Howard Dean takes his turn on the stage

[Nicholas_J]

Chances are he'll be a political footnote soon, but this week Howard Dean gets his 15 pages of fame.
The former Vermont governor -- who desperately wants to be the Democrat who gets to be slaughtered by George W. Bush in next fall's presidential election -- scored an impressive newsweekly triple play this week.

He landed on the covers of both Time and Newsweek and, as a bonus, his serious mug can be seen, postage-stamp-like, hiding in the upper corner of U.S. News & World Report's cover.

Dean and his anti-war, pro-tax, pro-gay-union strain of New England leftism is white hot for now. He is capturing media attention and raising money and volunteer support (the so-called "Deanie Boppers") faster than any of the other nearly dozen Democratic Dwarves who are officially or unofficially seeking their fractured party's 2004 presidential nomination.

But as Time and Newsweek both warn in their dueling, mirror-image Dean packages, anti-establishment, political party outsiders like him have flamed up early and eventually flickered away often in past Democratic primaries.

Both magazines call Dean "brusque" and explain how he cleverly used the Internet to raise $7.6 million in campaign money in small amounts. Both talk to political experts who handicap Dean's slim chances of winning the White House -- which Time says depend on how poorly things go in Occupied Iraq and with the U.S. economy.

Time asks "Is Dean for Real?" In its profile, it says that Dean, a rich, teetotaling, Yale-schooled WASP from New York City, is not quite the left-wing radical his supporters think he is.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/columnists/s_148614.html