddenly come together.

Linked by Albert-László Barabási
KEY POINT: Essential aspects of networks - e.g., the advantage gained by pioneers - are the product of general laws.
DEAN TAKEAWAY: Be first to adopt and invent community tools. The risk is worth the chance of grabbing an early lead.

Managing The Swarm
Joe Trippi keeps the Dean machine in sync with the networked world.
By Gary Wolf

What does a campaign manager matter? Howard Dean fans found each other through Meetup.com and raised his banner on round-the-clock blogs - and the network did the rest. But in fact, Joe Trippi's management of the Web campaign has been obsessive and brilliant. He has hired a staff of seemingly sleepless bloggers whose engaging voices on Dean's Web site set the tone for a larger network that includes independent bloggers, Meetup members, and supporters who comment regularly on the campaign site. He participates in a series of conference calls with all the Meetup organizers, he controls the timing and goals of the major fundraising pushes, and he uses his blogs' Comments feature to provide instant, focus group-style feedback. Most important, Trippi makes sure the structure and the rhetoric of the Dean campaign are aligned with the self-image of the most active segments of the Internet community. When Dean talks about a decentralized, networked, bottom-up democracy, he is aiming these words directly at an Internet constituency Trippi knows very well.

Trippi isn't a political outsider. He worked for Edward Kennedy in 1980, Walter Mondale in 1984, and Gary Hart, then Dick Gephardt in the 1988 campaign. His Washington, DC-based political consultancy, Trippi, McMahon & Squier, is well-known in party circles and handled the media for several of Dean's Vermont gubernatorial campaigns. But Trippi spent his college years as an aeronautics student at San Jose State, and he never completely left Silicon Valley behind. During the boom years, he worked as a consultant for Prodigy Linux Systems. He remains on the board of advisers of Smartpaper, a startup that owns a string of cheesy patents for an odd, pamphlet-shaped media controller, and he is the CTO of Catapult Strategies, a PR and lobbying firm that represents a number of Valley clients.

Also during the boom, Trippi was active on Raging Bull, a rowdy message board for small-time speculators, where his nickname was random1. Trippi's favorite stock of that era: Wave Systems. He says he learned a lot about the "stickiness" of an online community from the Wave enthusiasts. Wave's share price ran all the way up to $50 before bottoming out at 75 cents after the crash. (It now floats between $2 and $3.) Many of the small-time Wave investors stuck with their stock all the way down.

Talk about a surprising turn of events. The remains still have to undergo extensive testing, but he evidence recovered so far appears to be authentic.

Remains of Dean's Long-Missing Brother Found
By Jodi Wilgoren and Michael Slackman for the New York Times.

The Pentagon will not try to make an official identification until after the remains are flown to a forensic laboratory in Hawaii next week, but personal items found with the bodies — shoes, a sock and a P.O.W.-M.I.A. bracelet with the name of a Texan, all similar to those worn by the 23-year-old Charles Dean — strongly suggest the crude grave was his. Remains believed to belong to his traveling companion, Neil Sharman of Australia, were also recovered at the site.

Charles Dean is one of 1,875 Americans, including 35 civilians, still missing in connection with the Vietnam War...

Charlie, 16 months his junior, slept above Dr. Dean in bunk beds, and often led the four Dean brothers in building forts outside their East Hampton country house. Dr. Dean has said that if he were alive, Charlie would be running for president, with him as campaign manager.

Some have suspected that Charlie was working as a spy, but others believe he was simply a wayward tourist.

After graduating from the University of North Carolina, Charlie Dean set off for a yearlong adventure around the world, spending months in Australia and Japan before heading to Laos with Mr. Sharman. Colonel O'Hara said the two young men left Vientiane, the Laotian capital, in September 1974, and planned to take a ferry across the river to Thailand, but "never showed up where they were going to."

On the plane on Tuesday afternoon, Dr. Dean recounted how he learned that his brother had been captured by Communist rebels, the Pathet Lao. The call came in October 1974, as he was heading for a test at Columbia University, where he was taking classes to prepare for medical school.

Dr. Dean said the family later learned that Charlie had spent time in a prison camp, even growing some food in a garden, before being taken off in a truck on Dec. 14.

Here is the full text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/19/politics/19DEAN.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Remains of Dean's Long-Missing Brother Found
By Jodi Wilgoren and Michael Slackman
New York Times

Wednesday 19 November 2003

BEDFORD, N.H., Nov. 18 — Every day on the campaign trail, Howard Dean wears an unfashionable black belt that belonged to his younger brother Charlie, a silent memorial to the man who vanished while traveling the Mekong River 29 years ago.

On Tuesday, Dr. Dean, who rarely mentions his family on the stump, interrupted his schedule to announce that a search team had found his brother's remains buried in a rice paddy in central Laos.

"This has been a long and very difficult journey for my mother and for my brothers Jim, Bill and myself," Dr. Dean, the former governor of Vermont, said after a Democratic presidential candidates' forum at a hotel here. "We greet this news with mixed emotions, but we're gratified and grateful that we're now approaching closure on this very difficult episode in our lives."

The Pentagon will not try to make an official identification until after the remains are flown to a forensic laboratory in Hawaii next week, but personal items found with the bodies — shoes, a sock and a P.O.W.-M.I.A. bracelet with the name of a Texan, all similar to those worn by the 23-year-old Charles Dean — strongly suggest the crude grave was his. Remains believed to belong to his traveling companion, Neil Sharman of Australia, were also recovered at the site.

Charles Dean is one of 1,875 Americans, including 35 civilians, still missing in connection with the Vietnam War.

Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara, a spokesman for the Joint P.O.W./M.I.A. Accounting Command of the Defense Department, said the remains were found on Nov. 8, and that James Dean, a brother of the candidate, was told on Thursday.

Dr. Dean said he and his two brothers shared the news with their mother on Monday night at a fund-raiser in Washington marking his 55th birthday. The brief, stoic announcement on Tuesday was scheduled only after wire services picked up on Australian news reports about the recovery.

Last year, Dr. Dean, who sought grief counseling in the 1980's after suffering anxiety attacks, made a pilgrimage to Southeast Asia to look into his brother's mysterious 1974 disappearance and witness the military's recovery operations.

Dr. Dean has worn the black leather belt with the large, silver-rimmed holes for at least 20 years, and counts his brother's death as a watershed that made him more serious about his own future.

"When you go through something like this, you have a tremendous sense of survivor guilt and anger at the person who disappears and then guilt over the anger —it's very complicated," Dr. Dean said aboard his campaign plane as he flew with reporters from here to Houston for a speech and fund-raiser. "It didn't interfere with my life or my work, but it was disquieting. I went into therapy and we sort of peeled back the onion."

Dr. Dean said his 2002 trip, which included a meeting with the Laotian defense minister, a helicopter tour of the area and visits to five sites where archaeologists searched for remains, was a cathartic experience.

"I've been on the lines, I've helped sift the dirt — teeth would show up every once in a while," he said in an interview before the discovery. "I know what the government did to try to get evidence of what happened to these folks, and believe me, I don't think they left any stone unturned."

