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Dean by the numbers…
Posted at: Thursday, February 19, 2004, 02:57 AM
$50.3 million — Money raised by Howard Dean’s campaign, more than any other Democratic presidential candidate in history, according to his campaign.
318,884 — Individual contributors to Dean’s campaign, with an average of $80 per contribution.
Dean winds down
Posted at: Wednesday, February 18, 2004, 02:34 AM
A possible sign that Howard Dean’s presidential campaign may be winding down can be found on his official Web site. Not a single press release has been posted in the press section for a week. Prior to Feb. 10, the Web site featured several press releases daily.
Dean going for record?
Posted at: Tuesday, February 17, 2004, 12:35 AM
“If [Howard] Dean stays in the race through Super Tuesday, he may well break the 23-game losing streak now held by the ’61 Philadelphia Phillies.”
— Dick Polman of The Philadelphia Inquirer
Another Dean campaign chair departs
Posted at: Monday, February 16, 2004, 01:43 PM
Struggling Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean revealed Monday that national campaign chairman Steve Grossman has departed, but the former Vermont governor would not disclose the circumstances surrounding the change.
At an appearance here on the eve of the Wisconsin primary, Dean said Grossman was no longer with his campaign. “I absolutely don’t feel betrayed by Grossman. I consider him to be a friend,” Dean said, without elaborating.
It’s the second time in recent weeks that Dean has had a major shakeup in his campaign. On the day following the New Hampshire primary, in which he finished second to Sen. John Kerry, he announced that campaign manager Joe Trippi was leaving. This came after Dean decided to give the top campaign post to Roy Neel, a longtime confidant of former Vice President Al Gore. Trippi told people at the time that he chose to resign rather than remain in the campaign in a lesser role.
Monday’s revelation came as Dean had a brief exchange with reporters before appearing at a campaign event. Asked when he had last talked to Grossman, Dean said, “I have not talked to him since things came out in the newspaper.”
Asked to elaborate, he replied, “My response is, I’ll speak for the campaign.”
—The Associated Press
Last stand?
Posted at: Monday, February 16, 2004, 02:41 AM
Howard Dean’s campaign staff is being candid about their candidate’s uphill battle to win Wisconsin’s primary on Tuesday.
“Everybody knows this is a ‘Hail Mary’ pass,” campaign head Roy Neel said. “It’s a long shot.”
Neat neckware . . .
Posted at: Saturday, February 14, 2004, 02:35 AM
Dr. Jeff Patterson appeared eager to take Howard Dean on a tour of the Northeast Family Medical Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
But the Democratic presidential candidate seemed more interested in Patterson’s neckwear — a tie with simple drawings of children on a red background. It was the same fashion statement Dean enjoyed making during his years as Vermont governor, but which ended when he launched his presidential bid.
“My favorite tie,” Dean exclaimed during the tour, his face lighting up. “I used to wear these all the time until my staff said they didn’t look presidential.”
A scream too far
Posted at: Tuesday, February 10, 2004, 01:03 AM
It probably means little now to Howard Dean, but CNN’s top executive believes his network overplayed the infamous clip of Dean’s “scream speech” (below) after the Iowa caucuses.
“It was a big story, but the challenge in a 24-hour news network is that you try to keep all of your different viewers throughout the day informed without overdoing it,” said Princell Hair, CNN’s general manager.
Joe Trippi, Dean’s former campaign manager who lost his job in the fallout, accepts that the footage was newsworthy, but he figured it was a one-day story. Instead, cable and broadcast news networks aired Dean’s Iowa exclamation 633 times over the following four days, according to the Hotline, a Washington-based Internet newsletter.
“It was totally unfair,” Trippi said. “I don’t think there was any question about it.”
It took on such a life, said Paul Slavin, senior vice president of ABC News, that “the amount of attention it was receiving necessitated more attention.”
