At it again...

Who said this?

My career -- and this campaign -- is about changing the Democratic Party. It's about changing America. And this campaign is about taking back the White House so we can have health insurance, so we can have a balanced budget, and so we can have an inclusive society where everybody believes in each other and believes in America.

Obviously, it's a trick question: it sounds like Barack Obama, but that would be too easy.

It's part of the closing to a speech Gov. Howard Dean made in Sacramento back in March 2003, the speech known by the lines "what I want to know is..." and "I'm Howard Dean, and I'm here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." It was a turning point in Dean's campaign, as I am reading about in Mousepads, Shoe Leather, and Hope, a collection of essays by the people closest to the Dean campaign. The book is sort of the academic companion piece to Joe Trippi's excellent The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, and I highly recommend both.

Watching Dean's speeches from the '04 campaign, and reading the campaign post-mortems, reminds me that Dean was the first candidate I was ever excited about. Furthermore, the campaign foreshadowed the Obama phenomenon in many ways, in what has been written about elsewhere in great length; Obama has even adopted the 50 state strategy that Dean has instilled since becoming DNC chair.

Which reminded me of an idea I've had before but somehow neglected to write about in my last post (not to say that I'm the first to think of it): what about Howard Dean for VP?

For the most part, he fits the reinforcement criteria I laid out previously. Howard Dean is the consummate outsider, even as the head of the DNC. He was famously against the war since the beginning. He was the first Change Candidate. Plus, he'd make a great Vice President, relying on his experience providing health insurance and balancing budgets. An additional plus: an A rating by the NRA (since there is still no consensus on how Heller will play in November). And he doesn't leave a post that will be ceded to the GOP.

He is not without his faults. If I don't want to hear about JRE's haircuts, do I want to see The Scream ad nauseum? He's not disciplined and would surely cause some headaches every time he's on camera. As the head of the DNC, he's stuck his foot in his mouth plenty of times.

As with any presidential or VP candidate, the media will make or break you. In a way, they've already done this with Dean, so will they find a new narrative? I highly doubt it, which unfortunately makes this a non-starter.

An Obama/Dean ticket would make the netroots happy, combining the two movements that have revolutionized how we do business. But Dean's strengths as a presidential candidate are weaknesses as a VP: the direct, pragmatic message and a refusal to go along with the way things are done. So while it may not happen, at least we can look back on What Might Have Been with speeches like this: