The Revolution Will Not Be Televised : Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything 0060761555

Citation preview

REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE

TELEVISED

THE

REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE

TELEVISED DEMOCRACY, THE INTERNET, AND

THE OVERTHROW OF EVERYTHING

JOE TRIPPI

1© ReganBooks Celebrating Ten Bestselling Years

An

Imprint ofHarperCollinsPublishers

the revolution will not be televised. Copyright

©

2004 by Joe

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

book may be used or reproduced

in

No

any manner whatsoever without written

permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in

critical articles

and reviews. For information address HarperCollins Publishers 53rd Street,

New

York,

HarperCollins books

NY

Trippi.

part of this

Inc.,

10 East

10022.

may be purchased

for educational, business,

or sales

promotional use. For information please write: Special Markets Department, HarperCollins Publishers

Inc.,

10 East 53rd Street,

New

York,

NY

10022.

FIRST EDITION Designer: Publications Development

Company

of Texas

Printed on acid-free paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied

ISBN 0-06-076155-5 04 05 06 07 08

PDC/RRD

10

987654321

for.

To

the six hundred thousand people of Dean for

who

relit

the flame of participatory

And

to the flame

of my

life,

America

democracy

Kathy

Digitized by the Internet Archive in

2012

http://archive.org/details/revolutionwillnoOOtrip

God

we

forbid

rebellion

.

.

.

should ever be twenty years without such a

what country can preserve

its

liberties, if its rulers are

not warned from time to time that this people preserve the

spirit

of

resistance?

—Thomas

Jefferson

Send lawyers, guns and money

The

shit has hit the fan

—Warren Zevon

CONTENTS

Introduction:

December 2003

xi

Part

I

GET ON THE PLANE

1

The Beginning: Planes,

2

The

3

The Horror: Thomas Jefferson,

Politics,

and Pez Dispensers

Campaign: Jimmy Hogan,

First

3

Gadient, and the PDP-11

Irv

Willie Horton,

and

Governor Moonbeam

4

The Moment:

Killer

15

33

Apps, Open Source, and The Guy

Part

51

II

THE PLACE WHERE THE FUTURE HAPPENS

5

Vermont: Phish, Chicken Dinners, and the Deanie Babies

6

New

York:

Regime Change, September

11,

and

Pennies from Heaven

7

95

Jumping from a Fifteen-Story

Building: Puerto Rico, the

Russert Primary, and Overlooking Snail Mail

8

The Open Source Campaign: Hockey Sticks, the Sleepless

9 10

The

Fall:

Summer

73

115 Troll

Bats,

and 135

Tour

A .357 Magnum,

Al Gore,

and the Left Wing Freak Show

The End: Murder/Suicide, Harley Davidson, and Going Home

157 181

x

CONTENTS

Part

III

SEIZING POWER IN THE INTERNET AGE

11

The Beginning— 1956: Google, Napster, and the Disney Dweeb

12

The Age of the Internet: A

and Jefferson's Revenge

201

Little Rebellion, Trent Lott,

221

Appendix on the Web

237

Acknowledgments

239

Index

243

INTRODUCTION

December 2003

guy I

is

can

Hyhave

feel

it.

I

have a sense about these things, especially in Iowa.

kind of clairvoyance in Iowa.

a

While

posts,

staffers

our campaign has grown sick with

politics: infighting

I

can smell death in Iowa.

I

some of the

the candidate smiles and

White House of the old

about to crash and burn in an Iowa cornfield.

daydream about

symptoms

the

all

and petty jealousy among the campaign

staff,

by the candidate, cannibalistic ads by the other Democratic con-

gaffes

tenders

—

all

of

it

beneath the steady eyes of the scavenger

political press,

always on the lookout for stray hunks of flesh.

No, we're going down.

And

the worst part

months of scraping and runway,

—

ing

I

now

I

window and

want

who

—and

the rest of the

the wings are

sees

I

can do. After

coming

crew

down

is

the

celebrat-

off.

it.

is

telling

me

to get out.

can't.

For the better part of a year,

I

signed on

as

Howard Back when

have been the one person inside

Dean's presidential campaign saying that I

nothing more

out.

Every fiber of my being I

is

cajoling and pleading just to get the plane

the only one

desperately

But

There

that we're finally aloft

look out the

And I'm

this:

is

we

could actually win.

campaign manager, back when we had seven people on

staff,

$100,000 in the bank, and only four hundred thirty-two known supporters,

when you answered the phones yourself or they just kept ringing, back when Howard Dean was little more than an asterisk, the last name on a long back

list

of Democratic presidential candidates,

the eye and telling them: Look, we're

Now,

here

it is

I

was the one looking people

gonna win

this frickin' thing.

the end of 2003, and we're actually

the polls, in the process of raking in

in

more than $50

on

top,

ahead in

million, $15.8 million

INTRODUCTION

xii

in this fund-raising quarter alone

tions of $100 or

own! From

And whose

less.

the quarter before.

up supporters, not just people

lievers,

are

who

now

—

a

a record

—most of

from small dona-

it

we

fund-raising record are

We

beating?

bunch of chicken-dinner donors, but

activists, be-

have never been politically involved before and

new

who

Through them, we have

living and breathing this campaign.

tapped into a whole

Our

have an army of almost 600,000 fired-

vein of democracy and proven the Internet

as a

Now everyone is paying attention.

The labor unions are beginning to endorse us. Al Gore has endorsed us. The media that we had to beg for coverage a few months ago has all but coronated Howard Dean as the Democratic nominee. We got the covers of Time and vibrant political tool.

We

Newsweek. are

are the story.

beginning to

gonna win

And

mumble what

finally the other people in the

I've

been screaming for

Hey, we're

this frickin' thing.

Only I don't believe it anymore. The Iowa caucuses are a little more than

Our momentum

bleeding.

a year:

campaign

is

gone.

a

month away and we

Our message

is

getting

lost.

are

We're

our time and energy deflecting attacks from other campaigns.

spending

all

Our guy

has

disaster on the road. The unscripted when he was the longest shot is now being played Tourette's. The press continually mangles the con-

become an unmitigated

candor that served him

of political

like a sort

text of what he says,

amping up

his

words

in their

own

cynical version of

"Twist and Shout." We've got no adults with him on the road soned

people

political

— and

The young Dean

so, naturally, he's

staffers

—

all

gaffing his

way

energy and idealism

what's about to happen. For most of them, this

is

—no

sea-

across Iowa.

—have

no idea

their first presidential

and

they don't realize that the only thing longer than the hours are the odds of

Some of them

winning.

might work death-wisher

and work This

And

—

the really crazy ones

among them who might someday

is I

my

guard.

I

bug and

forget

how

hard

this

was

seventh.

can see

to pay

is

the

a third.

it

coming

apart.

I

can see that we've gone to the lead too

soon, that the other candidates are bearing there

—have caught

second presidential. There could even be the odd addict or

a

when an

down on

us.

I

know what

hell

insurgent catches the mainstream party leaders off

can practically hear the guns swinging around, the sights settling

on our back.

I've

worked too many caucuses

in

Iowa

to not immediately

INTRODUCTION

xiii

recognize the signs of this thing: the squabbling, the spending, the negative ads, the constant press scrutiny.

I

can see

all

of it beginning to take

its toll.

I can see that we just weren't ready. Not for this. Howard Dean launched his presidential campaign, he made the dubious decision to seal many of his records as governor of Vermont for a

Most of all,

Before

decade

—

saying that he didn't want "anything embarrassing appearing in

the papers at a critical time in any future endeavor." Well,

time now, and his decision has come back to bite us in the

who promised

date

new, open

a

eleven years' worth of

a critical

ass, this

candi-

of democracy hiding more than

style

memos and

it's

files

from the only major

office he's

ever held.

So here we

are, in early

December 2003, and

the senior staff has de-

cided to meet with the governor to plead our case for releasing the records.

About

fifteen of us have gathered in the long conference

Vermont

floor of a stale office building in South Burlington, rebel

campaign had

now

the

—and he

up

we

We

rise.

are

—everything

can't say out of

a

one side of

his

mouth

about to

is

here.

that he

while out of the other side say that his

politics,

this

He is attract new

new kind of pressure

he does and says will

the third

—where

explain that everything

under

frontrunner

scrutiny clean

unlikely

its

and that

hit critical mass,

room on

own

wants to

records are

off-limits for a frickin' decade.

We lot

tell

him

that

of things, but

we

it's

show up

starting to

double-talking politician.

The Dean

him

America campaign

for

of that ... a grassroots, reform candidacy breaking

making people

We

in the polls.

can't survive having people see

all

can survive a

as just is

another

the antithesis

the old rules and

believe in politics again.

"You've got to His eyes are

release the records,

set,

and

his

open

face

Governor." is

pulled back defensively into that

tree-trunk neck. "But there's nothing in there." "If there's nothing in there, then

"But

there's

"That's

why we

go around in

have to release them." release

them when

circles like this until

mate could have been stubbornness talking about records."

it.

should release them."

nothing in there."

"But why should we

We

we

"I

would

rather

there's

nothing in there?"

