Dean's wife comes to his rescue

DES MOINES -- For a year, Howard Dean strode into rooms, jumped onto the stage, and told audiences, "We're going to have a little fun at the president's expense."

The no-frills atmospherics suggested a man on a mission. There was no group of local politicians standing behind him, no canned "Rocky" soundtrack, and, perhaps most strikingly, no family members wearing teeth-gritting smiles while the candidate expressed his love for them.

Dean's wife and children were attending to their own business. Dr. Judith Steinberg Dean, a latter-day version of the country doctors celebrated in Norman Rockwell illustrations, was busy taking throat cultures in Shelburne, Vt. She consented to enough interviews to dispel whispers of discord or estrangement. The Dean kids, Anne and Paul, were busy in school.

At first, the notion that the Dean family considered the presidential campaign to be just another job seemed as refreshing as his straight talk.

Then, in the last two weeks, Dean's rivals unleashed a barrage of attacks. The message behind all the ads is embodied in the question asked by the narrator of a commercial by former House minority leader Richard A. Gephardt, "How much do you really know about Howard Dean?"

When Iowa voters looked again at Dean, they saw only that lone warrior. He seemed as disembodied as any talk-show gladiator. Celebrities and politicians clambered aboard his campaign, but only because they hated George Bush and saw Dean as the kind of pit bull to menace Bush's houseful of terriers.

Meanwhile, Gephardt was getting teary-eyed when talking about health care. He would point to his son Matt, diagnosed with fatal cancer at 18 months and now here, standing beside the candidate, a bulky 33-year-old with a look of steadfast sincerity to match his dad's.

Then, on Saturday, a retired cop from Oregon stepped out of the past and embraced Senator John F. Kerry in front of a host of cameras, thanking the lanky senator for saving his life in Vietnam.

Yesterday, with Dean slipping in nearly every poll and panic starting to crease the faces of his young campaign workers, his wife finally answered a call that came from every corner of the political world except her husband's. She would go to Dean's side. She would campaign beside him. They would show the world they are a loving couple.

For nearly a week, campaign aides have privately hoped for such a moment. At night in bars, they've expressed frustration that the former governor refused to ask his wife to come to his rescue. Aware that he had opened their lives to pitiless scrutiny, the aides said, Dean didn't feel he could ask her for more. On Saturday, Iowa Senator Tom Harkin's wife, Ruth, asked if Judy Dean could come. The governor relayed the request.

Judy Dean's reluctant campaign visit may well reassure voters about her love for her husband. But it's odd that her husband's amply evident concern for her didn't do more to satisfy the skeptics. Voters, like the judges on "American Idol," want the contestants to give it all up right in front of them.

They are the merciless ones. They want everything.

Peter Canellos can be reached at canellos@globe.com.