A year later, Dean fits leadership role

WASHINGTON -- HOWARD DEAN is about to become chairman of the Democratic National Committee this month because he says convincingly he wants to be build a stronger national party, not try to lead the upcoming fights with President Bush over Social Security or the war in Iraq, or to enforce ideological orthodoxy.

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That means that Dean understands the difference between the role he is about to assume in national politics and the roles played by congressional officials like the Democrats' two minority leaders - Representative Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada.

It also means that his successful candidacy underlines an important distinction that will become more apparent as the next presidential campaign nears.

On the one hand, and for obvious reasons, what happens in the nation's capital this year and next is going to be of vital importance to the country as well as to politics. But on the other, there will be an equally important, if slower-starting, effort to talk about the country's future once the current round of policy fights is concluded and the midterm elections next year deliver a tentative verdict.

So far, for a supposedly moribund, defeated amalgam, the Democrats haven't done badly on either score. Helped by Bush's relative passivity since his re-election as well as by independent-minded Republicans, the President's signature initiative - the partial privatization of Social Security - has become more of a piñata initially than a potentially realigning initiative.

Meanwhile, Democrats are transitioning to the future. For example, Senator Hillary Clinton of New York has made an effort to reach beyond an abortion-rights base to discuss the opportunities for consensus in family planning and John Edwards of North Carolina hopes to relaunch his political life when he tries to talk basic principles instead of last year's election to Democrats in New Hampshire this weekend.

Dean has an opportunity to fit neatly into this picture, and he is the one who made it possible. He probably could not have clinched the chairmanship had he not quickly removed himself from the 2008 presidential campaign. However, it is what happened after that act that was revealing. Two large clues emerged last weekend.

The first was his endorsement by Harold Ickes, a longtime fixture in New York and progressive politics, Bill Clinton's political guy in the White House, and the current head of Hillary Clinton's political committee. Ickes is one person whose roots in the party are so deep that he could have beaten Dean had he run. But he didn't, and his support was the first hint that Dean was in position to win.

The second clue was vintage Dean. Going into last weekend, the board of the party's association of state chairmen had voted to support one of Dean's opponents, Donnie Fowler of South Carolina. But over the weekend, Dean mobilized the state party chairmen themselves and they overrode their own national board to back him. For a metaphor about grass roots as opposed to so-called institutional support, you couldn't ask for a better one.

This time around, the Dean message is not his famous line to the Democratic National Committee two years ago almost on the eve of the invasion of Iraq about representing the ''Democratic'' wing of the Democratic Party. This time it was a pledge to use more than $10 million of national party money to support the salaries of state party workers - something the better-organized Republicans have been doing routinely for years.

It is to be expected that Republicans and people who shout for a living on cable television will use the L (as in liberal) word and replays of the Iowa Scream as an entertaining substitute for grown-up thinking about Dean and the Democrats. Dean will have to watch both his ego and his tone to avoid playing to those silly stereotypes.

The real Dean is a world-class organizer, a notorious fiscal conservative, a social liberal with a track record, and someone who happens to have opposed America's near-unilateral invasion of Iraq while running for president.

Since his campaign collapsed, his new political organization has had remarkable success finding interesting Democrats to run for (and win) election to lesser offices around the country - from deep in Dixie to the Rocky Mountains. Dean could have easily gone the celebrity route with something like a talk show; he could have easily sniped snidely at the people who beat him last year. But he didn't.

Like Ickes, I think those of us Lefties who opposed Dean for president on issue grounds are well positioned to say a year later what a good choice he is likely to be as party chairman. He'll probably never forgive those of us who didn't support his presidential candidacy, but the truth is that it's his own suitability and the support of former opponents that is making his second act possible.

Thomas Oliphant's e-mail address is oliphant@globe.com