Charlie, 16 months his junior, slept above Dr. Dean in bunk beds, and often led the four Dean brothers in building forts outside their East Hampton country house. Dr. Dean has said that if he were alive, Charlie would be running for president, with him as campaign manager.

Some have suspected that Charlie was working as a spy, but others believe he was simply a wayward tourist.

After graduating from the University of North Carolina, Charlie Dean set off for a yearlong adventure around the world, spending months in Australia and Japan before heading to Laos with Mr. Sharman. Colonel O'Hara said the two young men left Vientiane, the Laotian capital, in September 1974, and planned to take a ferry across the river to Thailand, but "never showed up where they were going to."

On the plane on Tuesday afternoon, Dr. Dean recounted how he learned that his brother had been captured by Communist rebels, the Pathet Lao. The call came in October 1974, as he was heading for a test at Columbia University, where he was taking classes to prepare for medical school.

Dr. Dean said the family later learned that Charlie had spent time in a prison camp, even growing some food in a garden, before being taken off in a truck on Dec. 14.

Both of Dr. Dean's parents went to Laos to search, but found nothing. An unsigned letter informed the family of Charlie's death in 1975, Dr. Dean said.

"I met the witness who saw my brother's body and Neil's," Dr. Dean said on Tuesday, recalling his visit in 2002 to the 150-yard plot in Bolikhamxai (pronounced BOH-lee-kum-sigh) province, where the remains were found. "I got him away from his minder. He said the North Vietnamese killed him, but of course you don't know."

The campaign does not plan to alter Dr. Dean's schedule, though he said he will probably travel to Hawaii for a repatriation ceremony on Wednesday, which had been intended as a day off. But the discovery of the remains overshadowed what the campaign had pumped up as a major speech on Tuesday in Houston.

"We know what happened to Enron," Dr. Dean said, speaking to a crowd of 1,200 about a mile from the headquarters of the scandal-plagued corporation. "Moral bankruptcy led to fiscal bankruptcy. And the ethos of Enron is where this president's politics and policies have led us in America."

"When the people take back their government from the powerful few who control it," Dr. Dean said, "we will be able to make real change for the future of our country."

Dr. Dean's brother James and mother, Andree M. Dean, declined to discuss the discovery.

Larry Greer, a spokesman for the Pentagon's P.O.W./M.I.A. operation, said the excavation where Dr. Dean's brother was apparently found was one of three being conducted as part of a monthlong Laotian mission, and was the result of seven investigations into the disappearance of the two young men. He said such recoveries are fairly typical of the 600-person, $103 million annual operation, and noted that 708 sets of positively identified remains have been found in Southeast Asia since the search began in 1985

In addition to the 1,875 people still believed buried in Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and China, Mr. Greer said, the Pentagon continues to search for 78,000 Americans missing from World War II, 8,100 from the Korean War, 126 from the cold war, and three from the Persian Gulf war.

"We send our teams into a country 30 days at a time," Mr. Greer explained, "armed with very detailed information on specific cases — they don't just go digging randomly."

"It's very routine," he said of the recovery. "We bring these folks back every month, month after month after month, for a long time."

Colonel O'Hara said physical evidence connected to Charles Dean was first discovered on Oct. 28, after a search in another spot in August.

Unlike Senator John McCain of Arizona, whose experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam became a major theme of his 2000 presidential campaign, Dr. Dean never discusses Charlie's disappearance in public forums. But on Tuesday, he said his own loss helps him empathize with military families.

"I've seen a lot of families come up to me and say my son is in Iraq, can you bring him home," he said. "I know what they feel like."

Rick Prelinger took these pictures of me and Howard Dean at yesterday's rally in San Francisco.

I'll have footage from the rally up tomorrow.

A friend of mine sent me this article yesterday in an attempt to inform me that Howard Dean was really a racist. I had to just laugh when I read the article, at first, because Dean's platform is so pro-civil rights and pro-racial equality that it was more than a little funny to me that anyone would be asinine enough to launch those allegations.

But when I read the article, I was more than a little angry at Al Sharpton. He had distorted the truth just enough to make Dean's intent sound questionable. I decided not to blog the article so as not to perpetuate the negative, inaccurate propoganda. And hoped it would just go away, I guess.

This morning, I awoke to a very pleasant rebuttle by Jesse Jackson, strongly criticizing Al Sharpton for his inaccurate remarks and reaffirming what I already knew about Howard Dean: that he is pro-civil rights and pro-affirmative action.

Thanks, Jesse!

Jackson Urges Democrats to Accentuate the Positive
Calls On All Democrats To Reject Racial Rhetoric
By Jesse Jackson, for t r u t h o u t.

Clearly, Gov. Dean is not anti-black and it is ridiculous for Rev. Sharpton to compare him to President George Bush in that regard. When it comes to addressing issues that directly affect African Americans, and indirectly affects all Americans, Gov. Dean clearly has good record. Up until this point - until I indicated my intention to endorse Gov. Dean - the Democratic campaign has been free of such racial rhetoric. I would recommend that it remain so. Such rhetoric will not contribute to defeating George W. Bush in 2004. Indeed, it will insure his re-election.

Here is the text of both articles in case the link goes bad. (The Al Sharpton article in the Washington Post is below the Jesse Jackson statement.)

http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/103003E.shtml

Jackson Urges Democrats to Accentuate the Positive
Calls On All Democrats To Reject Racial Rhetoric
Congressman Jesse L. Jackson
t r u t h o u t | Statement

Tuesday 28 October 2003
Congressman Jesse L. Jackson today said, "Al Sharpton is making a great contribution to the Democratic Party with his performances in the debates, his inspirational speeches on the campaign trail, his raising of the political consciousness of voters on issues that many of the other candidates will not touch, and by bringing new voters into the process.

"But no contribution of the Rev. Al Sharpton has been greater than the role he has played of statesman in the debates - of urging fellow competitors to `first do not harm' to one another. It was Al Sharpton who said in the first debate in South Carolina, televised by ABC, that the 'Democrats should not have a debate and George Bush turn out to be the winner.' He has constantly reminded his fellow Democratic presidential candidates that the goal is to defeat President Bush in November, 2004. He has also said that while he understands there will be competition between each of them, none of them should do any harm to the other candidates that would prevent them from defeating George Bush.

"Unfortunately, Rev. Sharpton has rejected his own advice. The spirit of Rev. Sharpton's release in that regard is over-the-top and mostly inaccurate. Rev. Sharpton is inaccurate when he says that Howard Dean is `opposed to affirmative action.' Even the 1995 quote he attributes to Gov. Dean is not a statement 'opposed' to affirmative action, but an argument for a broader criteria. More importantly, during this campaign Governor Dean has clearly stated for the record that he supports affirmative action based on race, gender and class - which is what the law requires.

"Whoever the ultimate nominee of the Democratic Party is I intend to support - and I will not agree with them on every issue. Gov. Dean and I may just have to agree to disagree on the death penalty. However, I would remind Rev. Sharpton that both he and I supported Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996 even though he supported the death penalty and ending welfare as we know it - both of which we disagreed with.