Neither Slavin nor Mark Lukasiewicz, NBC News executive producer in charge of political coverage, believe the coverage was overdone. Roger Ailes, Fox News chairman, told ABC News it was “overplayed a bit.”
High-tech regrets …
Posted at: Friday, February 6, 2004, 01:48 AM
In some ways, Howard Dean’s campaign seems like a throwback to the high-flying, hard-crashing high-tech ventures of the late 1990s.
Reinforcing that impression: campaign finance reports showing that when Dean’s Internet-fueled organization was at its fund-raising peak, with a record $41 million in the bank, it made some expenditures that — viewed from today’s perspective of a campaign struggling to stay alive — seem a bit frivolous. Among them: at least $6,779 for Lake Champlain Chocolates, from a premium truffle maker in Dean’s home state of Vermont, for thank-you gifts to the hosts of major fund-raising events.
The Doctor Called In Sick
Posted at: Thursday, February 5, 2004, 01:16 PM
The desperate hours having arrived in the Dr. Howard Dean candidacy — Dean said, after losing all seven states in the Tuesday primaries, he will keep going and going like the “Energizer bunny” — a side story has emerged.
Dean is the only shot America has at electing a medical doctor president. In the history of this nation, an MD has never been elected president, although Americans have elected at least one Ph.D., Woodrow Wilson.
What does this physician-aversion say about the presidency?
Or, perhaps more poignantly, what does it say about American’s attitudes towards doctors, who are better known for dispensing advice than they are for taking it, not to mention the profession’s famous inaccessibility (In a hurry, who would you rather have to get on the telephone quick — your doctor, or your congressman?)
From Dean’s foundering one may deduce Americans aren’t any crazier about doctors than they are about going to the doctor.
Another way to look at it: Maybe the presidency is simply a poor measure of personal credibility. Polling evidence tends to substantiate that.
During the 2000 campaign season, a Gallup poll found that doctors are among the professions Americans trust the most (behind nurses, pharmacists, and veterinarians), while lawyers are among the professions Americans trust the least (behind car salesmen, advertising practitioners, insurance salesmen and newspaper reporters).
Yet, in the history of the presidency, of the 43 presidents, no doctors and 23 lawyers have been elected. It’s not as though electing a lawyer is an assurance of quality leadership. The success of lawyer/presidents is quite a mixed bag.
According to a C-Span Survey of Presidential Leadership, America’s greatest president was Abraham Lincoln and its worst president was James Buchanan. Both were lawyers.
More recently, the men who brought the greatest ignominy to the Oval Office — Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton — were attorneys.
Among other professions Americans really don’t trust, Warren Harding is the only insurance salesman to be elected president. A man of many professions, he was also one of only two newspaper reporters to attain the nation’s highest office. The other was Howard Taft.
It’s worth noting that Taft is more remembered for being the fattest president in history — he tipped the scales at 352 pounds — than he is for any other achievement.
America has never elected an advertising practitioner. Americans just elect the people they advertise.
Among the remaining contenders, John Edwards and John Kerry are lawyers; President Bush is a businessman; Wesley Clark’s profession was the military; Al Sharpton is an ordained minister, and Dennis Kucinich is a marketing executive and business consultant.
As Dean’s hopes for the presidency fade. his profession’s haven’t died. One day, almost certainly, an MD will sit in the White House. Members of far less lofty fields have made it to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Herbert Hoover was a mining engineer. And Millard Fillmore was an apprentice to a cloth dresser before he became a lawyer.
Then president.
— Jeffry Scott, AJC staff writer
Seen it before
Posted at: Thursday, February 5, 2004, 01:05 PM
Millions of television viewers may have been shocked to see Janet Jackson’s naked breast during Sunday’s Super Bowl halftime show, but not Dr. Howard Dean, M.D.
Asked about the incident while campaigning in Washington state, site of Saturday caucuses, the Democratic presidential hopeful reminded his questioner that he’s a medical doctor.
“It’s nothing I have not seen before,” Dean said.
— Associated Press
