The Left's Mr. Right?

It's exactly this tough demeanor that --Dean's team thinks will help prevent him from being turned into a weenie by Republicans, as Michael Dukakis was in 1988. "He's not going to take it," says Joe Trippi, the campaign manager and master architect. "He's going to be up in Bush's face." The problem, of course, is that Bush can stick to the high road and let his minions go negative, as he did in 2000. And over time, Dean's pugnacity might not wear well with voters, who usually favor buoyant, warm personalities.

His immediate rival among the Democrats, Kerry from neighboring Massachusetts, is a decorated Vietnam veteran with his own reputation for toughness. It's unclear whether Kerry, in the crunch, will exploit the fact that in the early 1970s Dean got a medical deferment from the draft for a bad back not long before he spent the winter skiing the bumps in Aspen. Campaign chief Jordan says Kerry won't raise the matter himself but he doesn't forswear accentuating the contrast at some point. The six primary debates this year could prove critical. Kerry is a more experienced debater than Dean, as are Gephardt and the avuncular Lieberman. Edwards's Clintonian message could resonate, and his trial-lawyer capacity to frame issues in everyday ways might rival Dean's reputation for speaking English instead of Washingtonese.

But while Edwards was hurt by a weak performance in "the Russert primary" (NBC's "Meet the Press"), Dean's testy and unpresidential appearance on the show on June 22 (he likened one question about force structure in the U.S. military to "asking me who the ambassador to Rwanda is") didn't hurt him at all. In fact, his fund-raising surged that Sunday, testament, perhaps, to a feeling among some liberals that the media are now on "the other side." In truth, Dean is no favorite of working reporters, who tend to like their candidates funny and solicitous. So do voters.

Dean knows he needs to be less angry and more uplifting to go the distance. "A campaign of hope beats a campaign of fear every time," he says. And by stressing his support for more troops in Afghanistan, he seems determined to show that he knows pacifism is a big loser. "It's not if you're against the war that matters," notes Carville, differing with the Democratic Leadership Council crowd. "It's how and why you're against the war." His advice to Democrats wary of Dean is to "give him a chance." If he moves to the center nimbly enough to win the nomination, he will be, almost by definition, a good enough politician to be competitive with Bush in Nov-ember. As for winning the presidency without the South, Trippi likes to point out that with the Gore states plus New Hampshire, the Democrat wins in November.

In 1932, President Herbert Hoover's first choice for the other party's nomination was a crippled liberal governor named Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1980, much of President Jimmy Carter's team thought that a too-conservative former governor named Ronald Reagan would be the easiest to beat. Karl Rove and the graybeards of the Democratic Party might turn out to be right that Bush would eat Howard Dean's lunch in 2004. But Dean has already proved that he can go a long way on just a turkey sandwich.

WITH T. TRENT GEGAX, BARNEY GIMBEL, DEBRA ROSENBERG, HOLLY BAILEY AND SUZANNE SMALLEY

© 2003