"With respect to gun control, Gov. Dean supports all of the common sense FEDERAL laws and proposed laws with respect to renewal of the assault weapons ban, holding gun manufacturers responsible, adequately checking purchasers at gun shows. But beyond that he argues that different states have different needs, and I agree. Not every state values hunters and hunting equally and I respect and agree with Gov. Dean in that regard.

"I don't understand why I am being singled out. Rep. Major Owens, from New York, endorsed Gov. Dean some time ago, but none of these issues were raised. No member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has endorsed Rev. Sharpton, and there were other members of the CBC in the New York Times article who indicated that they too may be on the verge of endorsing Gov. Dean.

"I also don't understand Rev. Sharpton's attempt to introduce 'race' into the campaign by using such rhetoric as `anti-black' with respect to Gov. Dean. I challenge all of the other candidates to urge Rev. Sharpton to resist using such inflammatory rhetoric.

"Clearly, Gov. Dean is not anti-black and it is ridiculous for Rev. Sharpton to compare him to President George Bush in that regard. When it comes to addressing issues that directly affect African Americans, and indirectly affects all Americans, Gov. Dean clearly has good record. Up until this point - until I indicated my intention to endorse Gov. Dean - the Democratic campaign has been free of such racial rhetoric. I would recommend that it remain so. Such rhetoric will not contribute to defeating George W. Bush in 2004. Indeed, it will insure his re-election.

*****

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31895-2003Oct28?language=printer

Sharpton Calls Dean's Agenda 'Anti-Black'

By Brian Faler
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, October 29, 2003; Page A08

Democratic presidential candidate Al Sharpton launched a blistering attack on Howard Dean yesterday, accusing his rival of promoting an "anti-black agenda."

"Howard Dean's opposition to affirmative action, his current support for the death penalty and historic support of the NRA's [National Rifle Association's] agenda amounts to an anti-black agenda that will not sell in communities of color in this country," Sharpton said in a statement.

He said his comments were in response to a news report yesterday that Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) plans to endorse Dean, the former Vermont governor and presumed front-runner for the 2004 Democratic nomination. Sharpton has had a long-standing rivalry with the congressman's father, Jesse L. Jackson, who twice ran for president.

"Any so-called African American leader that would endorse Dean despite his anti-black record is mortgaging the future of our struggle for civil rights and social justice," Sharpton said.

His statement cited a 1995 interview in which Dean appeared to question the need for affirmative action programs based solely on race. "I think we ought to look at affirmative action programs based not on race but on class," Dean said on CNN's "Late Edition."

Responding to Sharpton's comments, Dean's deputy campaign manager, Andi Pringle, said: "Governor Dean has always been a strong supporter of affirmative action, and he believes there is still a great need for affirmative action in America."

Until now, the Dean campaign's brushes with racial issues have been less vitriolic. Earlier this year, some critics, noting that Dean comes from a heavily white state and campaigns extensively via the Internet, questioned his ability to reach low-income and minority voters.

In a Sept. 9 candidates forum in Baltimore, Dean said he was "the only white politician that ever talks about race in front of white audiences." Several rivals pointed to speeches that disproved Dean's assertion, which Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) called divisive.

Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign, yesterday dismissed Sharpton's attacks as a ploy to boost his standing in the polls.

"I think Dean's record on civil rights issues, on affirmative action -- his willingness to talk about race in a very inclusive way -- has been refreshing," said Brazile, who is African American. "These long-shot candidates, all they're doing is taking aim at the top tier because they're frustrated. I think Reverend Sharpton should keep his focus on ideas."

Hi guys!

Okay the rally has been changed to 4pm at Lafayette Park on the corner of Laguna and Clay.

Show up early to help out and get a free T-shirt!

Here's the message I just received:

Lafayette Park and volunteer meeting point will be Clay & Laguna Streets...

IMPORTANT CHANGE OF VENUE-
Sorry this is all so last minute folks.
The Rally tomorrow at 4:00 pm will be at LAFAYETE PARK at the corner of Laguna and Clay.
Any volunteers who can help I would appreciate it so much.

Sorry for all of the confusion, just problem with permits, satellite trucks, and so on.
This location will not change.
Any further help with promoting the rally would also be helpful, but we really need 20 or so folks to come and help with our advance team. Any one who can come early and volunteer will of course get a free T-shirt (like you all don't have one already!!)

See you there!

Here's the announcement I received via email:

RALLY WITH HOWARD DEAN AND HEALTH CARE WORKERS IN SAN FRANCISCO

When: Wednesday, Oct. 29, 4-5 PM Where: Lafayette Park and volunteer meeting point will be Clay & Laguna Streets...
California Pacific Medical Center's Pacific Campus, Buchanan at Clay, San Francisco

Before Howard Dean attends a fundraiser in downtown Oakland on October 29, you can catch him at a FREE OUTDOOR RALLY in San Francisco, in support of health care workers. I understand that the street will be blocked off, and Governor Dean will address at least 1,000 health care workers from the flatbed of a pickup truck. THIS IS AN OPEN RALLY, so it would be great if instead of 1,000 people, we doubled or tripled or even quadrupled the crowd!! This is your opportunity to show how strong our support is for Howard Dean. So tell your boss that you had bad sushi at lunch, and BART into the city to join us all at the intersection of Buchanan and Clay, in Pacific Heights. Don't forget to wear your Dean t-shirts, caps and buttons, and carry your Dean for America signs!!

The dedicated health care workers at California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) have been asking management for over four months to hold a fast and fair union election. Workers want a voice so they can improve their jobs and the quality of care for their patients. Instead of listening to the wishes of their employees, CPMC management has delayed and denied employees' right to organize. CPMC is owned by Sutter Health, the only major hospital corporation in California that has not agreed to refrain from employer interference when workers want to unionize.

For more information, go to www.seiu250.org or call Kevin Robbins at (415) 503-5729.

This is a great clip. And not just cause I'm a Deanie. This is just plain funny.

Steve follows Howard around at one of his speaking engagements, and then turns the tables and makes Dean get behind the camera to film the event.

Right on to Steve Carell for putting this together.

This piece was produced by Jim Margolis and edited by Einar Westerlund.

This is from the October 9, 2003 program.

Trail and Tribulations (Small - 12 MB)













The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

This is from the September 30, 2003 program.

This was a classic appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Looks like we've got Hollywood on our side!

Jay put together some hilarious clips (3 MB) of Dean as a street musician and Dean as Pete Townsend that are quite historical. One of them features Rob Reiner as a passer by.

Jay sure did his homework for this interview. We get to learn about how Howard decided to become a Doctor and how he managed to balance being a Doctor with his duties as Lt. Governor before the Governor died and he became the "big guy." We also learn about his favorite $125 JC Penny suit that he still owns to this day.

Howard Dean On Jay Leno - Part 1 of 2 (Small - 11 MB)

Howard Dean On Jay Leno - Part 2 of 2 (Small - 12 MB)

Howard Dean On Jay Leno - Complete (Small - 23 MB)
Howard Dean On Jay Leno - Funny Clip (Small - 3 MB)

Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson and Joi Ito from the Creative Commons, as well as hotshots David Reed and David Weinberger are participating:

NAB Committee For Dean

Here is the full text in case the link goes bad:

http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/PageServer?pagename=technology_profile

Initial Members of the NAN Broadband Access Working Group

Hal Abelson, Laura Breeden, Lawrence Lessig, Bob Lucky, Dewayne Hendricks, Joi Ito, David Reed, Richard Rowe, David Weinberger
Hal Abelson

Harold (Hal) Abelson is Class of 1922 Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and a Fellow of the IEEE. He holds an A.B. degree from Princeton University and a Ph.D. degree in mathematics from MIT. He joined the MIT faculty in 1973.

