So we were having a dinner-table conversation with the kids and the topic of politicians who flamed out came up. I recounted the story of Howard Dean’s famous “scream”… as I recalled it.
A little later, I pulled it up on YouTube and watched the entire speech, which is an exhortation to continue on and win the next ten states, ending with the “scream.” Which is not at all extreme, in context.
Now, I clearly remember seeing it and hearing it as something completely loopy and out of the blue and extreme - “Howard Dean just got up before the crowd and gave an incoherent scream.” But that’s not what happened at all; yes, he was a little pumped and a little excessive and a little in the arm-waving, jack up the troops mode. But screaming crazily for no reason, indicating he’d blown a gasket? No.
Dean is not someone I would have voted for under any circumstances, and I don’t think he had a chance in hell of even becoming a serious contender. I am disturbed, though, at the difference between the way he was presented and the reality.
I clearly remember it as not that big a deal, and thought the mockery in the media silly. I was astounded (and disappointed) when he dropped his candidacy because of it, or at least on that pretext.
I’m glad to hear that hindsight vindicates my opinion, but I still wonder how such a thing could happen, or why anybody ever thought it was a big deal.
People will use - or manufacture - little symbolic things to emblemize what they think of a person, even if the thing itself is not real or rational.
Carter being attacked by a rabbit. Muskie’s crying in new Hampshire. Bush misunderestimating. Romney putting his dog on the roof of his car. It’s “I knew I didn’t like him and here’s why”.
It’s also why other things don’t stick if they aren’t summations of our feeling. Obama is obvious smart and articulate, especially after Bush. The accusations about him not releasing his college records never got traction because they play into the reverse of of people’s one-word image of him.
It works the other way, as well. FDR will always be defined by “we have nothing to fear but fear itself;” Truman by “the buck stops here;” Kennedy by “New Frontier;” Reagan by “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Nothing they did will ever lessen this, even though objective analyses of their administrations show the usual highs and lows.
The world is complex. Simplifying people and events to a soundbite is critical. We put mental post-it notes on almost everything and practically never peel them off.
I am pretty resistant to such thumbnail categorization, which is why this instance surprised me so much. I very rarely review things and find them different from how I assessed them in the first place. This was… a shock.
My dad was a big Howard Dean supporter, and would have joined his campaign staff had he been the candidate. He was AT that rally, and said it wouldn’t have seemed outrageous in context. Among other things, he immediately followed a VERY flamboyant black preacher.
I was a Dean supporter at the time, and watched the clip firsthand. I never understood the hysteria around it, and pretty much wrote it off as simple mockery.
Watching it, yeah, no big deal. But many people’s exposure to it came via radio, where it sounded very bizarre. When you listen to it, Dean sounds like somebody getting more excited as he speaks, finally ending in a I’m-so-excited-I’m-no-longer-intelligible HYYYYAAAAAAA!
And you, the listener, are left asking “WTF was that? He’s going to be our next President?”
YouTube and other streaming sites didn’t exist in 2004. Lots of the country was still on dial up. I agree that the whole “issue” would be DOA today.
Expano - More like Romney’s “binders of women” remark, which no one ever took seriously. OTOH, tying the dog to the car roof was a genuinely bad thing to do.
My take: Dean was the media darling early on, but then it was clear he didn’t have the staying power. “The Scream” was a convenient way of ushering him out. His downfall preceded The Scream, but people seem to remember it as the event that knocked him out of the race.
That said, I do think it was overplayed. He was trying to whip up the crowd and got a little carried away. It’s a long campaign, and no one is perfect.
But keep in mind that at the time, you rarely heard just The Scream. Generally, it was played as part of the every-increasing exhortation that they would go on to X state, then to Y state, then to WASHINGTON… YEAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!
The Scream didn’t kill his candidacy. Finishing third in the Iowa caucuses when he’d gone in as the favorite was what killed his candidacy. I’m sure the Scream nonsense didn’t help, but we also shouldn’t overstate its impact. Going into the caucuses the story was that Dean was riding a wave of enthusiasm that had turned him from a dark horse into the favorite. What actually happened was that Kerry and Edwards had more experienced staffs than Dean and their ground game was much, much better than his. So while buses that were supposed to be full of Dean volunteers were empty, Kerry and Edwards got their voters to the polls and won. Going into the New Hampshire primaries the story was going to be his failure in Iowa and he was probably toast. It’s true that the Scream made him like a weirdo and that if you know the room was really loud - the microphones picked up Dean and not the crowd - then it doesn’t sound like much of a big deal.
I liked Dean, and had no problem at all with The Scream. It sounded a little forced, but like I said, it was a long campaign and I figure the guy was, justifiably, tired. Still, his campaign seemed refreshingly honest compared to the overly cautious campaign of Kerry (I voted for it before I voted against it) and Edwards (who, it turns out, was busy making a baby with a staffer and denying it).
I didn’t have a problem with the scream, but I knew it was a bad move the second I heard it. It was a gift to his critics at a time when he really couldn’t afford to give them one. Even if there wasn’t anything there when it was examined, It burned up a news cycle or two that would have otherwise been a good moment for him, and he needed to capitalize on it.
I thought at the time that I simply didn’t understand the furore. I still don’t get it. I truly have never understood why it was a bad moment, and nobody could ever explain it to me.
See my previous post. It sounds to me like scabpicker is saying the Iowa caucuses would have been viewed as a good moment for him if not for the Scream, and that’s wrong. Finishing in third was a disaster for him.
Dean withdrew from the primary because he kept losing elections, because he had very little in the way or a traditional campaign organization and those he did have were inexperienced. More experienced guys like Kerry had a lot of your typical get-out-the-vote type people on staff who knew how to drive around and get voters to come to the polls.
Dean started as a dark horse candidate and came up with some really good ideas on how to raise money using the internet and run parts of his campaign using new media. It is why he was so good at raising money early on, but it ends up you need traditional campaign stuff too, and that void was shown when the votes started coming in (or not coming in, for Dean.)
Now, fast forward to four years later and in large part you can argue Obama’s campaign success is because they combined that strong, traditional type of campaign staff that does the get out the vote drives and is good at busing voters around and all the stuff Dean had sort of pioneered in terms of using new media and online fund raising to really generate tons of grass root supporters/donors. I think the Democrats owe a lot to Dean in the 2006 mid terms and in the 2008 general election because he brought his skill at the more unconventional stuff and was able to effectively combine it with the more traditional party organizing/vote getting apparatus.
Even come 2012 the Republicans had not caught up to the Democrats in using technology, the Romney campaign tried and failed hard in par due to poorly run IT. Dean put the Democrats probably 2-3 elections ahead of the game on that stuff.
Ah, I see. No, the rally wasn’t of any importance. Every candidates has an enthusiastic rally after the election results (win or lose). Even if his enthusiastic volunteers didn’t believe it, the campaign was screwed.
I’m talking about how it looked, not what I personally thought about it. If you watched the broadcast version where there is virtually no noise from the crowd, it’s weird that this guy is standing there yowling. If you hear it with the crowd noise it’s not so odd.