Jim Moore’s blog: Innovation, Strategy, Public Policy

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n forty years of observing presidential contests, I cannot remember
another major candidate brutalized so intensely by the media, with the
possible exception of George Wallace. Howard Dean contributed some
fatal errors of his own, to be sure, but he also brought fresh air and
new ideas, a crisp call to revitalize the Democratic Party and at least
the outlines of deeper political and economic reforms. The reporters,
as surrogate agents for Washington’s insider sensibilities, blew him
off. Dean’s big mistake was in not recognizing, up front, that the
media are very much part of the existing order and were bound to be
hostile to his provocative kind of politics. To be heard, clearly and
accurately, he would have had to find another channel.

For the record, reporters and editors deny that this occurred.
Privately, they chortle over their accomplishment. At the Washington
airport I ran into a bunch of them, including some old friends from
long-ago campaigns, on their way to the next contest after Iowa. So, I
remarked, you guys saved the Republic from the doctor. Yes, they
assented with giggly pleasure, Dean was finished–though one
newsmagazine correspondent confided the coverage would become more
balanced once they went after Senator Kerry. Only Paul Begala of CNN
demurred. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Begala said,
blank-faced. Nobody here but us gunslingers.

The party establishment, limp as it is, was correct to target Dean
with tribal vengeance. From their narrow perspective, he represented a
political Antichrist. The unvarnished way he talked. The glint of
unfamiliar, breakthrough ideas in his speeches. His lack of customary
deference to party elders (and to the media’s own cockeyed definition
of reality). What the insiders loathed are the same qualities many of
us found exhilarating. I already feel nostalgia for his distinctive
one-liners:

“Too many of our leaders have made a devil’s bargain with corporate
and wealthy interests, saying ‘I’ll keep you in power if you keep me in
power.’”

“As long as half the world’s population subsists on less than two
dollars a day, the US will not be secure…. A world populated by
‘hostile have-nots’ is not one in which US leadership can be sustained
without coercion.”

“Over the last thirty years, we have allowed multinational
corporations and other special interests to use our nation’s government
to undermine our nation’s promise.”

“There is something about human beings that corporations can’t deal
with and that’s our soul, our spirituality, who we are. We need to find
a way in this country to understand–and to help each other
understand–that there is a tremendous price to be paid for the
supposed efficiency of big corporations. The price is losing the sense
of who we are as human beings.”

“In our nation, the people are sovereign, not the government. It is
the people, not the media or the financial system or mega-corporations
or the two political parties, who have the power to create change.”

Do you not remember those remarks? Dean’s best lines–evocative
suggestions rather than explicit policy pronouncements–were not widely
reported. In his brisk, scattered manner, he was talking about power,
inviting people to contemplate the deteriorated condition of our
democracy, expressing his solidarity with their skepticism and
alienation. Audiences responded, but this sort of talk was too soft and
allusive to constitute “news.” Dean’s style was indeed “hot”–”angry,”
the reporters said–but they simply couldn’t deal with his reflective
side; it didn’t fit the caricature.

Nor did they take much interest in concrete ideas, unless a rival
accused him of heresy. Dean called for a labeling law for mutual
funds–full disclosure on the fees they charge investors. He wanted a
Fannie Mae for small business. And a national commission on how to
restore democracy–no politicians allowed. He wanted to confront the
concentration of oversized corporations and break up media
conglomerates. In addition to full financial disclosure by
corporations, Dean called for full social accounting: “Why shouldn’t
companies be accountable to investors and the public on other important
matters like environmental standards and labor relations? Knowledge is
power.”

On political reform, he endorsed radical concepts like
instant-runoff voting, which would enable third parties with ideas from
either left or right to compete against Republicans and–good
grief!–Democrats too. He called for a $100 tax credit for citizens who
contribute to presidential campaigns–but available only to citizens on
the bottom half of the income ladder. He wanted free airtime for “civic
broadcasting” in election seasons–paid for by a spectrum fee charged
to the broadcasters using our airwaves. These ideas and others perhaps
sounded too fanciful, since neither party in Congress would have much
enthusiasm for them. The dead hand of the past always feels threatened
by a new guy with a different idea of what’s possible.

OK, the doctor stuck his chin out, and he got his head knocked off.
“Politics is a dirty business,” as Hunter Thompson used to say. The
Dean campaign–and the candidate himself–failed to define the man and
his agenda on his own terms before the media and his rivals defined
him, on theirs, as a one-note ranter. (The campaign did try, I know.
Back in the fall, when I was invited to contribute ideas, Joe Trippi
and others emphasized the need to go way beyond the Iraq war and lay
out a far-sighted reform agenda. A few speeches were drafted, but by
the time they were delivered the onslaught of attacks by the rivals and
daily “gotchas” by the press was already under way, blocking them out.)
I am reminded, by contrast, of the great communicator, Ronald Reagan,
who early in the 1980 campaign began broadcasting content-rich
commercials–the Gipper talking straight into the camera, articulating
his views on government, enterprise, the welfare state and other big
subjects–educating the public one-on-one, without filters. My hunch,
only a hunch, is that Dean and his staff were beguiled by their own
press clippings and poll ratings into thinking they would have plenty
of time later (after they swept Iowa and New Hampshire) to flesh out
their portrait of the man, and what he believes about the country’s
potential. Never happened.

Even had they done so, Dean might still have lost. The freshness of
his style appealed to some but frightened others. His governing ideas
were far more unconventional–outside Washington, some would say
normal–than the caricature allowed. Still, no one should excuse the
editors and reporters: Despite the multitude of media outlets, they
collectively block out the content that seems disturbingly new,
anything that doesn’t conform to insider biases about what’s possible.

Despite the spectacle of his cratered campaign, Howard Dean did
accomplish something real for democracy. First, he confirmed the
existence of an energetic, informed dissent within the husk of the
Democratic Party. An amorphous force, to be sure, but I do not think it
will go away. Don’t hold me to the numbers, but one campaign veteran
told me 70 percent of the citizens on Dean’s much-admired computer list
are over 30–a broader base than the stereotype. On the other hand, 25
percent of the money contributed came from people under 30–impressive
too. The Dean campaign demonstrated, most dramatically, that people can
make their own politics via the Internet and elsewhere by raising lots
of money from outsiders, i.e., mere citizens.

This momentous knowledge is liberating–if people figure out how to
use it in other places. I can imagine, for instance, insurgent
challenges launched by young unknowns against Congressional incumbents,
especially in Democratic primaries. Most of these incumbents haven’t
faced serious opposition in years. At a minimum, it would scare the
crap out of them–always healthy for politicians. In my Washington
experience, nothing alters voting behavior in Congress like seeing a
few of their colleagues taken down by surprise–defeated by an outsider
whose ideas they did not take seriously.

What the Dean campaign clearly did not accomplish (in addition to
formulating a smart countermedia strategy) was to find ways to develop
the flesh-and-blood relationships that can become enduring building
blocks in politics–de Tocqueville’s “associations” or labor’s
“collective action.” The Meet-Ups are a rough start. MoveOn.org is an
impressive organizing engine. We may be witnessing the early stages of
small-d democratic renewal, in which people impose new technologies and
new social realities on tired old institutions. As Howard Dean’s rough
ride reminds, established power, including the media, will resist
change tenaciously. But the doctor may yet be remembered as the herald
of something new.

National affairs correspondent William Greider has been a
political journalist for more than thirty-five years. A former
Rolling Stone and
Washington Post editor, he is the author of the national
bestsellers One
World, Ready or Not, Secrets of the Temple, Who Will Tell The
People and, most recently, The Soul of Capitalism (Simon & Schuster).