In 1992, Abelson was designated as one of MIT's six inaugural MacVicar Faculty Fellows, in recognition of his significant and sustained contributions to teaching and undergraduate education. Abelson was recipient in 1992 of the Bose Award (MIT's School of Engineering teaching award).

Abelson is also the winner of the 1995 Taylor L. Booth Education Award given by IEEE Computer Society, cited for his continued contributions to the pedagogy and teaching of introductory computer science. He was also a founding director of the Free Software Foundation, and he serves as consultant to Hewlett-Packard Laboratories.

He is co-director of the MIT-Microsoft Research Alliance in educational technology, and co-head of the MIT Council on Educational Technology.

Laura Breeden

Laura Breeden has been working to expand public sector applications of new technology for nearly 20 years.

Currently, she directs the America Connects Consortium (ACC), based at Education Development Center in Newton, MA. ACC was established by the U.S. Department of Education in 2000 to strengthen community technology centers by providing training, information, tools, and other resources.

Ms. Breeden has worked in network services for a high-tech company in Cambridge, Mass., served as director of a federal grant program, and spent four years consulting in the areas of internet strategies and organizational development.

As a volunteer, she has served on the program committees for numerous conferences and is currently a member of the board of the Association for Community Networking.

Raised in Kentucky, Ms. Breeden has a B.A. in Urban Education from Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio.

Dewayne Hendricks

Dewayne Hendricks is an expert on wired, wireless, and high speed communications. He is CEO of Dandin Group, Inc., a Fremont, CA-based company which does research and product development in the area of broadband wired and wireless data devices and services, and serves as a member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Technological Advisory Council (TAC).

Dewayne previously worked as General Manager of the Wireless Business Unit for Com21, Inc., and as Co-Principal Investigator on the National Science Foundation Wireless Field Tests for Education project. Dewayne was formerly co-founder and CEO of Tetherless Access Ltd., one of the first companies to develop and deploy Part 15 unlicensed wireless metropolitan area data networks using TCP/IP protocols.

He has participated in the installation of such networks throughout the world, including Kenya, Tonga, Mexico, Canada and Mongolia. For his work in deploying wireless systems in remote parts of the world, he's been dubbed by Wired magazine as the Ultrawideband Cowboy.

Joi Ito

Joichi Ito is the founder and CEO of Neoteny, venture capital firm focused on personal communications and enabling technologies. He has created numerous Internet companies including PSINet Japan, Digital Garage and Infoseek Japan.

In 1997 Time Magazine ranked him as a member of the CyberElite. In 2000 he was ranked among the "50 Stars of Asia" by Business Week and commended by the Japanese Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications for supporting the advancement of IT.

In 2001 the World Economic Forum chose him as one of the 100 "Global Leaders of Tomorrow" for 2002. Mr. Ito moved to the U.S. with his parents in 1970, attended junior high and high school in Japan, and returned to the U.S. in the mid 1980’s to study at Tufts University and the University of Chicago.

Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig is a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and founder of the school's Center for Internet and Society. He is also chairman of the CREATIVE COMMONS. He teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law, contracts, comparative constitutional law, and the law of cyberspace.

Prior to joining the Stanford faculty, he was the Berkman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and a Professor at the University of Chicago Law School. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court. More recently, Professor Lessig represented web site operator Eric Eldred in the ground-breaking case Eldred v. Ashcroft, a challenge to the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.

Lessig was named one of Scientific American's Top 50 Visionaries, for arguing "against interpretations of copyright that could stifle innovation and discourse online." He is the author of The Future of Ideas and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace.

Professor Lessig is a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a Board Member of the PublicKnowledge, and was a Commission Member of the Penn National Commission on Society, Culture and Community at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Lessig earned a BA in economics and a BS in management from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in philosophy from Cambridge, and a JD from Yale.

Bob Lucky

Robert Lucky is an engineer known worldwide for his writing and speaking about technology and society. He has led premier research laboratories in telecommunications over the last several decades, first at Bell Labs and then at Telcordia Technologies, where he was corporate vice president, applied research.

In October, 2002 he retired from this position. Now he devotes much of his time to professional activities, including advisory boards, studies, and consulting. He is the author of many technical papers and of several books, including Silicon Dreams and Lucky Strikes Again, and has also edited a number of technical journals and books on communications.

He also writes monthly columns for Spectrum Magazine. He received his doctorate in electrical engineering from Purdue University in 1961, and has been active throughout his career in professional, academic, and government roles. Dr. Lucky lives in Fair Haven, New Jersey, with his wife, Joan. They have two children and a dog, and live in an old house on a pretty river.
David Reed

Dr. David P. Reed enjoys architecting the information space in which people, groups and organizations interact. He is well known as a pioneer in the design and construction of the TCP/IP Internet protocols, distributed data storage, and PC software systems and applications. He is co-inventor of the end-to-end argument, often called the fundamental architectural principle of the Internet.

He discovered Reed's Law, a scaling law for group-forming network architectures. Along with Metcalfe's Law, Reed's Law has significant implications for large-scale network business models. His current areas of personal research are focused on densely scalable, mobile, and robust RF network architectures and highly decentralized systems architectures.

Dr. Reed currently splits his work time between the MIT Media Laboratory and Hewlett-Packard Laboratories. At MIT, he is Adjunct Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, and at HP Labs he is an HP Fellow. He also serves on a number of business and government advisory boards, including the FCC Technological Advisory Council, the DARPA Information Science and Technology study group. After earning his Ph.D.at MIT and serving as an assistant professor of computer science and engineering there, he spent 10 years in industry as vice president of research and development and chief scientist at both Software Arts and Lotus Development Corporation. For the last decade he has focused on disruptive technologies in network and computing systems, first at Interval Research Corporation and more recently as an independent researcher and advisor.

Richard Rowe

Richard Rowe is CEO of Rowe Communications, Inc. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in clinical psychology and was Associate Dean and Director of the Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology and Public Practice at Harvard University. He has conducted research concerning, and has been an advocate for, early childhood education, has served as a member of the Massachusetts Board of Education and is currently chair of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education.

He served as Director of the Test Development and Research Office of the West African Examinations Council in Lagos, Nigeria for three years. He later became CEO of The Faxon Company, a $500m company serving publishers and libraries throughout the world and then founded an internet version of that service which he took public and then sold. Dr. Rowe has served on the MIT Press Management Board and the Board of Advisors of the University of Pittsburgh School of Information.

He currently serves on the Boards of N2H2, Inc. an internet filtering company, and Instatrac, Inc. an online publisher and a bill tracking and documentation service for the Massachusetts legislature. He is the author of numerous articles and frequent speaker on the impact of digitization and the internet upon society with a particular focus on access to and preservation of academic, scientific, technical and medical knowledge. Dr. Rowe is the Director of the Internet and Information Services Department of the Dean for America Campaign.

