Return of the Angry Man

"Well," McMahon said, "I guess that's a strategy."

According to former campaign manager Joe Trippi, spontaneity is Dean's great strength and weakness. It lends him sincerity, but it proved his downfall as a candidate, because it obscured his abilities and more moderate convictions, allowing opponents to paint him as extreme. "He was caricatured, but in the end a lot of the caricature was ammo that he provided," says Trippi, who believes Dean almost reflexively defies any attempt to Washingtonize him.

"It almost got to the point where, if you wanted him to go out through that door," Trippi says, "you had to point to the other door."

Dean rarely speaks from a prepared text, preferring to jot thoughts on an index card, which he then barely refers to. Exasperated aides urge him to stick to a script. "Give the speech," says media consultant Tom Ochs, a member of Dean's DNC transition team. "That's why it's called a 'speech.' " But Dean gives speeches only on his terms. If Dems thought they were hiring a servile functionary, they were mistaken.

Dean has arrived at the Park Plaza in Boston to address the annual state Democratic convention.

He pulls out an index card, which he hardly glances at, and launches into a rousing delivery. ("We're not going to let Republicans define us anymore! We're going to say what Democrats are about!") Then three-quarters of the way through his remarks, he puts the card in his breast pocket. Things have gone smoothly.

Until he arrives at the subject of Tom DeLay. The House majority leader is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for taking trips paid for by lobbyists. Dean lights into him. DeLay needs to go back to Houston, "where he can serve his jail sentence down there courtesy of the Texas taxpayers!" Dean thunders.

Check me on this: Did Howard Dean just throw the Republican House majority leader into prison?

Nashville:

Dean's first weeks as DNC chair were strangely quiet -- for him. While debates raged about privatizing Social Security and the Terry Schiavo case, Dean was absent from the Sunday talk shows. Where was he?

He was doing the red states. In late March, he was in Nashville. The day before he arrived, there were reports that local Democrats would duck him. Gov. Phil Bredesen helped him out by stating that if Dean wanted to meet, "I'd be happy to do so." But a county commissioner, Curtis Adams, told the Nashville Tennessean, "Howard Dean will take this party down."

Also heralding Dean's arrival was conservative commentator Ann Coulter, who was in the area for a speaking engagement. She called him "the gift that keeps on giving."