Governor Dean

—ends

—whose running

the debate by saying he's done

withdraw from the

race than release those

INTRODUCTION

xiv

We're

quiet.

all

campaign

The frontrunner

Governor Dean nods

ends,

in the

threatening to quit, while he

is

my

in

2003 Democratic

still

has the lead.

presidential

The meeting

direction and chokes out the words,

"Follow me, Joe." try to keep up, but he's striding

I

and I'm

down

straggling fifteen feet

down

the hallway toward

behind him, reassuring

my office,

staffers as

I

move

the hall.

My

office

is

in the corner of the third floor, a long

narrow gash of a

—

room a crash site of paper, CD cases, and empty Diet Pepsi cans. Howard Dean is standing against the wall, his back to me. He's shaking. "You made this too easy," he manages to say. "What?" "This.

ask.

I

never thought

I

would go

it

this far.

an

change the country. But

never thought

He

understand?"

wanted

I

to

.

.

.

issue,

was going

this

I

my

would happen. Don't you

turns and faces me. "I never thought

but

to raise

shake up the Democratic Party. Help

profile, raise health care as I

I

never really thought

it

I

could actually win.

could happen."

1

SURGE OF POWER I've spent cases,

my life moving from

motel rooms and rental

one election to the next, living out of suit-

cars, sleeping

leafleting neighborhoods, writing ads

comebacks trying to get

you can imagine

a succession

—from

on couches, knocking on doors,

and speeches and snappy debate

of Democrats elected to every office

city attorneys to U.S. senators,

several unsuccessful runs at electing the president of the

In twenty-eight years,

hundred campaigns.

some

and

lost

for

some of

whom

I

I

would guess

that, to this

that

I

worked on more than

than

I

I

worked first

for a candidate

got

me

who

saying he didn't want to be president.

room

that day.

It's

tapped into the original

into politics

Slightly different versions of this story have appeared in various

the

a

I

would've had trouble punching the hole for myself.

well of idealism that

as

to

States.

my share, some that shouldn't have, nearly killed myself day, still break my heart. a few of whom seemed born to lead, some of

won more

these people,

Occasionally,

1

I

from mayors

United

worth noting

— an

eleven-year-old

media reports quoting Howard

that only

Howard Dean and

I

were

in

INTRODUCTION

TV

xv

Bobby Kennedy walked off the stage toward his assassination, a gauntlet of hands, black and brown and white, reaching out to him, for more than just his plan to erase poverty or to end the Vietnam War. Hands that seemed to reach out for some kind of boy watching on

as

deliverance.

who

Like a lot of sick twists

me were

elections for

the candidate. tool at

my

ponent look

always about the candidate.

would work

I

disposal.

I

spooned every night with

I

would do anything

to the point of exhaustion.

would write

like a polluting,

would do anything

practice politics as a career, before 2003,

I

for

would use every

television attack ads that

made

the op-

Medicare-hating, bribe-taking sociopath

who

businessmen and convicted murderers.

fat-cat

for the people

I

was trying to

elect.

My loyalty to

I

them

was everything.

And

then this thing happened.

When Howard

Dean's bid for the presidency finally did

burn (not in an Iowa corn

field, as it

ballroom), a cynical, middle-aged campaign consultant seen

it all,

work

to

who

win

thought he

elections at

pected lesson of his

This time,

it

it all,

who

an old pro who'd

thought he'd

made

it

his life's

life.

wasn't about the candidate It

my

life,

at all. It

was about the people.

was about them.

amazing thing happened in the

the first time in

crash-and-

learned the most profound and unex-

all costs,

This was never about him.

An

knew

its

turned out, but onstage in an Iowa

maybe

presidential contest of 2004: For

the first time in history, a candidate lost

but his campaign won.

When

Governor Dean stood in

my

office

and admitted that even he

hadn't expected to be thrust into the lead for the Democratic presidential

nomination, he was saying what I'd

known

for months.

That

this

was big-

ger than him. Certainly bigger than me. Bigger than the Democratic Party.

Bigger even than determining

who

ran against George

W. Bush

in the gen-

eral election.

This was nothing nothing

less

less

than the

first

than the people taking the

shot in America's second revolution, first step to

reclaiming a system that

had long ago forgotten they existed. This was democracy bubbling to the surface, flooding the landscape,

and raising

all

of us

— an obscure North-

eastern governor, his inexperienced supporters, and a handful of old political

warhorses

— along with

it.

INTRODUCTION

xvi

The Dean

for

America campaign arrived

pivotal point in our political history,

had reduced

politics to its basest

when

elements

at just the right

moment

—

forty years of a corrupt system

—

the race to raise

money from

one-quarter of one percent of the wealthiest Americans and corporate

donors in exchange for dictating the policy of the country. Then, the side

with the most money simply bought the most television ads to manipulate the most people

—while

instant polling, focus groups,

and message testing

refined the struggle to a few swing voters in a few key districts in a few

key

blurring any significant differences between the monolithic

states,

parties

war

and destroying honest debate about

in Iraq. Until every candidate

issues like health care

sounded exactly the same, and

and the a

mem-

ber of either party could proudly stand up and proclaim that his party had passed a Patients' Bill of Rights tally,

— an

utterly meaningless bill that, inciden-

didn't provide health care for one single American.

If there

is

a

playbook for

and governing,

politics

istration.

Simply

tell

it

this

type of checkbook, top-down, cynical

was being written by George W. Bush's admin-

the voters that you're going to be compassionate, and

then turn over the keys to the rich guys

who wrote

economy

the environment over to the oil

to the special interests.

companies.

Wage war

Turn

for the people

who wrote

Against this backdrop of transactional

come more

vicious,

more expensive and

more media

savvy,

the checks.

intensive, longer, bigger,

the

the checks.

politics,

more

Hand

campaigns have be-

technologically advanced,

and stronger in every way

except one.

Somewhere along As

elections as

them

—

a

political

Chrysler, a

new bacon-Monterey

So they channel surfed. They tuned

call elections

that,

began viewing

no different than any other product someone was trying to

new

pair of shoes.

our

the line, they lost the voters.

television transformed political campaigns, people

out.

When

before voters have even been to the polls,

system into just another

TV show

sell

cheeseburger, a strapless the networks

when

they turn

(and not a very good one at

something between the World Wrestling Federation and The Real

World)

So

all

they do

that's

From

is

encourage people to turn the channel.

what we

that seminal

did.

We

turned the channel.

moment when

I

watched Robert Kennedy declare

victory and then turn and walk toward his death in 1968, until now, the

involvement of Americans in

all levels

of

politics has fallen precipitously.

INTRODUCTION

xvii

I'm not talking just about the decline in the number of voters in the presidential election (which

plummeted, by about 42 percent

who served on

in

1960 to below 50 percent

The percentage of people who worked

in recent years). also

from 62.8 percent

fell

committee

a

for

some

in the past

30

for a political party years.

local organization fell

The number

by 39 percent.

Thirty-five percent fewer attended public meetings. Thirty-four percent

fewer attended Across process I

—have been

should know. I

—made

hopeless

by

a

hope-killing

was one of them.

I

kept working in politics throughout the 1990s

House candidates

campaigns and began pursuing

first

2

leaving politics in droves.

ads for Senate and

several

or speech.

Americans

board,

the

While

TV

a political rally

my

—

I

—mostly on

eased away from managing

other passion, technology.

I

worked

for

computer and Internet companies, innovative, risk-taking twenty-

century businesses that threw away the old templates and began look-

ing for

new ways

Being

do

to

a political

things.

junkie

at heart,

by the

ing about a campaign that would be run the panies were being run

—not from

the top

began daydream-

late

1990s

way

these revolutionary

down, with

I

a

com-

TV

$200 million

ad budget and a detached board of directors, but from below:

A

campaign

run by the people.

And the race sions,

that's

when Howard Dean came

we had no

choice but to

along, an

test this strategy,

underdog so blending

far

out of

my two

pas-

bringing to the political world the things I'd learned in the techno-

logical world, taking

democracy to the

last

place

where democracy stood

a chance.

The

Internet.

when I made the first inquiry about using an obscure web site called MeetUp.com to link Howard Dean supporters together from around the country, that I knew in a year we'd have 600,000 I'd

be lying

if

I

said that

people passionately committed to our cause. That these people would raise

up the one candidate who actually seemed jected the old politics,

empowering them

2

who

in the

to have convictions,

who

re-

took the people seriously by engaging them and

one place where they could meet him, the one

Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New

York: Simon

&

Schuster, 2000).

INTRODUCTION

xviii

place

sage

where the ubiquitous presence of television couldn't

—on

Internet bulletin boards and

Certainly,

I

had

known

web

that politics

point, just like every other aspect

a

distort his

mes-

rooms and web

logs.

would eventually come

to this

of our society will eventually come to

this point. I'd seen for years that the ingredients

ing

chat

sites,

decaying political system and replacing

it

were there for overthrowwith something responsive

and revolutionary.

But

I'd also

my office

be lying

if

said that

I

Howard Dean was

the only person in

stunned by the sudden power surge of Americans band-

that day

ing together to take back a system that had failed

them

miserably.