David Weinberger

Dr. David Weinberger writes and speaks about the effect of technology on culture and ideas. His work as appeared in Wired, Harvard Business Review, USAToday, Salon, The New York Times, and many others. He is a co-author of the national best-seller The Cluetrain Manifesto and the author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined. He is a columnist for Darwin Online and KMWorld and is a frequent commentator on NPR's "All Things Considered" and "Here and Now."

Dr. Weinberger has a B.A. from Bucknell University and a Ph.D in philosophy from the University of Toronto. He taught philosophy for six years before entering high tech, where he has been VP of Strategic Marketing and a strategic marketing consultant at innovative companies. He is currently a Senior Internet Advisor to the Dean campaign. He lives in Brookline, MA with his family.

This just in from the Dean Campaign:

Tonight -- Monday night -- more than 14,000 supporters of Howard Dean in
all 50 states will gather for house parties. Together they will set a
world record for the largest conference call in history when Governor
Dean makes his "National House Call" at 8 pm ET.

But tonight's House Call is about more than setting a record -- it's
about sending Howard Dean into the final quarter of the year with the
financial strength he needs to win the nomination and defeat George W.
Bush in 2004.

During the House Call, from 8 to 9 pm Eastern, I ask you to support the
efforts of more than 14,000 other Dean supporters by contributing to
Dean for America. Join tens of thousands of Americans who are making this
the September to Remember by contributing what you can tonight:

http://www.deanforamerica.com/contributetoday

You can also 'virtually' attend the house party -- and listen to
Governor's Dean's conference call -- by checking the campaign weblog
this evening at 9 pm Eastern:

http://www.blogforamerica.com

Your contribution tonight will make a tremendous difference in our
efforts to raise the final $2 million of our goal before midnight
tomorrow.

Hey, "United we stand. Divided we fall" people.

Dean, Driven by the Grass Roots
Bottom-Up Strategy May Turn Politics Upside Down
By Lois Romano for the Washington Post.

"Did he simply unite the Bush haters or did he expand the base of the Democratic Party to something new and potentially potent? The jury is still out on that," said Richard Bond, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee. "If these are independent swing voters, soccer moms, who ebb between the two parties and decide elections, then that's a threatening development for Republicans."

Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi said that anecdotal evidence suggests Dean's supporters are a mixed bag of the party's liberal base, reinvigorated Democrats who had either dropped out of the process or were never engaged and political independents who supported Ross Perot in 1992 and favored Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2000. Trippi said he believes they will go to the polls for Dean.

Nine months ago, there were 427 supporters signed up for Dean online. Now about 413,000 people have signed up to join the Dean campaign -- and 150,000 of them have contributed money. This month, there are more than 1,200 local Dean events posted on the campaign Web site, generated almost exclusively by volunteers on their own steam and their own dime.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44798-2003Sep21.html

Dean, Driven by the Grass Roots
Bottom-Up Strategy May Turn Politics Upside Down

Eighty Howard Dean volunteers in Philadelphia organized themselves and attended a Phillies game together in their Dean T-shirts. They were featured on the scoreboard. (Jennifer Powers)

By Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 22, 2003; Page A01

By day, Jennifer Powers is a grant-writer for a school for the deaf, a Gen X'er who in past elections was like millions of others who vote but don't pay much attention to politics -- and certainly don't lift a finger to help any particular candidate.

That changed for Powers a few months ago, when the 32-year-old Philadelphian, driven by a newfound passion, switched her voter registration from independent to Democrat and became an unpaid operative for Howard Dean's presidential campaign in Pennsylvania. Today, Powers sits on a Philly4Dean (philly4dean.com) steering committee she helped set up, overseeing grass-roots volunteers she helped recruit, and communicates online with a database of 2,000 prospective Dean supporters that she helped build.

She said she does this 30 to 40 hours a week after her day job and with only online direction from the Dean campaign -- and she is not alone.

Thousands of Dean supporters -- many of whom profess never to have been active before -- have taken to the streets on their own initiative to pass out Dean fliers at urban fairs and farmers markets, donate blood and clean up beaches in his name, and raise millions of dollars for the former Vermont governor at house parties.

Although few of these volunteers have ever spoken to anyone from the national headquarters, Dean, once among the least known of the Democratic presidential field, now appears to many to be among the best organized as he leads the pack in fundraising and surges ahead in polls.

Political strategists say that what began in January as a quirky, long-shot Internet strategy to attract online supporters to the dark-horse candidate could revolutionize presidential politics by minimizing the importance of television media and empowering grass-roots organizers. Advisers to Wesley K. Clark, the latest addition to the Democratic field, have indicated that the retired general will use a similar model and try to translate the success of the online Draft Clark movement into a national grass-roots organization.

"It's just extraordinary," said Dick Morris, a political consultant who advised Bill Clinton. "It's part of a new era -- back to basics. Howard Dean is using the Internet in an entirely guerrilla marketing approach. By this process, he's developed a massive grass-roots list. It's active and participatory, and people feel engaged. . . . You're brought in by friends and family. It's bottom-up, and people love that; they feel empowered."

Dean's field operation has taken on such a life of its own that campaign officials have been frenetically working to stay out ahead of it by continually developing Dean's already intricate Web site to better communicate with supporters and by starting to tap the largely unknown volunteers for specific projects. On Saturday, the campaign will dispatch to Iowa and New Hampshire 500 "Texas Rangers," Dean volunteers from President Bush's home state, to push for Bush's defeat next year.

Campaign officials have posted on the Dean Web site, www.deanforamerica.com, Federal Election Commission regulations that govern contributions of time and money to ensure the largely undirected, novice volunteers stay in compliance.

Tom Rath, a GOP New Hampshire national committeeman, said that what has impressed him about the Dean organization is its ability to turn out enormous crowds at events. "That tells me they are touching people that haven't been touched before. They have generated a system that no longer relies on the best signs or best precinct captains."

But Rath and other veteran political observers also emphasize that it is too early in the process to conclude that Dean's unprecedented cyber support is any more than just an extension of Internet chat rooms, which may or may not translate into votes. "The downside, I believe, is not knowing whether they will stick with him. Can you sustain this support through balloting?" Rath said. "Suppose they get some bad information on Dean, something contrary to his image. We have no idea how committed they are."

Indeed, what remains unknown and unsettling for Dean's primary opponents, as well as for Republicans, is who exactly these activists are -- and whether they will have a long-term impact on the process and stay with the Democrats should Dean not win the nomination.

"Did he simply unite the Bush haters or did he expand the base of the Democratic Party to something new and potentially potent? The jury is still out on that," said Richard Bond, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee. "If these are independent swing voters, soccer moms, who ebb between the two parties and decide elections, then that's a threatening development for Republicans."

Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi said that anecdotal evidence suggests Dean's supporters are a mixed bag of the party's liberal base, reinvigorated Democrats who had either dropped out of the process or were never engaged and political independents who supported Ross Perot in 1992 and favored Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2000. Trippi said he believes they will go to the polls for Dean.

