WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Anti-war rhetoric, savvy use of the Internet and fund-raising prowess transformed Howard Dean -- an obscure but outspoken former governor -- from underdog to top dog in the Democratic presidential race.þþHis bluntness, impulsiveness, imprecise statements and lack of foreign policy experience also have critics questioning his readiness to lead and whether he can beat President Bush in post-Sept. 11 America.þþ``I didn't expect to be in this position,'' Dean said aboard his campaign plane recently. ``I didn't expect to have all the other candidates flailing away at me. I didn't expect to be the front-runner.''þþA doctor who swapped a family practice for 11 years as governor of tiny Vermont -- 49th of 50 states in population, 96 percent white -- Dean says his presidential bid was initially spurred by anger.þþ``I was reading in the newspaper about something Bush had done that made me mad and I said, 'Are you just going to sit here and complain or are you going to do something about it?'''þþWhat Dean did was take his fiery opposition to the Iraq war, his record on health care, education and balanced budgets, combine them with an Internet push to sign up supporters and raise cash and set off as the quixotic outsider in a Democratic field that includes three U.S. senators and two members of the House of Representatives.þþHis campaign really began to catch on last summer.þþSoon, Dean had outraised his eight opponents. He passed up federal campaign financing and the $45 million spending limit that comes with it, betting he can approach Bush's huge re-election war chest by raising $100 from 2 million Americans.the largest labor unions in the United States. He led polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, where the first major nominating contests will be held this month. By winter, national surveys had him ahead, too, but lagging far behind Bush in a hypothetical head-to-head match-up for the White House. þþFRONT-RUNNER FOCUSþþWith front-runner status came intense scrutiny from his rivals and barely disguised glee from Republicans who believe Bush would crush Dean in the general election on Nov. 2.þþFrom the insensitivity of his remark that he wanted to be the candidate of ``guys with Confederate flags on their pickup trucks,'' to his contention that the capture of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had made America no safer, the combative Dean has provided fodder for attacks.þþHis opponents have used his own words against him to argue that he switched positions on critical issues like Medicare and trade and to question whether he is up to the job.þþLast month, Dean offered ``an interesting theory'' about whether Bush had advance warning of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, something he said later he never actually believed. Bush dismissed it as an ``absurd insinuation.''þþRepublicans are likely to challenge Dean's support for gay rights -- in Vermont he signed the nation's first civil unions law -- as out of the mainstream. Polls show most Americans oppose the idea of gay marriage and Dean is careful to point out that the bill simply guarantees homosexual couples the same basic legal rights that married couples enjoy.þþIn December, Dean surprised the political class by winning the support of former Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic nominee who lost to Bush in 2000, giving the insurgent Vermonter some establishment credentials and cementing the impression that he was the man to beat.þþ``I'm aware now that I am not speaking just to Democrats,'' Dean told reporters last month. ``I'm speaking to the whole country. It's not that I'm immodest, but when you're in a race like this you can't think about NOT winning.'' þþPRIVILEGED YOUTHþþThe 55-year-old son of a wealthy Wall Street broker, Howard Brush Dean III was raised amid the same sort of privilege as Bush, spending his youth on New York's Upper East Side, summering in the Hamptons and going to private schools.þþHe attended Yale, graduating in political science in 1971 and then worked as a stockbroker for two years before enrolling at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and receiving an M.D. in 1978.þþDean, who missed service in Vietnam because of a bad back that did not, however, keep him off the ski slopes, moved to Burlington for a residency at the University of Vermont Medical Center and later opened a medical practice in the state.þþHe is married to Dr. Judith Steinberg, an internist with whom he used to do crossword puzzles in the back of neuro-anatomy classes. They later opened a practice in Vermont.þþSteinberg has been conspicuously absent from the campaign trail, has given almost no interviews and plans to keep seeing patients if she becomes first lady. ``Her life is going to continue to be medicine,'' Dean said.þþThe couple has two children, Anne, 19, who attends Yale and Paul, 17, who is in high school. They, too, have remained out of the political spotlight and Dean has insisted his family will not be ``props'' in his campaign.þþAn unabashed admirer of former President Bill Clinton (''We're not going to see another Bill Clinton in this generation''), Dean has turned in some Clintonesque performances of his own, holding forth at length on the minutiae of trade pacts, health care, the intricacies of foreign policy and even the moral state of the nation.þþBut he can be self critical. ``I was a bore,'' Dean said of some of his gubernatorial speeches. He assessed his performance in one Democratic debate as ``awful.''þþDean rarely tells personal anecdotes, although he has confessed to being ``a tightwad'' who paints his own house and wears cheap suits. He has the no-nonsense, results-oriented attitude of many doctors.þþ``You know me,'' he said. ``If I think something is true, I say it.'' þþþþ
Source: NY Times