A DOT-COM MIRACLE Everyone knows by now how the Dean campaign ended,

in a looped tape

of seemingly misplaced, eleventh-hour enthusiasm ("And Oklahoma! Arizona! ate,

And North

couldn't control, and never understood, the networks and

news media

flexed their atrophying muscles and repeated that clip over and over, it

were Ronald Reagan being

ing,

John Kennedy's Lincoln making

its

sad

way along

It

target over

its

the Dallas streets in

zigging through the dark

and over again, sometimes in slow motion.

was hard to miss the glee with which the old media ran

In the days and

weeks

that followed the

the judgments against the governor and his

His brief burst of momentum had been

had been just another Internet short

I,

as if

Challenger explod-

shot, the space shuttle

1963, or that heat-seeking missile in Gulf War

and hitting

And

Dakota!"). Challenged by something they didn't cre-

fad, a

that clip.

3

end of the Dean campaign,

army of followers were a fluke.

A

dot-com crash

blip.

harsh.

Most of all,

—long

on

it

capital,

on substance.

This

is

In fact,

simply wrong. it

tion of 2004 In fact,

it

was is

a

It

was, in

fact, a

dot-com miracle.

stunning victory that will resonate long after the elec-

forgotten.

was the opening salvo

in a revolution, the

sound of hundreds

of thousands of Americans turning off their televisions and embracing the only form of technology that has allowed them to be involved again, to

3

Of course,

the Internet played a big part in spreading the "I

ing in the most perverse

way just how powerful

the

Have

a

Scream" speech too, prov-

medium had become.

INTRODUCTION

gain control of a process that alienated

weeks and months and by millions, and

years, these

them decades

And

coming

hundreds of thousands will be followed

this revolution will

not be satisfied with overthrowing a

corrupt and unresponsive political system. tics.

ago. In the

xix

It

won't stop

remaking

at

poli-

won't pay attention to national borders.

it

In fact, if every business and civic leader in every sector of the econ-

omy and

in every segment of society doesn't think that in the next decade

Howard Dean-style

they're in for

surprises

from the people they've been

treating with total condescension, they haven't been paying attention.

Every business

that spends

$20,000 to post

watch

web

a static

site that is

Every institution

their backs.

nology

$20 million on television advertising and

and demand what they want had better

the

start

Dean campaign ended and

several people asked if all

better

what they're being given

paying attention.

it

would be

a

I

sat

down

the juicy behind-the-scenes details about

These people

still

don't get

details are these: a

woman who

rise

what went

and sudden

tell-all

right

and

fall.

it.

truth of this campaign, the "tell

hundreds,

to write this book,

standard campaign memoir, a

went wrong during Howard Dean's dramatic

The

month had

revolution comes for you next.

When with

a

that doesn't understand that the tech-

finally here to allow people to reject

is

The

updated once

just

all,"

the juicy behind-the-scenes

sold her bike for

maybe thousands of people

to

democracy and inspired

do the same;

man who

a

raised

$400,000 in one week by himself by doing nothing more than sending out an e-mail; an eighty-nine -year-old

man who

thought he was

said that he

done living until the Dean campaign re-engaged

his life

with meaning and

civic purpose.

Yes, this it's

far

book

more than

For me,

it's

is

the story of a long-shot presidential campaign.

But

that.

the story of *a person

vastly different worlds

—

politics

ing to find himself standing

at

who

spends his

and technology

the place

life

reconciling

two

— and wakes up one morn-

where they're about

to converge, to

crash together and begin reversing fifty years of political cynicism in one

glorious explosion of civic re-engagement. It's

the story of dozens of

campaign unlike any in mistakes

we made, and

committed people who waged

history. It's about the things that

the lessons

we learned

we

a political

did right, the

that can be applied to every

xx

INTRODUCTION

election, every product, every issue in lied behind, a politician

the country's path

when

who had all

America.

It's

about the

the courage to stand

the others

man we

ral-

up and question

seemed to want nothing more than

to hide.

But most of all selves heard.

alogue,

and

how

It's

it's

to reach

start listening to

tionary idea to

the story of people standing

them where they them,

come along

No, I'm not

up and making them-

the story of how to engage those Americans in a real di-

how

to

live,

make

talking about the

I'm talking about democracy.

to stop selling to

them

better use of the most revolu-

man learned to light a fire. Internet. Or computers. Or telecom-

since the first

munications.

how

GET ON THE PLANE

THE BEGINNING Planes, Politics, and Pez Dispensers

was born It

when everything started going to hell. full dawn of the television age, when

right

was 1956,

the

number of

households with televisions topped 75 percent and when, not coincidentally,

American

downward in

spiral.

American

and

political

life,

In

civic

my lifetime,

involvement was beginning

television has

become

political

est civilization in history. If the

the Aztecs by brutality, and the

and

social

Greeks were

a

Romans by

long

dominant force

At the same time,

affecting every part of our culture.

began to erode some of the

the

its

it

underpinnings of the greatpeople destroyed by hubris,

arrogance, Americans at the

turn of the twenty-first century were a culture in danger of being ruined

by Must See TV. Television's impact has been so overwhelming, so insidious, that

nated by

it is

impossible for some people to imagine a world not domi-

to believe that

it,

something new could

rise

up and break TV's

fifty-year spell of cynicism and powerlessness.

But

I

And

We

have seen

it.

so have you.

saw

it

when an army of nineteen-year-olds

the recording industry to

where small blogs to

demand

We're seeing

gramming,

its

knees. We're seeing

investors are beginning to

it

accountability

it

in corporate America,

band together on web

from the companies they own

with TiVo and American Idol and

as television

used Napster to bring

a

sites

and

shares in.

flood of reality pro-

desperately tries to remake itself in the image of

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

4

We

the Internet.

government

their

in China,

where

citizens used the Internet to get

to confront the

AIDS

epidemic and in the Philippines,

saw

it

where demonstrations organized by text messaging drove out the president of the country.

And we saw

it

most

recently, in the

United

Howard Dean's

States, in

insurgent bid for the presidency.

For twenty years, people have been calling

what tion

it is. is

What

This power

the

of computers, the

—

really distributing

is

new paradigm of power

technology

from

empowerment

—which

new

shifting

is

is

this

down, hording information

all

now

we're really in

power, then

tribute information

a

this era

and telecommunications the "information age." But

Internet,

is

age. If

informa-

the first to evenly dis-

power.

institutions that have always

how

at the top, telling us

that

that's not

been run top

run our

to

lives,

to

democratically distributed and shared by

is

of us. believe that

I

of this country.

what we do with

that

power

believe that the Internet

I

believe that Americans will use

the

is

will determine the course

hope for democracy.

last

I

in the next decade to bring about a total

it

transformation of politics, business, education, and entertainment. Personally,

who I

I

can't wait.

Ever since

my

plane.

I

and

I

.

on

.

was

.

been the kind of person

even those things that scare

had

a kid, I've

tell

me why,

vivid, so real

— and

it

I

to death.

that

I

have to get on an

but they are adamant that

that plane. It's important.

was seven or eight when

me

me

nightmare. In the dream,

this recurring

family are frantically telling

They won't

gotta get

I've always

on change, the kind of person who runs headlong into things

thrives

don't understand

friends

But then,

first

You have

to get

began having

on

this

I

do

it:

air-

"You

that plane."

dream.

It

was

was the same every time: "You gotta get on

so

that

plane. In the nightmare, the

same thing always happens: the plane

and rocks and eventually goes into blows up in

a big fiery explosion.

a dive, hurtles

As

befits

sputters

toward the ground, and

someone who wakes up every

other morning having just died in a plane crash,

I

grew up

terrified

of air-

planes and of flying. I

think that most people,

would find

a

way

when confronted with

to avoid flying at

all costs.

this

kind of phobia,

THE BEGINNING

Not me. fear,

I

became obsessed with

learned everything

I

to take

them

apart,

and

hunched over models.

how

my hands on. When was old enough,

could get land.

I

I

I

as a

way

learned

them back together

they

again.

book and magazine about

my

conquer

to

why

I

fly,

how

spent hours

planes that

I

went to the airport to watch planes take off and

I

And, eventually, adult

to put

read every

I

Maybe

flying.

could about planes.

I

S

I

got jobs

at airports

working around

planes.

chose a career that meant I'd be on airplanes most of my

life.

In the end,

believe this

I

rational fear like that

—

to put

is

the only effective

way

to deal

with an

ir-

your mind to work on the problem, to turn

the fear of flying into an understanding of it, a sense of wonder at the mir-

of human

acle

understand the fear of communication and information technolo-

I

gies.

flight.

I

know

fuse to

there are corporate and political leaders

who,

to this day, re-

acknowledge the immense and mostly untapped potential of the

why you call the Internet a fad, why you comfort yourself by believing that we left all that nonsense behind in a speculative stock bust. I know what motivates you to say that it costs too much, that it's going to open the world up to new problems, that if you jump too soon into this new technology, you'll fall Internet.

I

know why you

belittle

technology,

out of the sky. You're afraid of this force you do not understand and cannot control. You'll check your e-mails, or run a search engine, but you'd like the Inter-

net to remain

static, like television,

where the shows might change, or the

screen might get bigger, but for fifty years, the stayed the same.

It's like

the person

who

get on a plane, but doesn't

want

ignorance; once you

.

.

