A Deaniac's idealism collides with reality

6 February 2004

Presidential candidate Howard Dean gave thousands of people a sense of the passion and possibilities of politics. Now, in the aftermath of his stunning fall, they are struggling to reconcile their renewed idealism with grim reality.

Richard Beinecke, chair of the public management department at Suffolk University, is one of those. His knowledge of Dean runs deeper than most, however: Together they shared a summer that fundamentally shaped their lives.

The two were classmates at St. George's, an all-male prep school for the children of the privileged. A year apart, they were more acquaintances than friends.

That changed in 1965. Beinecke's stepfather owned a 20,000-acre ranch near Belle Glade, close to the Florida Everglades. The families of the two boys sent them there for the summer to work the farm and learn about the "real world."

It was not the MTV version. Under a brutally hot sun, the two labored 11-hour days busting rocks, fixing fences and digging ditches. Their fellow workers were refugees from Cuba, Mexican migrants and poor blacks. For the first time, the boys were exposed to racism and poverty.

The experience opened their eyes. "I saw a world that was totally different," Beinecke says, "and at that point committed myself to change." In interviews, Dean has said much the same thing, describing his time at the ranch as a "liberating summer."

After prep school, the two drifted off. Beinecke went into social work. Dean became a doctor and then, of course, turned to politics.

It was November 2002 when the two reconnected in Philadelphia where Beinecke was at a meeting of the American Public Health Association. Dean was a keynote speaker. "We had a two-hour breakfast together and caught up," Beinecke says. Dean gave a speech that had the crowd of 5,000 on its feet. "He really had people going - and the whole focus was health care."

Beinecke saw the harsh lessons of the long-ago summer mirrored in the candidate's ethos. He became a believer. Scheduled for a sabbatical, he decided instead to split his free time, throwing himself into Dean's quest. "We knew it was a total long shot," he says, but Dean was captivating. He was principled, he cared about issues, he wanted to open up the Democratic Party and make it more inclusive. Beinecke had worked in many campaigns before, but in Dean he found something different, a quality that, for the first time in a long time, was genuinely inspiring.

"Dean changed politics," Beinecke says. He energized people - experienced hands like Beinecke who found their enthusiasm for politics rekindled, as well as college students who had never been involved before. And, of course, there was the Internet. Dean saw it as a way to organize and reach out; in the campaign it became a democratizing tool that gave all of the Deaniacs a chance to contribute, opine and vent. Unlike the top-down quality of traditional campaigns, Dean's effort genuinely relied on its supporters for advice and direction.

"We got our hopes up so high," Beinecke says.

And then they were dashed.

It isn't merely that Dean lost some primaries. Rather, it's how Dean lost.

The Howard Dean that Beinecke knows doesn't fit with the public perception of an angry, unhinged man. "He's passionate; he cares," says Beinecke. Yet, Beinecke acknowledges, Dean contributed to the belief that he was a loose cannon. There was the unrelentingly negative campaign against Richard Gephardt. The young volunteers in the campaign, often badly trained, estranged voters with their won't- take-no-for-an-answer pushiness. Anointed by the media as the inevitable winner, Dean ran a campaign that became "arrogant." Dean's original passion for issues, openness and the grassroots got lost in the run-up to Iowa. He went off message, trashing other candidates and seeking the endorsements of powerbrokers like unions and politicians.

Then, there was the money. Dean raised the extraordinary amount of $42 million. It came, at real sacrifice, from people like Beinecke. "On my income, on a professor's salary, it was a lot," he says. Suddenly, almost all of it was gone. "I was shocked." He heard the stories of padded payrolls and profligate spending. "It gets you angry."

Yet Beinecke knows the real Howard Dean and he remains a believer. "Maybe, just maybe, we can pull it off still," he says. Nevertheless, there is melancholy in his voice. "The enthusiasm is still there, but it's muted," he acknowledges.

And so he looks toward the future and the likelihood of someone else as the nominee. He worries about those who, brought into politics by the campaign, may now become alienated. Working for the Dean campaign, he says, "was akin to falling in love." And now their hearts are breaking.

Talk back to Tom Keane at TomKeane@TomKeane.com.