Nine months ago, there were 427 supporters signed up for Dean online. Now about 413,000 people have signed up to join the Dean campaign -- and 150,000 of them have contributed money. This month, there are more than 1,200 local Dean events posted on the campaign Web site, generated almost exclusively by volunteers on their own steam and their own dime.

"The great myth of American politics is that Joe Trippi is running the Dean campaign," said the campaign manager. "I've done six of these already in my life, and it's always been command and control from the top down. The challenge here for us has been to let people create their own energy."

Dean campaign officials, as well as volunteers throughout the country, insist that -- with the exception of Iowa and New Hampshire, where Dean had always planned to front-load resources -- the campaign has done little to direct this grass-roots effort. It's only recently, say campaign officials, as momentum has built for Dean, that the campaign has enhanced its Web site, offering more tools to enable supporters to communicate with the campaign and -- just as important -- with one another. "Deanlink," the newest tool, has attracted 10,000 people in two weeks.

Dean supporters first began self-organizing through Meetup.com, an independent and free Web site that enables people of like interests to meet in different cities. Initially, the campaign suggested only loose goals to tackle at the meetings. But at the July and August monthly meetings, in an attempt to use the tens of thousands signed up (113,900 as of now), the campaign asked each person in attendance to write a letter to the 50,000 undecided voters in Iowa and New Hampshire. The campaign provided stationery, stamps and the sentiment to be conveyed -- and generated about 60,000 letters to potential voters, some of whom received two handwritten notes.

In states with early primaries, Dean has recently hired paid staff to try to coordinate volunteer efforts. In Washington state, the campaign hired a coordinator to make sure the activists understand the caucus system of voting there and bring people to the polls on Feb. 7.

Trippi said that as balloting draws nearer, the campaign will dispatch "SWAT teams" into some states to organize volunteers. The campaign now lays out more specific goals and objectives on the Web site -- but largely leaves it up to the volunteers on how to achieve them. "In the next ten days of September, we're asking every Dean supporter to do at least one thing to increase the visibility of the grassroots in your community," the site advises, as part of its "September to Remember" promotion.

Similar stories of independent activism emerge in interviews with a number of volunteers who said they were drawn to the Web site after becoming impressed with Dean's blunt way of talking on a news show or by his antiwar stand.

Powers's Philadelphia group this month gathered 80 volunteers in Dean T-shirts to sit together at a Phillies baseball game -- and they were featured on the scoreboard. In Berkeley, Calif., Montessori teacher Laura Deal, 39, on her own, has distributed Dean literature at the local farmers market almost every Saturday since May, signing up hundreds of Dean volunteers.

Erica Derr, 34, a single mother from Greensboro, N.C., became curious about Dean when she saw a flier at her local library asking, "Do you want your country back?" Derr began working about eight hours a week for Dean. In July, when she received a $400 child tax credit check, she sent a letter to Bush informing him that she was mailing the check to Dean because she disapproved of the government rebate. On her own, she crafted a news release and faxed it to the Associated Press and the local paper, which published her letter.

Judy Weinstein, 44, an executive at a California entertainment company, is the self-appointed director of Dean's voter outreach for the San Fernando Valley and sits on a steering committee for the Los Angeles area. In June, with no direction from the campaign, she organized 14 volunteers over two days to man a Dean table at the Van Nuys Aviation Expo. It was the only table for a presidential candidate at an event that attracted 100,000 visitors a day.

Tim Cairl, an Atlanta health care consultant, said he became impressed with Dean when as governor Dean signed a civil unions bill in 2000 allowing all couples the same rights regardless of sexual orientation. Today, Cairl is the self-selected director of volunteers for Dean in Georgia and part of a self-organized steering committee overseeing Georgia for Dean (georgiafordean.com). He said he spends 30 to 40 hours a week setting up events, organizing house parties and guiding a growing stable of volunteers. "We take our cues from the national campaign and urge the volunteers to do it themselves," he said.

As for Powers -- she is having the time of her life, and for now Dean is her life. She has met any number of "very cool people" who work and play together and have taught themselves about grass-roots politics. But will she stay with the Democrats if Dean is not the nominee?

"This is a question that I have asked myself. I would certainly campaign against George Bush, but it would be difficult to work as intensely as I am working for Howard Dean. He feels less like politics as usual -- which is not what I am interested in."

Here's Howard Dean on the Sept 8, 2003 program of ABC's Good Morning America. (No website available.)

Howard took the opportunity to clarify several inaccuracies in the Shrub's September 7, 2003 speech regarding Iraq, where he states that Iraq has always had links to Al Qaeda. We know that, in fact, links between Iraq and Al Qaeda before the war have never been substantiated.
(In fact, there is evidence to the contrary.)

Howard Dean On Good Morning America (Small - 9 MB)

Here's Howard's speech from last weekend's SEIU 250 Leadership Conference in San Francisco on Saturday, September 6, 2003.

It was really an incredible event. The crowd was really into it and Howard gave a great informal speech.

I was lucky enough to run into him as I was coming down the escalators while he and his posse were on their way into the holding room. I called his name and waved -- I wasn't really expecting him to stop -- but he did stop and wait for me to come the rest of the way down so I could shake hands and say hi! What a sweetie!

(I resisted my hippy urge to give him a big old hug, although it is getting harder and harder to do that, because I really do feel like giving him a big old hug these days.)

Anyway, here's the speech. I've made it available in one large video file, two smaller video files, and in a single, and two smaller MP3s for those of you who might want to play the audio or use it on your radio show.

I'm also uploading the AIFF files of the audio for you DJs and professional folks to do with as you wish. (As of 11:15 am PST - these have about two hours to go until they are uploaded.)

Enjoy!

Video:

Howard Dean At the SEIU 250 Conference - All (Small - 53 MB)

Howard Dean At the SEIU 250 Conference - Part 1 of 2 (Small - 21 MB)

Howard Dean At the SEIU 250 Conference - Part 2 of 2 (Small - 32 MB)

Audio:

Audio - Howard Dean At the SEIU 250 Conference - All (MP3 - 30 MB)

Audio - Howard Dean At the SEIU 250 Conference - Part 1 of 2 (MP3 - 14 MB)

Audio - Howard Dean At the SEIU 250 Conference - Part 2 of 2 (MP3 - 16 MB)

Here's a great informal interview with Howard Dean by Carlos Watson for CNBC's The Edge.

Howard talks about his policy, his son, you name it, and even plays some harmonica at the end.

This interview took place on an airplane in between campaign stops.

This program was aired on September 1, 2003.

Howard Dean On CNBC's The Edge - Complete (Small - 23 MB)

Howard Dean On CNBC's The Edge - Part 1 of 2 (Small - 11 MB)

Howard Dean On CNBC's The Edge - Part 2 of 2 (Small - 13 MB)

This aired on
Larry King Live on August 4, 2003.

I've provided the interview in "complete" and three separate parts.

There's also a rush transcript available.

