For the moment, the dean of his class
Bracing himself between rows of seats, Howard Dean bestrides the aisle of his bus looking less like a Colossus of the political world than a high school teacher on a field trip. He's wearing his standard uniform: gray suit pants, blue-and-white-striped Oxford shirt rolled up to the elbows, a red tie scattered with what look like fishing bobbers. His black penny loafers don't add an inch to his sturdy 5-foot 8-inch frame.
On this day, he is holding court before a group of actual students - many of them Dean volunteers - who are riding along as he tours college campuses in Iowa. In some ways, it's a surprisingly stiff exchange: Much of what Dr. Dean offers up resembles a lecture on public policy rather than casual conversation. Yet the students consume every word, whether he's talking about his college-tuition plan or his position on steel tariffs. Some even scribble notes.
At one point, however, Dean grabs an imaginary microphone and blurts out lyrics from the rap group Outkast: "Sorry, Ms. Jackson, oooooh." Then he adds, with just a hint of political calculation: "I bet Wes Clark doesn't know any words to Outkast."
A former dark horse who's catapulted to the front of the Democratic pack, Howard Dean is a rare hybrid candidate - an increasingly established heavyweight who maintains the look of a political outcast. As his profile rises, the former Vermont governor's network of support is rapidly expanding to traditional constituencies, with congressional and union endorsements drawing blue-collar workers and minorities. But at its core, the Dean phenomenon still seems shaped by a legion of fervent young people like these, drawn to his antiestablishment rhetoric and bold political stances.
The campaign's energy is fueled by a devoted base that's helped Dean weather gaffes and attacks. He's parlayed that support into stunning financial success, raising enough cash to opt out of the public financing system, with one-quarter of his money coming from people under 30.
Yet this youthful base, combined with Dean's opposition to the Iraq war, has evoked unflattering comparisons to George McGovern, and causes some to question the ultimate breadth of Dean's appeal. While students cram into auditoriums to hear him, it's unclear how much of that enthusiasm will translate into votes. In Iowa - where polls show him in a dead heat with Rep. Richard Gephardt - the caucuses tend to weed out all but the most committed voters, making them a key early test of Dean's strength.
Those on the bus treat him with a mix of adulation and chummy affinity. "He's very funny," says Nicole Cabreriza, a junior at Drake University. "He's hysterical," chimes in her friend Kristin Frucht.
"He's really easy to ask questions to," offers Samantha Donisi, a high school senior from Mason City. "He gives an answer that's not promoting himself. He's not telling you what you want to hear."
But at rallies, more than a few students cite the "free stuff" the campaign hands out as their reason for coming.
What seems to draw many people - especially young people - to Dean is a sense that they're part of a movement. Though critics have cast Dean as an "angry" candidate, aides say his speech is more about hope than anger. It's not about him, Dean tells the crowd repeatedly. It's about them. It's about changing the country. Repeatedly, he evokes the civil rights movement of the 1960s, telling listeners he wants to recapture that sense "that we're all in this together."
At times, his stump speech can resemble a self-help seminar. At the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner, surrounded by potted plants onstage, he grows red in the face chanting, "you have the power," over and over to the crowd.
