There were a few lingering questions about Howard Dean’s efforts to become chairman of the DNC that led many, including me, to believe he may not be the ideal choice for the job. Near the top of the list was the fact that he made so many enemies during his presidential campaign a year ago. How could the party chairman be effective if many party leaders are still angry about him comparing them to “cockroaches“?
To his credit, Dean seems well aware of the bridges he burnt a year ago — and he’s making a good-faith effort to repair them.
With former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean now virtually guaranteed to become the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee, efforts have begun to repair the relationship between Dean and the Democratic establishment on Capitol Hill — ties that were frayed during his unsuccessful run for the party’s presidential nomination in 2004.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — both of whom were publicly neutral during the DNC chairmanship race but who are widely believed to have favored other candidates for the post — will both address the DNC on Friday, one day before its 447-member national committee is expected to select Dean as its new chairman.
Behind the scenes, Dean has already begun to try to forge a bond with the two top Congressional Democrats, as well as other party leaders, and is expected to sit down with them personally in the coming days, several Democratic sources said.
Good for Dean. This will, no doubt, help smooth over the transition. It will also be helpful as Dean reminds party leaders that he has no intention of “meddling” in policy matters on the Hill.
But it raises another, slightly off-topic question: Will Dean’s most ardent supporters be disappointed with Establishment Dean?
One of the attributes that drew many to Dean’s side was the idea that he was a revolutionary, ready to shake up the old and stodgy establishment. That wasn’t always a part of Dean’s persona. Indeed, though he chose not to mention it during the presidential race, Dean, as governor, positioned himself carefully as an establishment Dem, serving as chairman of the Democratic Governors’ Association in 1997 and staying on its executive committee through 2002.
Governor Dean never spoke of the need for a radical shake-up of the party; he was a centrist chief executive who routinely butted heads with his party’s more liberal wing.
Now that he’s assured the chairmanship of the DNC, necessarily making him a leader in the Dem establishment, I wonder if his die-hard supporters, many of whom expect sweeping institutional changes, may be in store for a letdown. If Chairman Dean leads like Governor Dean, changes will likely be incremental and slow. In fact, I suspect many of his most ardent supporters expect him to get on the phone with people like Reid and Pelosi to tell them a new boss is in town, not to smooth over rough patches in their collective past. Dean knows it doesn’t work that way, but do his most loyal grassroots backers?
Dean will, if you’ll pardon the expression, “change the tone” at the DNC. He’ll be more aggressive, perhaps even more combative, than Terry McAuliffe was, which will be a welcome change among some of the party faithful. But those who are expecting Dean to reach DC on a white horse, taking over the party and showing the dreaded “estabilishment” the door may find that Chairman Dean may not even be able to bring about the kind of radical changes they’d like to see.