From the Interviews
Ellen Goodman talks about Judith Steinberg Dean and Hillary Clinton:
"The press turned a normalcy into a disease. The fact that she
didn’t want to talk to the press … the fact that she didn’t want to spend her
life on the campaign trail, made her agoraphobic?
"Give me a break.
"I think that you have to remember that when he was governor
of Vermont, she didn’t do any of the state events with him. She thought it was
normal.
"That’s parallel to Hillary Clinton. When she was first lady
of Arkansas that …'two for the price of one' theory developed…and she thought
that would wash in a national campaign.
"That’s completely the opposite of Judy Dean’s idea …but the
similarity is that they both thought that whatever was okay as the first lady of
the state was okay for the candidate's wife."
Steve Grossman speaks about his mistake in Wisconsin:
"I called him after I did it, to apologize to him, because, in
retrospect, it was a mistake. What I did was a mistake.
" I mean, all I said was, “if Howard doesn’t win the Wisconsin
primary I’m going to reach out to John Kerry,” because I knew at that point the
campaign would be over.
"Even though what I said was fairly straightforward, it was
not an appropriate thing to do. It left a lot of Dean activists with bad tastes
in their mouths, which I hated to do after 18 months of involvement. Howard was
put into a position of having to answer questions about me and my role, for the
last two days.
"I shouldn’t have done it. I should have said to the reporter,
'call me Wednesday or Thursday.'
"When I called Howard to apologize, he said, 'you’re forgiven.
I wasn’t angry, I was more perplexed than anything else.'
"Ironically, Howard had said to me the previous weekend, 'you
know, you need to start rebuilding your relationships with people in
Massachusetts. You took a big risk on me. After 34 years (of knowing John
Kerry), you’re going to have to rebuild some of those relationships.”
"So when I apologized, he then said, with some humor in his
voice, 'I didn’t expect you to do it quite so quickly.'
"Which I actually hadn’t. I didn’t have a conversation with
anybody from the Kerry campaign until Thursday, the 19th, which is the day after
he dropped out.
"So I honored my commitment to stay with Howard until after
Wisconsin, but it played out in a way that was not helpful to the campaign, left
people with a bad feeling and I hated doing that.
"If I had to do if over again, I would have told the reporter,
'call me Wednesday or Thursday.'
"But you learn."
David Halberstam talking about the media, the Internet, and the Dean
campaign:
"There is apparently something that advantages new users of
technology.
"Television changed the cosmetics , it changed access, it
changed all aspects of our society in the past 60 years.
"(The Internet) is an instrument that is enabling and gives
access to a lot of people who felt outside of the political system, and were
looking for some form of community, not just political community.
"It gave a connection for people who did not otherwise know
how to be connected, and so it was perfect for an outsider… like Dean.
"I think it’s not in any way as profound an instrument of
political change as television is."
Ted Koppel:
..on Bill Clinton on the UNH debate where no one raised
their hands when he asked, “Who thinks Howard Dean can beat George
W. Bush?”
"All of the other candidates were so clearly determined that
Howard Dean not be the candidate, that they weren’t willing to give him the time
of day. It would have been so easy.
"The next day, I had an appointment with Bill Clinton in NY.
He had watched the debate.
"I said, 'tell me what you would have said.'
"He said, 'I would have said, ‘I think I’m a much stronger
candidate than Howard Dean, but frankly, anybody on this stage would be a better
candidate than George Bush.'
"That’s what I thought they were gonna say. My thought was
that you don’t trash your leading candidate at that point. There was still a
possibility, and, indeed, everyone thought it was the likelihood, that Howard
Dean would be the candidate.
"And here, you had every other Democratic candidate on record
as not being willing to raise his or her hand to the question, 'Is this guy
capable of beating George Bush?' "
Kathy Sullivan on the titanic struggle between the Dean staff and the
Kerry staff:
"I’ll tell you another story.
"There was a softball tournament for all of the presidential
campaigns over the summer, that a friend of mine, named Will Canteras, put
together.
"We had some elimination rounds, and Will had structured it so
that it could be a “Dean-Kerry” final. It didn’t mean it would necessarily
happen. They had to get there.
"The last day, there was a semifinal and a final. The final
was a great game…Dean vs. Kerry. Dean went way up, was up by several runs.
"Those of us who were neutral were standing around talking
about it, saying , 'oh, God, the Dean people can’t win.'
"Not because we didn’t like the Dean people. It’s because we
knew that if the Dean people lost, they would say, 'OK, we lost, let’s go have a
beer.'
"Whereas if the Kerry people lost, they would have been so
angry. At that point that was the difference in the nature of the campaigns.
"We were saying, 'Oh, my God, please God, let the Kerry people
win,' because we didn’t want to deal with it.
"Then there was this big turnaround, and the Kerry people came
back and won the game.
"Just as we had predicted, the Dean people said 'OK we lost,
let’s go have a beer.' "
William Trezvant explains “Flat Howard” and his role in making Washington
State Dean’s most successful state other than Vermont:
"We had what they call a “flat Howard”. Flat Howard was a
picture of Howard Dean that you could download off the Internet.
