Sidney Blumenthal, The Guardian

WASHINGTON, 23 January 2004 — One year ago the congressional Democratic Party gathered to applaud George Bush’s State of the Union address, a call to arms in Iraq. Having just lost the Senate — its patriotism impugned — the party was disoriented, dispirited and disjointed. It was against that tableau that the feisty former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean began his ascent as the anti-war, anti-Washington Democrats, and generally anti-Bush candidate. He had this vast unpopulated territory to himself. In Iowa, where congressman Richard Gephardt from Missouri was always the favorite, Dean pulled ahead — as he did nationally. But then his march veered on to a murder-and-suicide scene.

No sitting member of the lower House of Representatives has ever been elected to the presidency. Gephardt’s earnest manner, measured flat speech and universally acknowledged decency belied his loudly ticking ambition.

His early distinction came in the aftermath of the 1984 Reagan landslide, when he became the first head of the newly founded Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist group created in reaction to Walter Mondale’s dependence on the unions. But in 1988 Gephardt ran for the presidential nomination as the champion of trade protectionism and aggrieved industrial labor, winning the Iowa caucuses. But his candidacy soon collapsed.

In the first year of Bill Clinton’s administration, Gephardt rancorously split the Democrats by opposing the North American Free Trade Agreement, and that division contributed to the party losing the Congress in 1994 for the first time in two generations.

Gephardt planned his 2004 campaign as a reprise of Iowa in 1988, but the labor federation as a whole refused to endorse him and he was left with a handful of unions and little else. His last hurrah was a last stand. His message was reduced to the nub of raw protectionism and he devoted himself to tearing down Dean, attacking him as a conservative wolf in liberal sheep’s clothing.

The other candidates similarly leapt on the new frontrunner. And the media predictably trained its harsh glare on Dean, putting him in the spotlight of a series of absurd pseudo-scandals. Dean’s campaign was a stroke of innovation, using the Internet to create a new form of democratic political organization. But in the heat he began to melt. His temperament began to overshadow his message. He demeaned his rivals as “cockroaches” and declared: “I’m going after everybody because I’m tired of being a pincushion here.”

After Al Gore’s surprise endorsement, others flooded in, and Dean clutched them like shields. Overnight, the insurgent appeared defensively crouched. In the fury, Dean reiterated his anti-war position, but forgot to mention that — as the only governor in the field — he had proven experience on the domestic issues that voters most cared about.

But as Gephardt and Dean slashed away, the door sprang open for senators John Kerry and John Edwards. Kerry, from Massachusetts, has a sparkling CV as a Vietnam War hero who also led protests against the war. He has a far more liberal record than anyone else, including Dean. But as the early frontrunner, his candidacy imploded through constant indecision, a Capitol Hill-run campaign, and a vote for the Iraq war that he could not adequately explain. Edwards, a first-term senator from North Carolina, had no record to speak of but was smooth and energetic. With attention riveted on Dean’s floundering fortunes, they both seized upon the anti-Bush theme. Kerry appended it to his CV. Edwards, a millionaire trial lawyer, presented himself as the modern upholder of the old economic populism, and the “son of a mill worker”.

In the Iowa caucuses, Dean was damaged while Gephardt’s support disintegrated, most of that drifting to Edwards. Kerry, rejecting his previous position on the Iraq war as best he could, soared as the figure of experience. Edwards called Bush the president of the “privileged few”. Kerry mocked Bush’s bravado: “Bring it on! Just don’t let the door hit you on the way out!” While evading the distorting media gaze, they learned from Dean and became pointedly anti-Bush, the sine qua non for legitimacy among Democrats.

But the dynamic that has lifted them up is only beginning to unfold. Political geography is now destiny. While Iowa puts a premium on niceness, New Hampshire prides itself on flintiness. Iowa instinctively wants to reward the worthy; New Hampshire habitually wants to kill the king. Iowa tries to reach a consensus in the caucus in front of the neighbors; in the privacy of the voting booth, New Hampshire wants to assert individuality. Iowa wants to cast a considered ballot; New Hampshire wants to, as its state motto proclaims, “live free or die”. Will Dean recover? Will Wesley Clark and Joe Lieberman, absent from Iowa, galvanize support or play assassins? Is there a new king and will he survive?

— Sidney Blumenthal is former senior adviser to President Clinton and author of The Clinton Wars.