History Will Be Kind to Howard Dean
Dean never had a high charisma quotient but his vision thing was off the charts.
In many ways Obama is the Facebook to Dean’s Friendster.
He took the grassroots/online formula that Dean innovated in 2003 and turned it into the killer app of 2008.
Obama’s formidable campaign machine also steamrolled along the 50-state path blazed by Dean as DNC chair.
Dean, the secular Vermont doctor, had the vision to believe that the Democrats could be a nationally competitive party among the red state faithful by rebuilding the party through grassroots activism.
His replacement as DNC chair by former Gov. Tim Kaine, a Virginian and a Christian, is proof positive that he was right.
Here’s hoping Dean lands somewhere quiet and consequential, where his over-the-horizon thinking can be leveraged and his unsmooth demeanor will matter not.