For the moment, the dean of his class

One part of his biography Dean does cite is his identity as a doctor. He uses it to highlight his healthcare credentials - a top issue for primary voters - even brandishing a stethoscope at an AARP forum. But it also emerges in unexpected ways. When an Iowa campaign worker collapses in a parking lot, having a seizure, Dean jumps out of his van and tends to him until an ambulance arrives.

His years practicing medicine are evident in the bluntly diagnostic approach he takes, often telling voters firmly, "Here's what we're going to do." He says he has little patience with ideologues, and describes himself as reliant on facts above all else.

Perhaps most important, he projects a doctor's unhesitating confidence, to which many people seem instinctively drawn.

Yet he has also been accused of high-handedness, and of being a poor listener. When he came under fire for his controversial statement about wanting to appeal to Southern whites with Confederate flags on their pickup trucks, he refused to apologize for days, offering measured regret only after the incident threatened to become a political liability. Rival campaigns hint that Dean's stubborn temperament may not be a good fit with the Oval Office.

"I do have a temper - I think most people have tempers," Dean admits. He's never yelled at a staff member, he says, though during his tenure in Vermont he did yell at "maybe four or five" legislators. "The one thing is, I don't back down."

Sometimes this rashness can get him into trouble. Stopping for lunch at the Amana Colonies - a cluster of 19th-century German villages in eastern Iowa - Dean is asked about Alabama Judge Roy Moore, who was removed from the bench over his insistence on displaying the Ten Commandments in his courthouse. A hint of a grin plays around Dean's mouth as he says the problem has clearly been resolved. But the woman is visibly taken aback by his reply, saying uncertainly: "But isn't it good to have - God?"

Dean quickly moves to smooth things. "Here's the deal," he says. "I'm a religious person. I pray every day, and I don't think it's the government's business to tell me who to pray to." He adds, "I don't get excited about saying 'One nation under God.' [Banning] that goes a little far for me."

One reason Dean's surge has caused such controversy in his party is that many critics believe he's too liberal for mainstream America, not only on issues from the Iraq war to gay civil unions, but also in how he comes across, rarely mentioning the campaign tropes of faith and family.

Yet Dean may prove harder to pigeonhole, politically, than opponents imagine. His tenure as governor was characterized by fiscal conservatism, and he emphasizes balancing the budget as a top presidential priority. In the 1990s he made positive statements about Republican efforts to slow the growth of Medicare - something Gephardt has successfully attacked him for in Iowa. And while he's socially liberal in some ways, he was also rated positively by the NRA and still considers gun control largely a states' issue.

Dean also has shown deft political skills, cultivating a reputation for straight talk even as he adjusts some stances to suit the Democratic primary electorate. Rivals have tried, with little success, to paint him as flip-flopping: A proponent of free trade and an ally of the business community as governor, Dean now says he'd push for stronger environmental and labor controls, and has called for "re-regulation" of some industries.

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