Howard Dean On Larry King Live - Complete (Small - 54 MB)

Howard Dean On Larry King Live - Part 1 of 3 (Small - 19 MB)
Howard Dean On Larry King Live - Part 2 of 3 (Small - 19 MB)
Howard Dean On Larry King Live - Part 3 of 3 (Small - 16 MB)

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0308/04/lkl.00.html

CNN LARRY KING LIVE

Interview With Howard Dean; Will U.S. Catch Saddam Hussein?

Aired August 4, 2003 - 21:00 ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

LARRY KING, HOST: Tonight, Howard Dean, the man everybody is talking about -- on this week's "TIME" and "Newsweek" covers. Will he be the one to take on President Bush?
Then, later, is the United States any closer to finding Saddam Hussein and those weapons of mass destruction? We'll talk postwar Iraq with Steve Kroft of "60 Minutes"; "L.A. Times" chief diplomatic correspondent and Middle East expert Robin Wright; another Democratic presidential hopeful, Florida Senator Bob Graham, former chairman of Senate Select Intelligence Committee; and Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, the chairman of the Military Construction Subcommittee.

They're all next on LARRY KING LIVE.

We begin with governor -- the former governor of Vermont Howard Dean. He's with us from Burlington, Vermont. If you saw the weeklies, they're out, he's on the front cover of "Newsweek," called "Howard Dean: Destiny or Disaster?". Front cover of "TIME", "The Dean Factor."

Governor, what do you make of all this?

HOWARD DEAN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, it's an exciting time in Burlington and around the rest of the country. I think it's basically time somebody stood up to this president and I'm glad our party is finally coming away.

KING: Why don't you -- why aren't you called doctor?

DEAN: Oh, some people do call me doctor. I am a doctor. I'm an internist. I practiced up until the day I became governor, almost 12 years ago.

KING: But the title you most often use is governor, right? I mean, you're not referred to as Dr. Dean?

DEAN: Some people do. I don't really care. You know, the old saying, I don't care what you call me as long as you call me on time for dinner. You know, truthfully most people call me Howard around here.

KING: Any cons to all this attention? There were pros, obviously. You forged ahead,. You're leading in some polls. Any downside to this? DEAN: Well, there's always a downside. I have a big target on my back from all the other campaigns on the Democratic side. But the good thing is it gives me a platform on how to talk about how to beat George Bush. And the only way to beat George Bush is to stand up to him.

I think in Washington the game for too long among the Democrats was let's try to be a little bit like him and that's not going to get us elected president and it's not going to get a Democratic president in the White House.

KING: Speaking of the others attacking you, yesterday, on Sunday, Senator Joe Lieberman, another candidate, compared you to George McGovern and described a party led by Dean as a ticket to no where. Today he spoke at the National Press Club. Here's what he had to say and we'll get your comment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOE LIEBERMAN (D-CT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: A candidate who was opposed to the war against Saddam, who has called for the repeal of all of the Bush tax cuts, which would result in an increase in taxes on the middle class, I believe will not offer the kind of leadership America needs to meet the challenges that we face today. And as I said in my prepared remarks, I believe that that kind of candidate could lead the Democratic Party into the political wilderness for a long time to come. Could be really a ticket to no where.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Your reaction?

DEAN: Well, obviously I don't agree.

I think the four candidates from Washington that voted for the war, Senator Lieberman, Senator Kerry, Senator Edwards and Representative Gephardt basically gave the president carte blanche in October to launch a preemptive strike and the evidence wasn't there.

Let's look at what the president said. He told us that he was buying -- that Iraq was buying uranium from Africa. That wasn't true. He told us -- or the vice president that Iraq was on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons. That wasn't true. The president told us there was a clear link between al Qaeda and Iraq. That wasn't true. The secretary of defense told us he knew exactly where the weapons were, right around Tikrit and Baghdad. That wasn't true. So if I could figure that with my foreign policy team as a governor from Vermont, my question is why should we be led by people who couldn't figure that out and who voted to give the president unilateral authority to attack Iraq?

KING: Are you hurt, though, that a fellow Democrat taking you on like that?

DEAN: Listen, if that's the worst I get in this campaign, I'll be in good shape.

Look, these guys have worked hard. They want to be president. Any one of them would be better than the president they have now. But what our party really has to have is some backbone. We are not going to beat George Bush by voting for things like No Child Left Behind, which is a huge middle class tax increase, property tax increase. We're not going to beat him by doing as Senator Lieberman and others did, voting for some of the president's tax cuts because those tax cuts have really harmed our economy and taken jobs away from Americans; and we're not going to beat the president without casting a critical eye on the statements that he made leading up to the Iraq war, when so many of them have now turned out not to be so.

KING: You're not unhappy that Saddam Hussein is not in power though, are you?

DEAN: No, I think it's great that Saddam Hussein is not in power, but I would have approached it in a very different way. And I think the jury is still out in terms of how much danger to the United States this poses.

Now that we're there, we can't get out. We cannot afford to lose the peace. That's not an option. Now that we're there, we have to find a way to make sure that a chaotic situation doesn't develop or, worse, a fundamentalist regime with Iranian influence doesn't develop. And the first thing we really ought to be doing is bringing NATO and the United Nations in so we can send some of our reserves home.

KING: So if you were president tomorrow, that's what you would be doing?

DEAN: Yes, I would begin the process of going to the United Nations, getting a resolution to bring foreign troops in, preferably including some troops from Arabic-speaking nations and some Muslim troops so that we can make this truly an international occupation. I do believe it's a worthwhile goal to rebuild Iraq into a democracy. I think that's unlikely to happen with this president, given his track record in Afghanistan.

I support the president's invasion of Afghanistan because I thought that was an issue for national security of the United States. But I think what s happened since then has been a very bad harbinger of what the president may do in Iraq.

We're under -- we have probably a fifth of the number of troops that we need to have in Iraq -- excuse me, in Afghanistan. The president is making deals with the warlords, who are certainly not Democratic forces. i think things look bad in Afghanistan. We need the U.N. and NATO to come in and help us there. And the problem is the president has managed to alienate and humiliate all the very countries that we now need to help us maintain the peace both in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

KING: How do you react that so many conservative Republicans, some, many on the extreme right, want you to be the candidate? They think you would be the easiest one to beat. DEAN: Well, I welcome that challenge. You know, they all say, Well, he's so liberal. Well, if liberal is balancing budgets, please do call me a liberal. No Republican president has balanced a budget in 34 years in this country. If you want jobs and investment in this country, you're going to have to have a Democrat because the Republicans simply can't handle money.

KING: You actually think, though, out of nowhere, you could win this?

DEAN: I do. I really do.

This is an insurgency candidate, a candidacy. We are way ahead of where I ever thought we were going to be and I really do believe that most Democrats in this country want someone who is going to take on the president directly and is not afraid to do that and doesn't focus every position based on what the polls say and what his focus groups say.

Look, I don't check the polls before I take positions and it has gotten me in trouble before. I also don't always check carefully about when I say what I think. And that's gotten me in some trouble before. But what the American people are going to see, should I get the nomination, is a Democrat who is not afraid to be a Democrat again.

KING: We're going to take a break. When we come back, we'll get to some specific issues with Howard Dean, the Democratic presidential candidate, the former Democratic governor of Vermont. Again, he's on the front cover this week of "Newsweek" and "TIME." Major frontpage story in "The Washington Post" yesterday as well.

