On the road with Howard Dean (Slate)

[dajabr]

HIGHWAY 34, SOUTHERN IOWA, July 28 — “Did you see what happened?” Howard Dean asks. He’s excited, engaging in a bit of self-swooning after a campaign stop in Chariton, Iowa. The former Vermont governor is munching on a chocolate chip cookie, his legs propped on the seat across from him. “I was actually surprised at how many people came up and said they were going to support us.”

AT A BARN in Chariton, Dean spoke to about 40 people, the kind who wear trucker hats and American-flag belt buckles unironically. One supporter gave Dean a $5 check. “That is not the educated, cultural elite” that the national media say comprises the bulk of his supporters, Dean emphasizes.

It’s 12:30 p.m. on Friday, and I’m riding on “McFun,” the Dean van named for its personalized license plate. It’s a big Ford E-350, festooned with Dean placards and bumper stickers, a loaner from a Dean supporter named McGuire who uses it to haul around his seven kids. Up to now, I’ve been following McFun in a van driven by a Dean campaign intern. “There are two rules on McFun,” Jenn Hengstenberg, Dean’s Iowa political director, tells me before I get on board. “One, you have to have fun. Two, if you have any spinal problems, let me know, because it’s bumpy.” McFun’s low-rent allure is a pretty good reflection of the appeal of the Dean campaign.

“People have no idear” — Dean always says “idear” — “what kind of politician I am,” the candidate continues. “Because they have no idear what governing Vermont is like for the most part, because they’ve never come up and seen it. That was classic Vermont. Farmers, working people, smart, maybe not so well-educated, but they read a daily newspaper every day. Literate, product of good high-school systems. Work with their hands, rural. Conservative social values, but open-minded.” Later, Dean returns to the point. “It took me about three minutes to figure out what that crowd was like, and it was rural Vermont.” He smiles and raises his eyebrows in a self-satisfied way.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/945233.asp