US: Conservative populist Howard Dean declares his presidential candidature, writes Conor O'Clery in Vermont
Everyone who gathered on the Lake Champlain waterfront in Burlington for the 4th July fireworks seemed to have an opinion, mostly favourable, about the feisty local doctor who is running for president.
People take Howard Dean (54) seriously now," said Tim Cope who was selling $1 American flags for the Burlington Rotary Club. "On the whole people are really proud to have him as presidential candidate."
The former Vermont governor has suddenly become the hottest of the Democratic hopefuls, having raised the most money in the last three months, mainly through an anti-war grassroots Internet campaign. He even has an ice cream named after him in Burlington - a university town of 40,000 in northern Vermont with lively brew-pubs and pavement cafes - called the "Maple Powered Howard".
People know him here as intimately as they knew Bill Clinton in Hot Springs, Arkansas, before he became president. Like Clinton, Dean avoided the Vietnam draft, in his case because of a back problem, and he has his own embarrassing family problems. In June, his son Paul was charged with helping three other youths to steal beer from the Burlington Country Club. This led Dean to one of a series of gaffes that have marked his campaign.
"The Democratic Party, all the candidates from Washington, they all know each other, they all move in the same circles, and what I'm doing is breaking into the country club," he told several thousand people in Burlington's Market Street as he formally announced he was running for the White House a few days later.
Afterwards, Dean asked a press aide in exasperation, "Why do I say these things?" Paul Dean was not on the platform that day as his father declared for the presidency accompanied by his wife Judith and daughter Anne.
Judith Steinberg met Dean when they were both studying medicine at a college in the Bronx. He was the son of a Manhattan Republican investment banker with no pretensions to public service. She joined him after he moved to Vermont in 1978 to practise as a doctor. Here Dean first got involved in politics when he campaigned for a bicycle path along the lake shoreline where they have their home. He stopped his medical practice to become governor in 1991.
As governor he was a conservative populist who sometimes derided welfare recipients, favoured the death penalty and insisted in balancing the budget. He is pro-gun, popular in rural Vermont and gets an "A" from the National Rifle Association.
His liberal credentials come from healthcare reform and in particular his signing of a civil union bill for gays and lesbian couples in 1999.
"People didn't scream and holler about this," said Brad Smith, a software engineer at the fireworks display. "But they were really pissed off and I don't think he will carry Vermont." Master electrician Tim Tritochaud shrugged and said: "He's a libertarian, I like that and most people I know will vote for him."
"He's no raving liberal," said Tim Cope of the candidate who himself says the fact he is considered a left-wing liberal shows how far to the right the US has lurched. "This anti-war stuff, we never heard it when he was governor," said Cope. "But he's honest, and smart, and clear about what he wants to do."