.

you'll also have to confront It's

natural to fear things

thing has generally

swallows his fear long enough to

lurking behind that fear

is

damn

to think about

why it stays aloft. Always know why the plane flies

why sometimes it doesn't. we don't understand. But

in this era

warp-speed technological discovery that we've been in for more than teen years

—when gadgets seem become manual — of change to

reading the soon)

is

obsolete before you've finished its

related fear of changing too

a terminal condition.

I've got

who

(and

fear

of

fif-

news

for

you

politicians

and business people and anyone

has let your fear of technology keep

else

you from understanding and

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

6

embracing the Internet. This distant future

And

dominant technology

the

is

—but of tomorrow, of next week, of now.

—not of some

you're almost out of time.

The quantum

coming

steps are

now and

faster

the rate of change

is

The stop and start of the dot-com boom and nothing more than the jet engines stalling, and then

about to become blinding. bust will seem like

rumbling to

life,

Governor Dean

told

I

doesn't admit that this technology

America

the process of transforming

As

who

and anyone

you have

fly,

to get

on the

in

going to miss the takeoff.

in the beginning of his unlikely

for the presidency: In order to win,

you can

is

is

you

campaign

can't be afraid of losing. Before

plane.

THE FIRST CANPAIGH I

grew up

when

I

in Los Angeles in the 1960s and early 1970s.

was three and

San Jose.

two

We

Boulevard.

and divorced again, so

a tiny

sisters in

were very poor

—but my

poor

tireless

I

It

was

at a

with

my two

—hand-me-down

poor, water-on-your-

mother, Peggy, found a

way

to

make

it

work,

at

Denny's in the

my

passion for air-

nightclub until well after midnight.

in that house

planes and technology.

It

on Sunset was

black-and-white television vision of politics, of

first

lived

house on the wrong end of Sunset

supporting five kids by working two waitress jobs,

morning and

My parents split up

hundred miles to the north, in

father lived four

My mom remarried

brothers and

cereal

my

set in

its

that

I

first

found

also in that house,

1968,

when

I

crouched in front of our

was eleven,

that

I

had

my

power, of its ability to inspire and transform

people, and also of its potential for tragedy. I

the

can

still

see

Bobby Kennedy walking

Ambassador Hotel

and making there!").

I

in Los Angeles

his victory speech

—just

("Now

it's

into that packed ballroom at a

few miles from

on

to

was cheering in front of the television

ballroom through

his supporters,

watching the confused reaction

as

house let's

win

he was led out of the

and into the kitchen, and

—people running,

my

Chicago and

I

was stunned

—

pointing, crying

after

Sirhan Sirhan shot him.

Our neighborhood was black, white,

much

color

very poor and racially mixed: equal parts

and brown; one of those neighborhoods where there was so

no one much noticed, or cared

— and where

the newest toy

THE BEGINNING

was any baseball

that

still

rounded by poverty,

had

its

When

stitches intact.

you grow up

and democracy are not abstract

social justice

7

sur-

ideas.

Hunger and joblessness are not just statistics when you see people lined up and unemployment checks. I watched my own mother work

for welfare

stubbornly to do everything she could to stay out of the welfare line

then watched her cry and think she'd failed

when sometimes

to put food on the table was to relent and stand in that

the only

line.

Years

when Ronald Reagan yapped on and on about Welfare queens

my

limousines,

While

way

later,

in their

skin crawled.

wasn't overtly political until

I

—and

saw growing up reinforced the sensation assassination: the

was

I

I

in college, the Los Angeles

I

had watching Bobby Kennedy's

world was an unfair place that needed improvement, and

every once in a while someone special stepped up to do something about it

—sometimes

at

great sacrifice.

In high school,

where

my

worked

I

grades

left

ran track and occasionally found myself in

I

enough

just hard

to

remain

something to be desired

athletically eligible.

you desired

(unless

Cs).

class,

And I

had

so a

named Marc Cobb, a black guy who lived in Watts and ran track with me, and one day Marc mentioned that he was getting ready to take friend

the Standardized

Achievement Test

"The what?" I asked. So Marc dragged me down about Marc,

me,

to

I

if

to get into college.

to take the test

my

he has any idea that he saved

crushed that

test,

with him.

I

often

wonder

Surprisingly, mostly

life.

scored around 1500. Suddenly colleges were

contacting me. I

tics. I

as

chose San Jose State University, where

an all-night desk clerk

for

I

wanted

put myself through college, working after

my

father,

tough old pected

me

at a

seedy hotel.

I

to study aeronau-

class at a

also

pizza place and

drove a delivery truck

who had moved his florist shop to San Jose. He was a who considered college a waste of time and fully extake over the business when I was done messing around

Sicilian

to

with school.

One minding

day during

my own

walking from

my

freshman year, in 1974,

business,

when

table to table.

I

saw

At each

a

guy with

table,

explained that his

hair

in the cafeteria

down

to his ass,

he'd stop and say something,

and the people would shake their heads no.

He

was

I

Finally,

name was Dennis Driver and

he got to that he

my

table.

was running

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

8

body president

for student

New

as part

of

a

group called the Alliance for

a

Democracy. But to run for president, he had to have a whole

of candidates on his ticket and he needed one more name for the

slate

student council.

"Can

I

When

put your I

name down?" he

looked skeptical, he

said,

asked.

"Look, don't worry about

man.

it,

You won't win or anything. I just need a name for this slot." I let him put my name down and it turned out Dennis was right. The Alliance for a New Democracy was a lark, the fringest of fringe parties. In fact, of the twenty or so names he had on his clipboard, there would be only one winner.

Me. had made the

I

first political

blunder of

my

career: underestimating

name Trippi on a college campus in The only candidates that I could possibly have lost to would have to be named Jimmy Acid or Tom Mescaline. So I was on the student council. The next year, I was the student body vice president. Politics was my new airplane. I loved it. I became a shaggythe value of a candidate with the last the year 1974.

haired activist, leading the fight for campus parking, starting an indepen-

dent newspaper, and reviving an edgy, defunct literary magazine.

One day, I was reading the daily San Jose News, when I noticed a front-page story about of the story was that

gist

tially assured

this

of retaining

newspaper, the Mercury

his seat

because the filing date had passed and

no serious challengers had surfaced. The nents was an African American

threatening of his oppo-

least

woman named

Iola Williams.

implied, at least to me, that Iola couldn't possibly Jose,

which was only 3 percent

I

can't

tell

you how much

asked

if

I

I

that story pissed

was outraged. So

could walk

The

story

win

in a city like

San

off.

She can't win

be-

black.

me

cause she's black? This was 1975 in San Jose, California.

vannah, Georgia.

The

a city council race.

longtime councilman, Joe Colla, was essen-

I

a precinct for her.

Not 1955

in Sa-

got on the phone, called Iola and

Then

I

waded out among

the tidy

ranchers and split-levels in San Jose and knocked on doors, asking people to support Iola Williams.

A

couple of days later

only two hundred and forty precincts in if

I

all

I

did

it

of San Jose, and

could just get two hundred students to go with me,

entire city of

San Jose in

a day.

So

that's

again.

what we

did.

we

I

There were realized that

could walk the

THE BEGINNING

9

win, but her surprising showing kept Joe Colla from

Iola didn't

reaching 50 percent, and forced a runoff with the guy in second place, Jerry Estruth. Iola called Jerry and offered her endorsement, but asked a

me

condition that he hire

work on

to

walk the

thing, got the college students to

who

beat Colla.

And when

would go on

I

as

did the same

time for Estruth,

city, this

another city councilman was forced to resign

Williams was appointed to

after a scandal, Iola

years later,

campaign. So

his

to be the first African

his position and, a

American elected

few

to the

San Jose City Council.

Around

the

same time, the president of San Jose

State,

John Bunzel, was

giving a series of speeches about the Alan Bakke reverse-discrimination

which was before the U.S. Supreme Court. Bunzel argued

suit,

Bakke had been wronged by the system,

was

that affirmative action

a

that

hor-

rible thing.

knew it, I was on the front page of the Mercury-News, leadstudent movement calling for Bunzel's resignation. We took our case

Before ing a

I

which

to the city council,

called for Bunzel's resignation.

We

petitioned

the governor. Finally, in 1978,

Not long Still a

few

John Bunzel resigned from San Jose

after that,

already helped

I

also resigned

of graduating,

credits shy

win two

seats

from San Jose

my

About

life:

work

that time

naturally mature

is

students in the Draft

on the City Council, and was

vote,

1

was contacted by

make

He would

civil rights

knew what

key organI

wanted

I

called David,

is all I

to

well-spoken, and pretersur-

only a year older than you) to organize San Jose

want

me to

Edward Kennedy

When Kennedy finally

who was

into Iowa.

do

to get Senator

I

the California

want

in the world.

I

to

announced

campus organ-

do advance

want

his

for Senator

to get people out to

sure they turn out."

resurface in 1980,

chairman of

a bright,

Kennedy movement,

"David, you gotta get

Kennedy. This

I

a

fulltime in politics.

1980 presidential campaign.

candidacy in 1979, izer:

State University.

guy named David Bender (one of those people you're

prised to find out

into the

I

1

was twenty-two years old and had

I

izer in a drive that ousted a university president.

do with

State University.

his civil rights

when Reagan was

commission

— an

elected president and appointed Bunzel as the

Orwellian appointment

commission chairman who didn't seem

if

ever there was one: a

to believe in civil rights.