Right back with more with the former governor of Vermont right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Our guest is Governor Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont. He's also a medical physician. He has been a major scorer on the fund-raising campaign, I'll ask about that in a minute. But he's also been running a television commercial in Austin, Texas. And we want to show you a portion of it. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, COMMERCIAL)

DEAN: I'm Howard Dean. I'm running for president, and I approved this message because I want to change George Bush's reckless foreign policy, stand up for affordable health care and create new jobs.

You know, when you think about it, in the past two and a half years we have lost over 2.5 million jobs. And has anybody really stood up against George Bush and his policies? Don't you think it's time somebody did?

Visit my Web site, join my campaign, because it's time to take our country back.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Did you gear that so the president could see it while he's on vacation?

DEAN: We actually didn't do that, air it so the president could see it so he's on vacation. We have an enormous amount of support in Austin, and we think there's a reasonable chance that we can win the Texas primary. And you know, I think it's unlikely we're going to win Texas during the general elections, but we need to play hard in Texas.

One of the things that I thought was a mistake that the Democratic Party did was to lay down in some states, because what happens is we need to excite the base. My whole campaign, the difference between my campaign and all the other guys' from Washington campaign is I believe we need to go to the Democratic base first. We have forgotten who put us in office.

We need to get them energized, and then we need to bring new people into the process. You saw the Web site, DeanForAmerica.com. That Web site has generated over a quarter of a million people who are now supporting us. The fund-raising, you talked about the fund- raising, we raised more money than anybody else in any quarter. We did that because 93,000 people gave us money. Most have never given money to a political campaign, and the average gift was well under $100.

That's how you beat a president who can get as many $2,000 checks as he wants, is to bring three or four million new people into the process, give them a reason to vote, and then you can beat George Bush.

KING: Let's talk about other issues. The president said he wants to codify a law that secures the fact that there will be no gay marriage. Vermont has what, gay union?

DEAN: We have civil unions, which gives equal rights -- doesn't give marriage, but it gives equal rights in terms of insurance, employment rights, inheritance rights, hospital visitation, to every single Vermonter, no matter who they are.

You know, interestingly enough, Dick Cheney took a position in 2000 in the debates that is not very different than mine. He said, this is not a federal issue. I really am inclined to leave this matter to the states, and I think we ought to let states figure out how to give equal rights to everybody in the way that they do it. So I think this is kind of a political issue at the federal level, but the power to decide these things really belongs to the state level.

KING: All right. On your own state level, if it were a referendum, would you vote for gay marriage?

DEAN: If what were -- we don't have a referendum in my state, and we have civil unions, and we deliberate chose civil unions, because we didn't think marriage was necessary in order to give equal rights to all people.

Marriage is a religious institution, the way I see it. And we're not in the business of telling churches who they can and cannot marry. But in terms of civil rights and equal rights under the law for all Americans, that is the state's business, and that's why we started civil unions.

KING: So you would be opposed to a gay marriage?

DEAN: If other states want to do it, that's their business. We didn't choose to do that in our state.

KING: And you personally would oppose it?

DEAN: I don't know, I never thought about that very much, because we didn't do it in our state for that reason. The body politic agreed in our state that it wasn't the thing to do, so we didn't do it.

I'll tell you what I will do, though. If Massachusetts decides that they're going to do gay marriage, I believe there is a federal involvement, and the federal involvement is not to recognize marriage or civil unions but it is to recognize equal rights under the law. So that if a couple enters into a domestic partnership, or a gay marriage in Canada, or a civil union in Vermont, I think those couples are entitled to federal benefits.

KING: What do you think of the recall of Governor Gray Davis in California?

DEAN: I think that the recall of Gray is probably a mistake. I think that -- this is another attempt to overturn an election that was a legitimate election by the right wing. Darrell Issa, congressman from Southern California, very wealthy, very, very conservative, really paid for the recall effort himself, and I think it's better not to upset legal elections. We saw that -- something like that happening in the election in 2000. There were a lot of people who still don't think that was the right thing, and I myself -- I believe we don't really know who won that election. I think it was a shame the United States Supreme Court decided to stop the recount. And I don't think you want in the most populous state in the country another attempt at overthrowing a legal election by the conservative right.

KING: The latest issue of "U.S. News and World Report" says that the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Terry McAuliffe, went to the campaigns of all of you and said that if it was mathematically clear that the party had a nominee, he wanted every loser to drop out, and that you refused. Is that true?

DEAN: Well, I am not aware that Terry McAuliffe -- Terry McAuliffe has certainly never had a conversation like that with me. I checked with my campaign, and I never heard of anybody he had that conversation with in my campaign, so I'm not aware that such a conversation ever took place.

I believe, however, that what I'm trying to do in addition to becoming the next president is to build this party back so that we aren't under the thumb of the Rush Limbaughs and the Tom DeLays of the world. I really think that in order to bring new people into the party that I've got to stand up and be proud to be a Democrat the whole way through, be proud of who I am.

KING: Do you have to...

DEAN: But I'm not inclined to drop out, but I never had that conversation with Chairman McAuliffe.

KING: But you're inclined to have your delegates stand up for you in convention?

DEAN: Well, yes, not only do I plan to have my delegates stand up for me in convention, I hope very much there's going to be a majority of them.

KING: How do you account for all this fund-raising?

DEAN: It's average people in my party and independents. You know, I was in a fund-raiser in San Diego at 8:00 in the morning, which is sacrilege in California, and we had Perot people, we had McCain people, we had Green Party people, and we had a huge number of Democrats. There are a lot of independents and Democrats who don't think huge budget deficits are a good thing, who were really upset about the nearly three million private sector jobs that this president has lost, and upset, frankly, about his foreign policy, which appears to be based on things that the president didn't think were necessary to share with the American people.

So I think by standing up and being who you are, people reward you for that. There are going to be some things that people don't agree with me on, but they're going to know where I stand and they're going to know that I'm not going to be afraid to tell them what the facts are.

KING: Any thoughts on the reports that Colin Powell intends to not stay another four years if Bush is reelected?

DEAN: Well, I wouldn't be surprised. I admire Colin Powell a lot, and I read his books, and I think that if the president had listened to Colin Powell we probably wouldn't be in Iraq right now.

I think that, like Christy Whitman before him, the president tends not to listen to voices of moderation. I think Secretary Powell is a voice of moderation. It doesn't surprise me that he might be pretty frustrated with his inability to get much policy headway in the Bush administration.

KING: Would you say, Governor, that you will have to move more towards the center? Is the center where American politics lies?

DEAN: Larry, I am in the center. I balanced budget. The president hasn't done so. I believe that states have the right to make their own gun laws, after enforcing the federal laws vigorously. I believe that we ought to have health insurance for every single American. Harry Truman put that in the Democratic Party platform in 1948. There's nothing that's not centrist about me. I just think that the party and the electorate, the Republican Party and even my own party has simply moved too far to the right.

KING: We'll take a break, come back, take a few calls for Howard Dean. Then our panel will assemble. You're watching LARRY KING LIVE, don't go away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Before we take a call for the gover