Campaign '04: Thanks, Al. I'll Take It From Here

Who knew that Howard Dean was such a sugar-tongued swain? Al Gore's televised "I do" last week (not to be confused with Trista and Ryan's more lavish and much higher-rated nuptials) was the culmination of a secret but ardent yearlong courtship by Dean. Yes, it may be a marriage of convenience, but the hushed backroom cell-phone calls, the clandestine visits, the little apercus of agreement on global warming are all part of a modern political romance novel. Apparently the doctor has a bedside manner after all. But the relationship did not really get serious until Gore decided it was time for a blunt conversation in August. The country needed to learn more about Dean than the fact that he was against everything that George Bush says and does, Gore told him. Dean needed to tell the country his own ideas, to move from combative rhetoric about the U.S. role in the world to concrete proposals on terrorism, the Middle East, national defense and intelligence. From there, the two started talking every 10 days or so. As aides to Dean tell the story, it was on Dec. 5, at the end of one of those late-night phone calls, that Gore surprised Dean with the news that he was ready to publicly declare his support for Dean and that he wanted to do it "sooner rather than later."

Dean accepted Gore's endorsement--but the question now is whether he will accept his advice. Even as Dean for the first time has begun to consistently lead the national polls--a measure both that he is getting closer to the nomination and that more people are paying attention to him--the former Vermont Governor confronts a new and substantial challenge: having got this far by telling Democrats what he is against, he must start telling them what he is for. Dean needs to step up and define himself, or the Bush campaign will spend millions of dollars doing it for him. For instance, Dean signed a bill establishing civil unions for homosexuals in Vermont, which is not the same as gay marriage. But that distinction doesn't faze one top G.O.P. activist in the Midwest, who chortles, "He'll be for gay marriage when we're through with him."

If Dean is the nominee, Republicans will inevitably portray him as a tax-raising, soft-on-terror liberal with a chip on his shoulder and no substantial alternatives to what Bush is doing. Dean intends to help remedy his where's-the-beef problem and sketch out his vision for the country with two major speeches this week. In a foreign-policy address on Monday in Los Angeles, he will call for "a new global alliance to defeat terror" and advocate a tenfold increase in funds spent on finding and eliminating unguarded nuclear, chemical and biological materials left over from the Soviet Union. And on Thursday in New Hampshire, Dean plans to flesh out his economic proposals.