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

10

David

"Joe,"

What

ahead.

At that point,

me

cruited

not advance. Advance

said, "that's

you're talking about

only

I

for the

is

when you go

knew two guys

in politics,

both of whom had re-

Kennedy campaign, David, and an outgoing young ad-

vance guy named Jon Haber. If Jon was advance, that's what

wanted to

do

to be.

out

field."

is

"Look,

I

don't give a shit what

it's

called,"

I

thought

I

said. "I just

I

want

it."

A few days later,

Get

the call came.

my ass

to

Des Moines, Iowa.

I

was

ecstatic.

Months

earlier, in

Bank of America

my

role as a

campus

agitator, I'd led protests against

for supporting apartheid

Africa. Unfortunately, a

caught in the crossfire

by doing business in South

row of businesses near

—

businesses

the

campus

in

San Jose got

whose owners had loans with Bank of

America and who wouldn't have known South Africa from South Dakota, and couldn't understand what the ruckus was about.

One

of those businesses was

When my

me

dad asked

my

father's flower shop.

to stop,

I

me

and

asking him, "Can't you control our

own

what

It

I

believed

hurt, but

He

in.

looked

looked

I

at

at

him and

So he was already furious with out of school to go

work on

a

told

him

that

was fighting for

I

said that people at the

bank were

son?"

shot back, "Tell

me when

'em no, you

he found out

campaign, to be

—

in his

I

can't."

was dropping

words

— "a bum"

and "a hack." In late 1979,

business forever.

I

It

packed

my

would be

things and left San Jose, out of the florist

five years before

my father and I would speak

again.

DAWN OF THE GEEKS I

wanted

to

change the whole

Nothing

Whether

it

short of that

was taking on

damn

world.

was worth getting out of bed

my own

in the

morning.

university president over affirmative

action or defeating apartheid in South Africa, the only direction to

was forward:

Do

it

better, fix problems, advance.

move

That was the attraction

of politics. Bobby Kennedy's message was one of progressive democracy not governing for the sake of governing, but bringing everyone forward, lifting the

poor and oppressed, raising the quality of life for

all

Americans.

THE BEGINNING

If politics isn't a force for change, if

isn't

it

committed

to putting poverty

and crime and racism and war behind us, then what good

why

improve the world, then

can't

appeal of the Democratic Party

—

the hell bother?

I

suppose that was the

was conservative and reactionary, intent on keeping the worse

—

the other side

quo

status

—

or

rolling back the clock.

was frustrated by the pace of change

I

If politics

is it?

moved forward while

it

11

sistance to

there was

it.

people, then to propel

wanted

desperately

I

to see

some method of getting there wanted

I

it.

Years

Howard Dean's

later,

in

America, and outraged by re-

what tomorrow looked

faster,

when we

some

first

like.

tool to involve

If

more

began using the Internet

presidential candidacy, people

were shocked

that

technology could play such an important role in the regressive, alwaysdone-it-this-way world of politics.

What

did a

bunch of geeks hunched

over keyboards have to do with running the country?

For me, well

—

the balls-out desire for progress, the idea that the greatest force for

political

and

them

change in America has always been the ingenuity and

social

creativity of

give

and high tech have always sprung from the same

politics

people, and that if you bring

its

the tools

—

enough of them together and

a candidate,

a petition,

a

—they

computer

could

transform the world.

From

the beginning,

And

technology.

if

I

was

of these two fathers

a child

enthralled with the world of political organizing, a full-fledged

Even really see

it's

began to lean away from aeronautics

I

spending the I

also

of

rest

continued to

my

life

in

as a

.

.

like Laser

where

career

some room figuring

and

I

became

I

became

Holography.

—shooting

doing

a

red-beam

I

(I

lift

couldn't

drag co-

around the San Jose State physics depart-

loiter

ment, randomly signing up for the most speculative science .

politics

technology addict.

after

efficients),

—

San Jose State in the mid-1970s was where

classes available

had no idea that the primitive work laser off the face

of a quarter to capture

three-dimensional image of George Washington in a plate of glass

be the same process thirty years

later

I

a

was

shiny

—would

used in the holograms that appear on

credit cards to foil counterfeiters.

As

it

computer

turned out, San Jose was one of the birthplaces of the coming age,

fascinating that ling

and so everywhere I

I

turned someone was doing something

had to find out about.

computer science

labs,

I

was especially drawn to the fledg-

with their huge proto-computers

—room-size

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

12

behemoths

reel-to-reel

processing power

The

that

cell

IBM

on

that ran

your

phone has

index cards and didn't have the today.

generation of geeks was everywhere, walking around Bay

first

Area campuses, staring off into space, mumbling computer code, already beginning to plot their binary takeover, and

world

as

jacket,

was

I

was one of them. Beneath

I

some new device came out even

it,

if

It's a classic

earliest users.

was

I

that

for extra

bushy hair and

hunched over

a

money. The minute

promised to help change the world,

I

had

was the only one.

problem with technology, the

when

For instance,

clearly a

my

just another gadget-obsessed geek,

computer screen, repairing pinball machines

to have

as easily in their

did in the campaign headquarters of Iola Williams.

I

Okay. Full disclosure:

denim

moved

I

groundbreaking invention, but

Americans had

years before 10 percent of

rate

the telephone

a

of penetration for the

was developed it

in 1876,

would be nearly

phone

it

thirty

in their house.

For

Graham Bell nor the phone company had any new technology would become because they

decades, neither Alexander

how

idea

powerful their

hadn't figured out

Of course,

how

if I'd

to get

it

into the hands of users yet.

been around in 1880,

my

four people with a phone, sitting in

my

just traded

going to

call

tractor for,

me.

I

would have been one of those

I

farmhouse staring

who bought

was the guy

Radio Shack and bought the Trash-80 by

those sleep-deprived guys

first

its

phone

lines.

I

TRS-80

users, reporters for big city

little

failed, brick-sized

or three years too early and

I

owned

remember, in the 1970s

ders of my friends into a primitive

of numbers

with

a

at

network

to

newspapers and

Shack

all

day) and

else in the

called the

is

precursor to

.

.

.

over

all

the

Palm

Pilots

with gadgets that arrived two

filled

almost every one of them.

San Jose

State, staring

over the shoul-

computer monitor and watching

scroll across the screen,

guy somewhere

fledgling

down

cuplet to transfer information

and PDAs. The technology graveyard

also

raced

was even the proud owner of an Apple Newton, the

much-beloved, ultimately

I

I

portable computer (affection-

who hung around Radio

snugged the telephone into the the

thing I'd

the $2,000 calculator (with half

the functions of today's five dollar digital wristwatch).

ately called the

at the

wondering when the other three people were

computer code

country staring

ARPAnet, an

that

at his

a

bunch

was being shared

computer, over

old defense department

this

com-

puter network and the precursor of what would later become the Internet.

THE BEGINNING

From

moment

the

it

was

first

drawn up

as a

way

13

comput-

to increase

ing power by connecting researchers' computers, the Internet was a singularly

democratic and open network. The

network

—before

Gates and Microsoft had the darkly brilliant idea of

Bill

—was open and

licensing and selling this stuff to other

programmers,

they could improve

operating system for this

initial

who were and

it

source code was available

its

invited to mess around with

pass the

it,

to see if

new-and-improved version on

to the

next person to tinker with and improve some more. As the technology

guru Howard Rheingold wrote

in his

was deliberately designed by hackers

to

book Smart Mobs, "The

Internet

be an innovation commons,

a lab-

oratory for collaboratively creating better technologies."

This ground-up architecture

is

what sparked the dynamic growth

computers and, eventually, the Internet

make

to innovate, to

anyone

it

better.

—

this

open invitation

Anyone could contribute

in

to improve,

to this system,

and

government, corporate and university researchers and soon

did:

fifteen-year-old kids in their basements. All over San Jose,

world that was screens

—but

—

a

all

over the country, people were envisioning not the

bunch of fuzzy numbers flashing over black and white

the world that could be: a network, a

sharing information:

life stories

and computing

web of computer

tips, recipes for

users

cookies and

petitions to abolish apartheid. It

was

a thrilling, intoxicating time,

would have happened

if,

I'd stayed in Silicon Valley

college

who

and

sometimes wonder what

I

instead of deciding to indulge

with

my

computer

soon found himself working with

find other computer users

who might

my

peers, like

political half,

one friend from

handful of other people to

a

be able to help

his friend's

wife buy

old Pez dispensers.

The

little

community they

built, eBay,

lion registered users. This year they will

now

buy and

has about forty-five milsell

$52 billion worth of

Pez dispensers, baseball cards, sewing patterns, and whatever their fancy.

munity,

But eBay

a city

and commerce, rise up,

and in

is

more than

a multibillion dollar business;

else strikes it is

a

com-

of people broken into neighborhoods by hobby and interest a

community of people who,

a single

day change the world

if

they banded together, could

all

by themselves.

THE FIRST CAMPAIGN Jimmy Hogan,

There's one thing

Irv

Gadient, and the PDP-11

most people don't understand about

that

a presi-

dential campaign:

Everything.

Working day-to-day on job on the planet.

