Washington — An obscure ex-governor from a tiny rural state emerges from the political wilderness to grab the Democratic presidential nomination.
Improbable? Bill Clinton did it in 1992, going on to defeat a U.S. president named George Bush.
Now, Clinton protégé Howard Dean — antiwar hero, former Vermont governor and doctor — has stepped out in front of a lacklustre pack of hopefuls in the race to unseat Mr. Bush's son, the current president.
So far, Dr. Dean is beating his better-known rivals — in the polls, in the race for campaign cash, in media attention and apparently in the hearts of many Democrats.
"He caught a wave," agreed Stephen Hess, a veteran campaign watcher at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.
One Democratic insider recently likened the unlikely surge of Dr. Dean, 55, to the come-from-behind saga of the racehorse Seabiscuit, the subject of a current Hollywood movie.
Capitalizing on his outsider status, Dr. Dean ran hard, early and passionately against the war in Iraq. That forced his opponents, including senators Joe Lieberman and John Kerry, to awkwardly reconcile their support for the conflict with a growing disquiet among Americans about its messy aftermath.
"I finally realized that the President is actually weaker on defence than I am," Dr. Dean told USA Today this week. "It was kind of a startling revelation."
He was the first of nine Democratic candidates to embrace "the militant anti-Bush position," suggested Alan Lichtman, a history professor and political analyst at American University in Washington.
"Dean caught it exactly right," Prof. Lichtman said. "He hit the anti-Bush position just as Bush was about to drop 20 points in the polls."
Dr. Dean was also the first of the Democratic hopefuls to effectively tap the Internet as a vehicle for raising campaign cash, emulating the 2000 success of Republican candidate John McCain.
Eager to make the most of his early lead, Dr. Dean's chartered "Grass Roots Express" jet carried him on a four-day, 10-city blitz that wrapped up Tuesday. And with his campaign coffers bulging, he's also poised to launch a $1-million batch of television ads in six states that have early 2004 primaries — Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Washington and Wisconsin.
The early start has paid off. In poll results released yesterday, Dr. Dean was ahead of the next most popular Democract, Mr. Kerry, by 21 percentage points in the bellwether state of New Hampshire. After trailing the Massachusetts senator earlier this year, Dr. Dean polled 38 per cent to Mr. Kerry's 17 per cent in the Zogby International poll conducted Aug. 23-26.
The risk, of course, is that Dr. Dean could flame out early, wasting money while most Americans are paying more attention to summer barbecues and back-to-school routines than next year's presidential race, which begins with January's Iowa and New Hampshire primaries.
His handlers, however, scoff at the suggestion that campaigning hard and early is a strategic mistake. They've dubbed the recent campaign blitz the "Sleepless Summer" tour.
"This is going to happen really fast," Joe Trippi, Dr. Dean's campaign manager, told reporters at a stop in Chicago this week. "This is going to be the most compressed election cycle in history and [we] believe from the beginning, you have to be aggressive."
Dr. Dean's campaign is clearly generating buzz, which seems to be the objective. While rivals such as Mr. Lieberman or Congressman Richard Gephardt draw polite applause at Rotary Club luncheons and labour-union meetings, Dr. Dean is the star attraction at events with up to 10,000 people.
His first breakthrough came in the April to June period, when he raised $7.6-million (U.S.) — more than any other Democratic candidate. His campaign is now on track to take in another $10.3-million in the third quarter — the first Democrat to raise that much money since Mr. Clinton in 1995, and he was president at the time.
The Dean campaign staff is already musing about opting out of the federal campaign-finance system, which provides matching government grants in exchange for agreeing to cap total spending. Mr. Bush opted out in 2000, freeing himself to raise and spend record amounts of cash.
"Dean's already winning the critical two early primaries: the media primary and the wealth primary," Prof. Lichtman explained.
Dr. Dean has also benefited from the relative greyness of his rivals, analysts said.
Three senators with years of political experience and personal wealth had been expected to surge to the early lead — Mr. Kerry of Massachusetts, Mr. Lieberman of Connecticut and North Carolina's John Edwards.
But that hasn't happened. All three have stumbled in their own way, failing to seize the imagination of a party desperate to unseat Mr. Bush.
Dr. Dean is pouncing on the opportunity. His latest television ads focus on three hot-button issues for Democrats: the perceived recklessness of the Bush administration's tax cuts, the war in Iraq and the crisis in health care.
"I opposed the war in Iraq when too many Democrats supported it," Dr. Dean says in the ad, accusing his opponents of being too "scared" to stand up to Mr. Bush. "I created jobs as governor, balanced budgets, and made sure every child in my state has health insurance. As president, I'll make sure every American does too."
The impact of the ads pales next to all the free publicity he's been getting. He's already been on the cover of Time Magazine and Rolling Stone, not to mention Modern Physician.
Identifying the real Dr. Dean isn't easy. He's positioned himself as the candidate on the far left of the party, particularly with his antiwar stand.
But his résumé reads more like that of a New England blue blood. He's the son of a Wall Street stockbroker. He studied political science at Yale (Mr. Bush's alma mater) and then medicine at Albert Einstein College in New York. He's been a career politician in Vermont for the past two decades.
He also insists that he's a fiscal conservative, if only to hammer at what he considers the imprudence of Mr. Bush's tax cuts.
