More on Dean the Man

Jay Parini, a writer, a resident of Vermont, and a personal friend of Howard Dean, has a piece in The Guardian that supports the "butch" analysis on Dean in the previous posting to this site. Here's the core argument:

"Dean is a passionate man by nature. Two years ago, I saw a good deal of him when our sons were playing high-school soccer together. He would hurl himself into the games, cheering on his son and the team. He is, I would guess, a fairly straightforward man: a tough, smart fellow with a lot of genuine compassion: he did, after all, choose medicine as a career, and only became governor when the previous one unexpectedly dropped dead from a heart attack. Dean, who was lieutenant governor then (not a full-time job in Vermont), was in his surgery when the call came. He very reluctantly left his busy medical practice behind to assume office.

"An old friend of mine was Dean's lawyer and close personal adviser throughout his time as governor. We were having lunch shortly after Dean announced that he was running for president, and I asked him what he thought. "Howard will win," he said. "He is smarter than everybody else, he works harder than everybody else, and he's luckier than everybody else." My own experience of Dean is very much along these lines. He has a long road ahead of him, but he's well equipped for the journey, and he tends to succeed at whatever he attempts."