It's a

a presidential

campaign

is

unlike any other

thankless job, an outrageously difficult job, the

most emotionally draining, physically taxing, stress-creating job you can imagine, and

when

it's

done,

it

almost always ends in

total, abject failure.

Since 1968, sixty-three serious candidates have run for president

Democratic

Two

ticket.

on the

have won. That's two in thirty- five years.

other sixty-one have gone

home

The

broke, beaten, and exhausted. This

—working

hard enough on the candidate, but for the staff

is

twenty- hour

days with no days

off,

desperately trying to do the impossible, and dying

with every misstep

—

the psychological equivalent of self-mutilation.

it's

There's no glory in working on

a presidential

campaign. Whatever

glory there might be goes to the candidate. There's no prestige.

No

you get any

perks.

sleep at

You all.

sleep

money

on motel beds, or on couches or

Dinner

is

a slice

of pizza or

a race

in

it.

No

in cars, if

through

a drive-

through window.

Working day-to-day on stupidest

And

human endeavor I

a presidential

campaign

ever conceived.

believe everyone should do

it

once.

is

undoubtedly the

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

16

In

November 1979, when

I

left

San Jose, California, and drove

gold Ford Pinto 1,800 miles to Des Moines, Iowa, ever

be

my

was eager to do what-

could to get Ted Kennedy elected president. This was not going to

I

Kennedy had what we now

easy.

call

cumbent

president.

fallen,

was

it

Even though President Jimmy

Carter's popularity had

and to attempt

party,

But

this

was

to defeat a sitting president

was considered

it

political

of

to get into politics, heir to the throne

America.

I

was

and honored.

thrilled

when he gets to work on down the halls.

My

first

a bright,

man who'd

liberal

inspired

Democratic

me

politics in

did what every foolish kid does

I

his first presidential

campaign:

I

did somersaults

assignment in Des Moines was to go to the airport and pick

who were flying in. One of them was young guy named Tony Pappas, who until a few days earlier had

a couple

worked

from your own

blasphemy.

Kennedy, the brother of the

a

taking a sharp

running against an in-

unheard of

still

was

also

that wasn't enough, he

all

"character issues," and was the

when America was

nation's preeminent liberal at a time right turn. If

up

I

of other

field organizers

in the Carter

not get where

White House. People can work

Tony had

paying position to

their

whole

lives

and

gotten, but he'd just quit this prestigious, decent-

work long hours

in the field for

Ted Kennedy

for fif-

teen bucks a day, hoping that by some miracle he could get Kennedy, and

maybe

himself, to the

White House

.

.

.

the very place

Tony Pappas had

just quit!

Right away with I

I

knew

all

home

felt at

this collection

of cynical

in this

Campaign

especially, Trail.

I

organizing legend

The guys

Hunter

S.

I

met on

shot of adrenaline

the

—

organizing

a self-described "grassroots

Kennedy campaign were tireless, fearless,

like

who

field-

gun-

George McGovern in 1972.

from going over the edge.

only people

called the Corn-Stalkers. litical

Teddy White's Making of the President Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the

named Gene Pokorny,

smart, caustically funny,

lost tribe, the

commitment,

was enthralled with Thompson's description of a

slinger" for presidential candidate

whip

irrational

about the gonzo reputations of campaign organizers and ca-

reer pols. In college, I'd devoured

books and,

world of

idealists.

I

from

that

and larger than

life,

all

felt like I'd

thought and acted the way

Some of the guys were

found I

did.

mold just

one

my longWe were

already big names in po-

Carl Wagner, a contemporary of Gene Pokorny's;

THE FIRST CAMPAIGN

John

Sasso,

who would go on

paign in 1988; Paul Tully, at Yale,

who had worked

mastermind the Michael Dukakis cam-

to

a gentle

man and

bear of a

a

former football

who was just

campaigns for Udall, Jerry Springer, and Birch Bayh, and big, just as eclectically brilliant,

They

and just

as totally

called each other "Brother Ford!"

on

cut his teeth

1

for short,

star

Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, and

for

and Mike Ford, an Xavier graduate who

Morris Udall;

17

as

nuts as Tully.

and "Brother Tully!" or "Bro"

and there was nothing these guys wouldn't do for you, nothing

they wouldn't do for each other, nothing they wouldn't do for a vote, and

nothing they wouldn't do for a meal. Tully and Ford, at zas,

two

in the

don't

I

know how many

times

I

saw

morning, rumble in carrying eight large piz-

who

ready to break the arms of anyone

even thought about asking for

a slice.

Every campaign didate

—

usually trusted aides

who

campaign freelancers wins

between the people who come

is split

from

drift off to the

you view the other

is

— and

in the best campaigns,

a healthy disdain: the coarse, unpredictable,

antagonistic pols vs. the ambitious, overly cautious desk jockeys. right

away where

Later,

name

when

I

belonged

the

same sentence

in the

—with

those

as

I

could see

the Fords and Tullys of the world.

book Quest for

veterans like Paul Tully,

the pros,

next campaign once the candidate

made up of idiots. Even

with

side

staff

with the can-

members of these two groups automatically

(or loses). In general, the

assume the other group

governmental

his

in

the Presidency

— guys

Mike Ford and Joe

".

.

.

1984 included

blooded 1980 campaign

Trippi

." .

.

—

it

was the most

shocking and humbling thing I'd ever read. These guys were legends. .

.

.

well ...

I

was me. Seeing

utility infielder

coming

my name

across his

a great baseball lineup: Gehrig,

Back

after those guys'

own name

Ruth

.

.

.

in 1979, about the only thing

my

was

mistakenly listed

I

was

like a career at

the end of

Trippi? I

common with Ford and And unlike those guys, I

had in

we all happened to be in Iowa. know my ass from Des Moines. Right away, we were assigned counties. Mike Ford was given Waterloo, Steve Murphy, who would emerge as another lifelong friend and a star in

Tully was that didn't

campaign organizing, Council

1

Yes, that Jerry Springer. Before he

was

Bluffs.

a talk

I

was given small, out-of-the-way,

show host breaking up

transgender couples, Springer was the mayor of Cincinnati.

fights

between adulterous

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

18

Then we were each given

conservative Jones County.

Kennedy supporters of names for

known

in each of these counties.

watched the county organizers get

I

of the

a list

Two

this county.

their

names

Three boxes

in boxes:

boxes for that county. Then came

little

Jones

County.

My boss, Jack I

turned

"That's

looked

I

Corrigan, handed

my

over in

it

it,"

he

me

an index card.

my box?"

hand. "What's this? Where's

said.

down

at the card.

There was one name on

it:

Irv Gadient.

There were 20,401 people in Jones County, Iowa, and the only known

Edward Kennedy's

supporter of Senator

named

That day,

Irv Gadient?

his spare

bedroom and

I

presidential candidacy

drove up to

sat there, staring

Irv's

out the

house and put

window

at

was

my

a

guy

stuff in

miles and miles

of flat, snow-covered farmland, while the other 20,400 people waited to see

what Joe Trippi was going the first clue about

As fied.

I

where

to do.

group of Dean

told a

had never seen snow.

I

didn't have

I

workers in Iowa in 2003,

field

stood around for three days, staring

I

And

to start organizing a county.

at

my

I

was petri-

shoes, sure that at

moment I was going to be discovered as a fraud. And then I got on the plane. I used my fear to push myself into to

conquer the thing

I

feared by taking

worked, by teaching myself on the

Iowa Caucuses. Or mocrat, almost

was

a

all

of those Carter supporters. But

war going on

in Olin. Cavey's Cafe

between those who thought

who

thought

how

it

to organize a county in the

town of Olin, population 700, maybe

begun carrying Playboy magazine and those

by figuring out

apart,

it

how

action,

to crash in the process.

started in the small

I

fly

any

it

it

was the

I

Street

had recently

down

split

was about time Playboy came

first

De-

quickly found out there

on Jackson

town was

the

a third

the middle

to Olin,

and

sign of the Apocalypse.

Given Ted Kennedy's negatives

as a

candidate,

I

doubt

my

superiors

would've approved of my asking Dave Cavey to be the Chair of the Olin

Kennedy campaign based on having ting

up

when

now

doubled

signs,

the fact that his cafe carried Playboy.

my voter base

to two,

I

began to work

tirelessly,

But put-

knocking on doors, wheeling and dealing and cajoling and,

necessary, driving

tion with the farmer

my

Pinto into a ditch and striking up a conversa-

who came by

in his tractor to help

me

out.

THE FIRST CAMPAIGN

19

The Democratic chairman of Jones County was a crusty Carter supporter named Jimmy Hogan, who lived across the highway from Irv Gadient. Back then, in these rural towns, the caucuses were held in peo-

homes and

ple's

so, if a

Carter supporter like

Jimmy Hogan

caucus, then out of a sense of Midwestern propriety political parties in

Iowa

—Kennedy

—which trumps both

supporters wouldn't think of going to

house to disagree with him. The Kennedy voters would stay

a fella's

home and

Carter would walk away with that caucus.

