Howard Dean Cover Story in NY Times Magazine: "The Inside Agitator"

[Totally Committed]

The Print title:

It's His Party?
Howard Dean and the Creative Destruction of the Democratic Establishment



The Online title:

The Inside Agitator
By MATT BAI
Published: October 1, 2006

"Howard Dean is the only guy in Washington just now who is talking about the long term.... In a real way, Dean might be better off if the Party he heads doesn't win in November. Then the Democrats might be desperate enough to listen to him." -- Matt Bai, author of the article.

Brief Excerpt:

“Bull,” Dean snapped, using a slightly more elongated version of the term.

“Huh?” Chris Canning, Dean’s personal aide, suddenly looked up from a loose-leaf binder. He seemed to think he had misheard.

“I’m not going to do that,” Dean replied firmly, craning his neck to address Canning in the back seat. “I didn’t come all the way up here just to talk to people who already agree with us. I want to talk to everyone else. I’m fine with doing Air America, but we have to do something else too. Isn’t there some conservative show we can do?” Teeters warned that the few right-wing shows in town could get nasty for the chairman. “If you can set something else up too, great,” Dean said with finality. “Otherwise, I won’t do Air America.”

Then Dean wanted to know how many organizers the state party now had on the ground, and Teeters told him there was just one: Teeters himself. The D.N.C. created his job — along with a position for a communications director — last year as part of Dean’s signature program, known as the 50-state strategy. Under this program, the national party is paying for hundreds of new organizers and press aides for the state parties, many of which have been operating on the edge of insolvency. The idea is to hire mostly young, ambitious activists who will go out and build county and precinct organizations to rival Republican machines in every state in the country. “We’re going to be in places where the Democratic Party hasn’t been in 25 years,” Dean likes to say. “If you don’t show up in 60 percent of the country, you don’t win, and that’s not going to happen anymore.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/magazine/01dean.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

This article explains plainly why he is getting a fight every inch of the way from the very Party he is trying to lead.

P.S. I like the Print title much better. It fits the article and the the tone of the piece perfectly. Go, Howard!

TC