Return of the Angry Man (Why I Heart Howard Dean)

I realize Howard Dean is not the 'news' right now, but you can do a Google or Yahoo search for that stuff. I just want to point out this (long) Washington Post piece on the guy I most admire for handing Dems a spine and then demanding they use it to bludgeon Repugs.

"Howard Brush Dean III, the political insurgent and former governor of Vermont who became the flash candidate for president and fodder for cartoonists everywhere, would seem to be the worst possible choice to chair his party. It's a party that has lost control of Congress and the majority of governorships, and that hasn't won a majority of the popular vote but once in the last 10 presidential elections. The selection of such a remorseless firebrand as chair would seem, on the face of it, to confirm Republican charges that the Democrats are a party lapsed into confusion and hotheadedness. Dean represents 'loony left redundancy,' says former RNC chair Rich Bond, who also calls Dean's ascent 'a disaster' and 'a joke.' Former House speaker Newt Gingrich has said Dean represents 'a true death wish' on the part of Democrats.

But Dean is also the guy who made speaking up fashionable again for Democrats. And that is one reason his party is wagering on him. If Dean says things that are ill-considered, he also remains his party's leading rebel -- one with enough fresh fight in him to take on not only Republicans but also those change-resistant Democrats who would rather be titular heads of a dying party than less relevant figures in a renewed one. The hope for Democrats is: Dean will be the antidote for a party that is lacking a strong message and that needs somebody, anybody, to say something. Dean likes to quote his political hero, Harry Truman. 'I don't give 'em hell,' Truman said in 1948. 'I just tell the truth, and they think it's hell.' And the truth, as Dean sees it, is that mushmouthedness is killing the party, and so is voter neglect. 'Somebody has to take those right wingers on,' he says, 'and I enjoy doing it.'"

Howie, you am my man...