In a place like Jones County, Iowa,

were halfway This

to delivering the

whole damn county.

something not everyone

is

you get Jimmy Hogan and you about our political system.

realizes

Not all voters are created equal. Some book on consumer epidemics The Tipping

people carry

more

on the involvement of people with

ent

Gladwell

calls these influential

influence. In his

Malcolm Gladwell

Point,

writes, "... the success of any kind of social epidemic

gifts."

hosted the

is

heavily depend-

and rare

a particular

people, people like

set

of social

Jimmy Hogan,

"connectors." In the

But

Dean campaign, we

in 1980,

I

called

them

bloggers.

wasn't going to reach Jimmy

by posting on an electronic bulletin board. So

up

long dirt driveway and ask

his

know

that,

come

in his house the night

even

Jimmy was

a

if

if

or

had no choice but to drive

I

he could

Hogan with an e-mail

somehow

neighbors

let his

they wanted to vote for Kennedy, they were

wel-

still

of the caucus.

craggy old farmer, too busy to listen to

my arguments. He

pointed out that he had plenty of dairy cows that needed his attention a lot

more than

I

milked

cows every morning

his

show up So ing,

I

did.

For six weeks,

I

bugged him.

at 5

Finally, he told

me

a.m. If I wanted to talk to him,

that he I

could

then, but I'd better be ready to milk.

began showing up on Jimmy Hogan's farm

milking cows and pleading for him to open

his

at five in the

morn-

house up to Kennedy

supporters. Finally,

with ten days to go before the caucus, he agreed.

Most people don't

really

know how

a

caucus works, especially

have the same experience with voting that voting booth, pull a curtain, punch try,

—

people do the same thing

a hole,

I

if

they

had in California: step into and

leave. All over the

casting their votes one at a time.

a

coun-

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

20

A

caucus

about their

very different

a

is

affair.

grassroots politics at

It is

bunch of neighbors getting together every two

basic level, a

common

—

interest

in this case politics

—

its

most

years to talk

and, during a presiden-

campaign, to choose the candidate they prefer from the two major par-

tial

They shoot

ties.

the shit about farming and their families and the local

basketball team, and then get around to talking about the

they divide into

on

egates based

A

sides,

that

im-

issues that are

portant locally and the issues they'd like to see the party pursue.

And

then

count the numbers for each candidate, and assign del-

number.

caucus reveals something profound about our political system, the

importance of the social and economic fabric that has always existed beneath our political systems

Kennedy supporters

way they

ple live, the

—

into his

the very reason

home.

I

had to ask Jimmy to welcome

system that reflects the way peo-

It is a

relate to their family, to their jobs, to their interests,

and to their communities. The Iowa Caucuses are

bottom-up

civic

engagement

— everything

a participatory, social,

through

that politics has lost

its

black-tar addiction to television advertising, and everything that the Inter-

net offers again: a chance for people to not just vote, but to

become

in-

volved again, to write the agenda, to contribute to the organization, to affect

how

more than

to reach a

to attend an

This to

is

just the

owner trying

business

the Internet could

think that the

I

Dean campaign was

able

years of commercial theories about the Internet in an

few people expected.

myself had years of

Political organizers like

much

experience with the very issues that create so

on

to understand

do worse than

Iowa caucus.

one of the key reasons

make good on

area that

A

numbers.

community of people on

make

the Internet, issues that also

potential for

difficult for the usual

it

growth

American

corporate giants to control.

The

my

night of

Hogan's house

at

first

caucus, in January 1980,

I

went

to

Jimmy

6:30 p.m., and watched his neighbors pull up in their

pickup trucks and American sedans.

Jimmy's living room was packed. vote, the

two

sides

began moving

flickering chandelier

people

move

When

came time

to call for the

to opposite corners of the

demarking the

line

to their corners, doing the

few votes either way could turn

it

it.

between them.

math

And

in

my

just as they

head.

room, an old

I

It

watched the was

close; a

were about to

start

THE FIRST CAMPAIGN

counting, this seventeen-year-old girl niece,

can't

I

remember

—began

a

—-Jimmy's

daughter, or

21

maybe

his

slow determined walk across the room.

In Iowa, if you're going to turn eighteen by the time of the general

you can vote

election,

in the caucus.

girl

marched

across the

the

Kennedy

side.

God,

we

if

step

watched, stunned,

teenaged

as this

As she reached the chandelier,

I

my

started thinking,

could win in Jimmy's house

"Young more

I

room, leaving the Carter supporters to go over to

Jimmy's voice boomed across the room. "You take one

lady,"

and you're grounded for the

rest

of your

moment

she had any ballet training, but at that

life."

I

don't

know

if

she performed a perfect

pirouette under the chandelier, turned and walked right back over to the

Carter side of the room.

Of course,

over Iowa, things like that happen.

all

You show up

to the

caucus meeting, see your shop foreman on the Carter side and think twice

about declaring for Kennedy. You pull up, see your ex-wife's

keep driving.

And

It's a

had

I

nonscientific, arbitrary, messy, heartbreaking system.

numbers

the

as

the senator

let

County by

started

down.

coming

When

three hundred votes,

eastern Iowa, knocking

I

"I'm

I

on

a

good

I

translated to four percentage

I'd

been working day and night,

my

car into ditches

all

over

share of the county's 6,931 front doors.

lose?

I

let

my

failure.

I

was

in agony.

you down."

the numbers," he said gruffly.

"How

bad

quiet for a

moment. Then he asked me

you only

lost

by

four.

Do you

is it."

to repeat the

num-

In Jones

County?

Hell.

You

was no greater way

now I had joined

to

creamed

realize we're getting

over the state? We're getting beaten by thirty points.

and

plot-

did.

"Joe,

there

had

told him.

He was bers.

To

sorry, Jack.

I

which

called Jack Corrigan to dutifully report

"Gimme

was devastated.

was done, we'd dropped Jones

ting and planning with Irv Gadient, driving

for what?

I

Dave Cavey, milking cows with Jimmy Hogan,

cutting deals with

And

in,

it

52 percent to 48 percent. Here

points,

and just

absolutely vital to our democracy.

it's

That night, lost.

car,

did great, bro." In

You only

lost

by four?

Kennedy organizing

honor someone than to

call

them

all

circles,

bro or sister,

the ranks of Tully and Ford and Corrigan

—somehow

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

22

County,

in losing Jones

I

had become

a brother.

And

something

I'd learned

important about politics Kennedy-style: The cause was everything.

spend yourself completely, leave nothing on the

lose,

health. Losing

would be

something

you could' ve done.

else

painful, but not as painful as

In Jones County, there was nothing bers for the state were as

Kennedy by 28

Only The fraud

grim

more

I

had found

a

home

to

come

me some

for

ies,

in

Hampshire,

was over,

it

And

I

two

I

was empty.

I

Illinois,

things:

It

was the

it

again.

counties.

worked

world of political

my

ass

off

on the

Arizona, Texas, and Michi-

a landslide in the general election.

greatest thing I'd ever

DROPPING PEBBLES The 1980

I

had never been so tired in

would never do

certain about

num-

Carter swept past us to victory in the Democratic primar-

only to lose to Ronald Reagan in

When in.

New

Maine,

Of course,

gan.

final

other day.

in the insular, adrenaline-driven

organizing. After Iowa, in quick succession,

ground

The

Carter beat Ted

Kennedy than Jones County.

three counties in Iowa did better for

would have

could do.

or

was

there

Jimmy He won 98 of the 99

points that night in Iowa.

police

I

knowing

Jack promised.

as

Win

not even your

table,

presidential race over,

I

was

been involved

THE WATER

IN

began

I

my life.

a cycle I'd

continue for the

work for other races members of congress, mayors, governors, city attorneys and vowing that I would never, ever, as God is my witness, take another presidential. next eight years: doing organizational and field

—

And

I

meant

In 1981,

who had

it. I

went

to

work

for

Tom

Bradley, the

decided to try and become the

first

mayor of Los Angeles,

African American governor

of California. Political organizing

is all

about finding those people

who

you do and drawing them into your organization any way involved

— everything from —while

canvassing to donating

ing for your candidate

out to the people In that way,

who

it's

at the

money

think like

that gets

them

to simply vot-

same time trying to get your message

haven't decided yet.

not so different from Ford

Motor Company,

King, both of which need to keep serving those people

Ford F-150s or Whoppers. But they

also

who

or Burger

already like

need to draw in the guy

who

THE FIRST CAMPAIGN

know what kind of truck he doesn't know what sounds good,

23

who is hungry who didn't know

doesn't

wants, or the person

but

or even the person

he was hungry or never imagined he wanted a truck.

The

difference

is

began revolutionizing and dom-

that since television

inating advertising and the rest of our culture, Ford and Burger

simply thrown their ads on the is

and waited to see

air

top-down, one-to-many advertising and for the

eth century,

But

was the only way

it

150 years in America,

for

do

to

of politics that

I

done

still

who shows

last

up. This

half of the twenti-

business.

worked

politics

on the ground, from the bottom up. Even when portion of the job was

King have

in the other direction,

started, in 1980, a

I

loved and the part that

was best

I

good

This was the part

at the grassroots level. at

—

the field work,

meeting with people, getting them involved, navigating the real-world communities, neighborhoods, labor unions, and other places where people intersect

As tify

with their

a field organizer, you're always

your voters.

with

political lives.

