Howard Dean

That year, he received both a deferment from the Vietnam War because of back problems and $25,000 of trust fund money. He moved to Aspen, Colo., to spend the year skiing.

Dean returned to New York to work on Wall Street, but volunteered at St. Vincent's Hospital at night.

In 1974, Dean's brother, Charlie, was kidnapped and killed by communist rebels while traveling in Laos. "What happened to Charlie was a catalyst of a lot of things in Howard's life," his other brother, Jim Dean, told the Boston Globe. "It made him think big."

In 1975, Dean entered Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. He earned his M.D. in only three years and did his residency at the University of Vermont in Burlington.

At Einstein, he met fellow student Judith Steinberg. She joined Dean in Vermont where the two married in 1981 and began practicing medicine together.

Dean was elected to the Vermont House of Representatives in 1983, but continued practicing medicine. He served until 1986 when he became Vermont's lieutenant governor, all the while continuing to practice medicine.

Governor of Vermont

In August 1991, Vermont's Republican Gov. Richard Snelling died of a heart attack. As lieutenant governor, Dean took over the top state job (he finally gave up his medical practice). He finished Snelling's term and served five more, spending more than 11 years running Vermont.

Dean was a decidedly centrist governor, who insisted on balancing the budget, pushed to make health insurance more available, and had an "A" rating from the National Rifle Association.

But Dean became known nationally for signing a 2000 bill that allowed same-sex couples to enter into civil unions and receive rights similar to those of married couples.

2004 Democratic Presidential Candidate

Dean became a national player with a "people-powered" 2004 presidential run that stunned seasoned campaigners with its fierce grassroots success.

He announced his 2004 candidacy as early as July 2002 , becoming the first person to enter the race, and defining himself as the anti-George W. Bush. It was less than a year after the attacks on the World Trade Center, and Dean was vehemently against the war in Afghanistan and the one that seemed inevitable in Iraq.

He condemned Bush for profligate spending, and played up his own balanced-budget record in Vermont. He said he'd beat Bush by running to the president's right on fiscal responsibility.

"His campaign was tonally brilliant," Mark Steyn wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that was otherwise critical of Dean. "He was an angry peacenik, an aggressive defeatist, he got in-your-face about getting out of Iraq."

Dean won credibility with an endorsement from former Vice President Al Gore in December 2003 in "a move that rocked the Democratic presidential field and hastened Dr. Dean's evolution from a long-shot maverick to a leading candidate of the Democratic establishment," the New York Times reported.

Excitement inspired by Dean's campaign revived grassroots liberal activism of a kind not seen in decades and presaged the enthusiasm over Barack Obama's 2008 presidential bid. (Shortly before he withdrew, Dean tried out a new campaign slogan: "Real Choice, Real Change.")

Equally exciting to Democrats was Dean's success in grassroots fundraising. He broke the traditional mold for Democrats that relied on big donors and instead sought small online donations in "a strategy that transformed a former governor from the 49th-largest state with no national fundraising network into the best-financed Democrat in the presidential campaign," the New York Times declared in November 2003. Forgoing public financing, which would have limited the amount of money he could spend, Dean raised more than $40 million in 2003 alone, mostly from online donations.

But after poor showings in the primaries, and a famously frightening scream in front of supporters in Iowa after placing third in those caucuses, Dean withdrew from the presidential race in February 2008.

Chairman of the Democratic National Committee

Dean's grassroots, anti-war presidential bid seems to have coaxed his party's liberal base from their Bush-era hibernation, and the Democrat used his momentum to run a successful grassroots campaign to become DNC head. He also turned his campaign email lists into a web-driven political action committee called Democracy for America.

As DNC chairman, Dean advocated a "50-state strategy" that channeled Democratic funds and support to every U.S. state rather than focusing on specific races. Despite fierce opposition from then-Democratic House leader and now-White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, the strategy helped the Democrats win back the House and Senate in 2006, and win the White House in 2008.

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