One of the volunteers came to me and said ‘Bill, you know, why
don’t we get a Flat Howard’. I said, ‘what’s a Flat Howard?'
"He showed me the computer. 'This is a Flat Howard.'
"I looked at it and I said, 'OK, we’ll see,' because it’s part
of yes-based management.
"I was, like, “First , how much does it cost?”
" 'It’s eighty bucks.'
“ 'Fine, I’ll approve 80 bucks and if somebody gets mad, I’ll
take the heat.'
"Not even knowing what a flat Howard was, I said ‘Just show me
what the picture looks like, ‘cause if the picture was of Howard Dean with the
devil’s horns and a mustache, I was going to be like, 'No, forget it.'
"But they showed it to me, and it was a picture of Howard Dean
standing in his 100-dollar suit, pointing.
"They copied onto a disk, went to a printer, and printed out a
full-sized version of this picture of Howard Dean. They then mounted it to dry
backer board. It cost another 20 dollars for the mounting materials, and our
volunteers put it together, and another volunteer cut it out, so it was a
life-size figure. They actually made him taller.
"I had one of our staff people go out and buy a Polaroid
camera, one of the instant picture things."
"Anyone who came into the campaign office got a picture with
flat Howard. So, it’s 'Hi, welcome, you want a picture with Flat Howard?'
"If they wanted a picture for themselves, that was fine, but
what we did is say, 'Write your name on it. You know why? It’s going on our wall
of supporters.'
"So when you walked into the campaign headquarters in
Seattle,Washington, the very first thing you saw, you obviously saw people in
the reception area, but you saw this cutout of flat Howard standing in front of
you. Sometimes it scared people, other times it’d wake people up.
"The staffers would walk around and every time they turned the
corner, they’d think that there was somebody there.
"It was just a very interesting…just watching people’s
reactions. I think we ended up posting almost 700 pictures on the wall. So,
you’d come in, we’d get your name, your e-mail, then we'd ask if you wanted a
picture with flat Howard.
"Somebody brought in the Seattle Super Sonics rally monkey,
and so we put a Dean button on the rally monkey, and put a Dean sticker on him,
hung him around flat Howard, took a picture of that.
"On the wall we had a section called endorsement. It was ‘the
rally monkey endorses Flat Howard’. So it was, ‘Mary with Flat Howard’, ‘Bill
with Flat Howard’, ‘Kathy with Flat Howard.’
"Everybody signed their names. It had two effects. New people
that were coming in could look at this wall and see all these other different
people here, whether they knew them or not, no big deal. But then they’d want
their picture taken and want their picture up on the wall.
"The second thing is, it reinforced what we were trying to say
about this campaign. That this campaign was about people-to-people, and getting
local, and yes-based management.
"The kind of campaign model I was running in Washington State,
it was about the individuals. So, when they walk in, I don’t want them to see a
big, huge sign of monolithic Dean for America first. I wanted them to see a
picture.
"We had a big picture of Howard Dean addressing the crowds in
Seattle. It had Dean off to the side, so the biggest visual you got were a
number of people. "Next to that were all these individual Flat Howard Polaroid
pictures. What subsequently happened is that Flat Howard became so popular, so
many people were putting their arms around him, that the cardboard backing began
to break down.
"So one of our supporters went out and took flat Howard for a
day and a half, and actually laid him down and cut out a 3/8 inch plywood
backing for him. Put hinges on it, put weights on it, attached it together with
bolts, so flat Howard came back sturdy.
"We started calling him Flat, Stiff Howard, ‘cause now he was
made of wood. The next thing that happened was, when they would do visibility or
go to some local function, obviously you couldn’t get Howard Dean there, so they
would take Flat Howard.
"Then we had a section called ‘Flat Howard about town’. Flat
Howard at the Pikes Market, Flat Howard at the Seattle Center, Flat Howard at
the Space Needle, Flat Howard everywhere. Flat Howard with the mayor.
"The word got out, it was on our blogs, whatever. All of the
other offices wanted Flat Howard. So we ended up having six Flat Howards made,
and sent out across the state so we had Flat Howard at all these appearances.
"You’d go to a candidate forum, and the Kerry campaign would
send their campaign manager, Clark would send his people, etc. Or even local
Democratic things, say the 32nd district was having their Christmas party, we’d
send our own people, plus Flat Howard.
"When we were at the Washington State Quarterly Democratic
Convention, we had Flat Howard at our reception, and we took pictures of people
with Flat Howard.
"The thing just took off. It’s a small item. Ended up costing
100 bucks per Flat Howard …plus the cost of film.
"It sent a very real message and accomplished two things.
"One, when a new person walked into the campaign office, they
not only saw the faces of their neighbors, which underscored the
people-to-people nature of the campaign. It underscored a sense of community.
They then wanted a picture with Flat Howard, they wanted to take something home.
" Two, they went and they told their friends and other people
came. It became a bit of a thing. There was local news coverage about it.
"That clearly wasn’t my idea, but it worked."
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