Sunday, February 29, 2004

Couldn't they have told their supporters $40,000,000 ago?

Howard Kurtz reports that there was deep schism inside Dean's campaign. "Dean, they concluded, did not really want to be president."
In different conversations and in different ways, according to several people who worked with him, Dean said at the peak of his popularity late last year that he never expected to rise so high, that he didn't like the intense scrutiny, that he had just wanted to make a difference. "I don't care about being president," he said. Months earlier, as his candidacy was taking off, he told a colleague: "The problem is, I'm now afraid I might win."
Wow. I wonder what his donors will say next time someone hits them up for money.
Interviews with more than a dozen Dean advisers -- portions of which were not for attribution because many did not want to be viewed as disloyal to their former boss -- produced a picture far different from the public image of a hip, high-tech operation of dedicated Deaniacs.

It was, instead, a dysfunctional political family, filled with tales of blocking access to the candidate, neutralizing internal rivals, trying to penalize reporters deemed unfriendly. And some of its members just plain despised each other.
Memo to self: When I run for president, don't hire Joe Trippi.

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