Dean remains the more spontaneous and looser of the two, but he now plays a subordinate role to Kerry when they appear in public.
Dean said he spends about four days a week on the road now, part of it building his own organization, called Democracy for America, an effort to maintain the Dean network around the country. But he said he is prepared to do whatever Kerry's campaign asks. Sometimes that means watching what might have been. As Kerry's traveling entourage prepared to leave Portland on Tuesday afternoon, the candidate was busy posing for pictures with police officers and others, constantly surrounded by well-wishers and admirers. Dean stood alone near Kerry's plane, talking on his cell phone but constantly watching the scene as Kerry made his farewells.
When they are together, Dean's job is to provide generous introductions, as he did Monday night at an enthusiastic rally in Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square that included many of his former supporters who are trying to warm to Kerry as their nominee. "I want my children . . . to be citizen[s] of the United States of America led by a man like John Kerry, who served his country with patriotism and valor and stood up for what was right," Dean said. "But I also want somebody who understands right from wrong."
For Dean, traveling with the nominee also can mean sitting mostly mute on a stage with Kerry, as he did Tuesday morning at a workforce training center. At times, as Kerry fielded questions, Dean looked as if he was restraining himself from breaking into the conversation and he said that a reporter had asked him if he felt odd to be sitting at Kerry's side after the intensity of their competition. "I said no, it was kind of fun because I was admiring the craft [of campaigning]," he said. "You know, there's a craft to this, there's a skill set to this. There have been 58 Democrats who have run for president in the last, I think, 36 years. And that's not a big lot of people in that period of time who go through this. I think there really is kind of a fraternity-slash-sorority to doing all this. It wasn't hard for me at all to put this aside."
It was then that he described his admiration at having his back side booted around Iowa. Earlier Dean had said his determination to see Bush denied a second term in November made it easier not only to endorse Kerry's candidacy but also to work actively in Kerry's behalf.
"I didn't have a moment's hesitation on Feb. 18th when I dropped out of the race that I was going to support John Kerry," he said. "I said so at the time and I wasn't kidding," he added. "And the reason for that frankly is that all of us, I think, have in some ways come out of the wilderness in the Democratic Party and all of us are determined to make this country in the image of what it should be, which is the moral leader of the world, a position we held until George Bush did what he did on his way into Iraq."
Kerry said the door he has opened to his rivals is part of the process of learning to lead his party as its presidential nominee. "It's an inclusive business and if you're going to president and make your country work, you'd better start by making your party work and reaching out," he said.
Dean said he misses the campaign trail and he took time to catch up with some of the reporters on Kerry's campaign who had ridden his campaign planes and buses, played card games with him on late-night flights and who chronicled his rise and especially his fall in Iowa and New Hampshire last January.
Did he see it coming in Iowa, he was asked as the free-flowing news conference was breaking up? "No, I thought we were going to win," he said. He sensed slippage but was blindsided by what hit him.
"I thought we had a shot," he said. "The last couple of days didn't feel right. But I thought we had a shot."