On the

a sign offering free

rather than

come

looking for tools to help you iden-

Kennedy campaign, lemonade

to

Kennedy

make

fifty

Tom

Bradley campaign in 1981,

thousand phone

had

I

set

up

voters,

a

lemonade stand

with the idea that

maybe we could

calls,

get

them

to

to us.

On

the

I'd inhabited since college,

I

made what

I

still

living in the

two worlds

thought was another innovative

suggestion.

We

needed

They

just

a

computer.

stared

me.

at

was

It

like

I'd

suggested

we buy

a

submarine.

When

I

$17,000 for

couldn't get anyone at the Bradley campaign to agree to spend a

computer,

to the

campaign for $500

of the

first

I

went into debt

a

month.

DEC

as

top.

It

with had

a

a political

it

leased

it

had to be one

campaign.

"a personal computer" then. This one was

PDP-11, top of the

could find in 1981. This meant bigger,

buy one myself and

can't say for sure, but

computers ever used in-house by

There was no such thing a 16-bit

I

to

line, as technologically

it

looked

like a

advanced

as

you

washing machine, only

a plastic, Star

Trek-looking one-piece monitor/ keyboard on

whopping

megabytes of memory

1.5

—

the equivalent of

or three great big floppy disks, piles of which were stacked like

around the Bradley

offices.

two

cordwood

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

24

We

used the computer to organize the names and addresses of sup-

Even with

porters and potential Bradley voters.

the

memory

limitations of

PDP-11 system (one floppy might only hold half of the people whose name started with A) it turned out to be the perfect tool for storing and the

We

sorting names.

used

it

to send out direct mailers to certain precincts,

including some that were overwhelmingly African American and over-

whelmingly poor.

was

It

a

tremendously successful fund-raising

yet the results were bittersweet, too.

still

I

came with those $5 and $10 money

that

been overlooked by

"You

me

give

We

money."

money from

remember some of

orders,

from people who had

politicians before. "I believe in you,

hope. I'm not gonna eat today so

had serious ethical discussions about people

who

and

tool,

the notes

I

Mayor

Bradley."

can send you

this

whether we should take

really couldn't afford to support a candidate.

We took the money. Tom Bradley was unlike

But

Bradley was their candidate. Election night with before or since.

And

was the

it

thing no one else could see

saw

first

—even

time if it

I

anything I've ever seen,

had that curse of seeing some-

was only

a

few hours before they

it.

In

what probably was another computer

moved

PDP-11

the

first for a

campaign,

we had

to the Presidential Suite of the Biltmore Hotel

and

rigged a direct line into a box on the roof of the hotel. This connected the

PDP-11 with

the California Secretary of State's computer,

tabulating results as they

was

1982 and

I

fly across

my

closed,

mayor's

all

came

sitting in a hotel

screen

—

Bradley campaign

room

downstairs

—

how

does

it

feel to

it

was

I

As the

polls

was in the

the results

when

I

the brilliant chairman of the

at the Bradley victory party in the Bilt-

more's ballroom. The television stations had

where the crowd was going

which was Here

watching numbers

Bradley winning.

PDP-11 and monitoring

and saw Nelson Rising

—

state's precincts.

in Los Angeles,

Tom

numbers had

the exit

TV

from the

the results of an election in real time.

suite, babysitting the

turned on the

in

crazy.

A

all

cut live to the scene,

reporter asked Nelson, "Mr. Rising,

be the next chief of

staff to the

governor of Califor-

so happy I cried. My God, we had done it. we had elected the first African American governor in U.S. history. And then I happened to look over at the PDP-11, the numbers dancing across its screen, counties flashing as new results hit

nia?" In the room,

I

was

Against the longest odds,

the state's

computer in Sacramento,

a blur

and jumble of data

spilling out

you needed

so fast

screamed out

me

at

printout to digest

a

it.

THE FIRST CAMPAIGN

25

Something was wrong.

It

numbers

in those scrolling

— 2,000

votes here, 534

votes there.

turned to the

I

One lieve

Ballroom

by one

we

him up

get

Tom

Bradley had

In the end,

want

didn't

I

was

in that mess of digits, there

Nelson Rising off the

pull

here now!"

pulled key staffers aside, but hell,

where

"Go

next to me.

staffer

— my projection—

floor of the

many

to believe

want

didn't

But some-

either.

it

to be-

100,000 vote anomaly.

a

lost.

George Deukmejian

And

by fewer than 53,000 votes.

won

the governorship of California I

have ever

was going

to use tel-

the greatest victory speech

heard was never given.

Tom Bradley

had decided

won

if he

that night he

He was

evision differently than any politician before or since.

podium of the Grand Ballroom of the Biltmore Hotel and

walk out

to the

look out

at his glitzy

had funded tience

—

his

Hollywood donors and

someone more important

needed to

that he

for patience

—

was someone he needed

there

important than them. "Please, children,

I

have something

after a

I

know

I

want

it's late,

to read

can't

make

make

it

a difference in this

sharecroppers.

I

world.

am

I

let

.

.

.

from

Something important." a

simple speech he had

anyone

tell

rules, to

you

work

and always to dream.

that

you can grow up

this

day forward your parents and

to be

whatever I

it is

will

have the same opportunity to succeed in

We

fell

you you

that

can't

hard, as hard as

I

stand here tonight

I

as

true.

That

the elected gov-

ernor of the largest state in our nation means that anything

precinct.

tell

proof that in California, in America, dreams can come

someone born with no chance could stand here tonight

that

more

the son of a poor family of Texas

was taught to play by the

could, to never ask for favors as living

Don't

in this country.

three net-

all

to talk to even

drafted himself, for California's children. "Don't let anyone

you

all

but please wake up your

to say to them.

moment, he was going

talk to.

and dead-ahead into

to look straight at the press riser

of those television cameras and ask the viewing audience on

And

who

the wealthy supporters

campaign and he was going to ask them for some pa-

there was

Then he was going works

going to

is

possible

you dream of being, and from

work life

together to

that

I

make

sure

you

had."

short of delivering that speech by one-and-a-half votes per

One-and-a-half

I

watched

a stoic, stately

Tom

Bradley

slide that

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

26

version of his speech back in his breast pocket, raise his head high, and de-

completely different speech, one of concession.

liver a last

time

And

it

saw

I

a

man who

wouldn't be the

votes.

To

today

if that

this day,

meant, what

I

would not be

represented something bigger than

my

time

last

wonder how much

different our country

And knowing what

Bradley would've meant

think that there was something

else

I

all

of us

the

lose.

heart was broken for lack of a few

speech had been delivered.

Tom

It

governor,

as

would be

that speech

tortures

it

me

to

could've done to get just one-and-a-

half more votes per precinct, votes that would've

made

the difference in

all

the world. I

was twenty-six years

old.

I

had learned that no matter

candidate or his campaign, the other side ative ads,

cause

.

.

spends millions to beat you.

still

you can

.

still lose. I

excruciatingly aware that the hurts

when you

was becoming

fail.

My

doing what

I

I

I

I'd

in any level of government.

campaign manager for

more you

a

a

how

noble the

Bradley campaign

no matter

more

how much

it

politics

couple other campaigns and then found

I

I

my-

have ever held

followed Jules Radcliff, the big, razor-sharp

Tom Bradley,

come up with

Tom

never do, taking the only job

deputy. But months into the job,

tive

matter

the

noble a

runs neg-

believe in something, the that

work

to

governor, Leo McCarthy. Jules worked

done. I'd

No

how

still

couldn't stop myself from believing.

worked

vowed

came away from

problem was

a business,

After Bradley, self

kicks as hard,

still

good

I

as

for the California lieutenant

the chief of staff and

was miserable.

I

was

his

couldn't get anything

I

idea and have to submit

it

to

committee, which would spring into action by tabling

some

it.

I

legisla-

felt like a

caged animal.

The 1984

presidential race

who had been

Mondale,

Democratic front-runner

was off and running without me. Walter

Jimmy

vice president under to challenge

Carter, was the clear

Reagan, but he'd gotten an early

shock from California Senator Alan Cranston,

who had been

hiding in the

bushes, ignoring the long preparations for primary and caucus season.

had chosen instead to run his efforts to

between

a

win an

operation in Wisconsin

—concentrate

nonbinding vote,

all

a cross

caucus and a fund-raiser, in which tickets are sold to events.)

Mondale, with say bloodless

izing

a guerilla

early straw poll (a preliminary,

He

his huge, experienced,

—campaign

and professional

—some might

organization, was furious. His team, finally real-

what Cranston was up

to,

looked up

at the

map and knew

in an

THE FIRST CAMPAIGN

instant state

asked

where the California senator would go next

—Maine,

27

the other

nonbinding straw vote. Mondale turned to Mike Ford and

with

a

him

if

there

was someone he could find

who

could put Maine in the

Mondale column. That day, in the

when

nor's office

of 1983,

fall

the call came.

end of the conversation that could

I

could

was

it

Fritz

tell

just

in the lieutenant gover-

by hearing McCarthy's

Mondale on

the phone.

sorry,

Mr. Vice President. Yes, Joe

you have one of my staff guys."

is

very good. But

After he hung up, Leo thought about

He

over.

mean

what could

.

.

and hire you back in

do?

I

a

I

for a

"Of

moment, and

me

that he

finally,

he

permission to

course," he said carefully, "if

couldn't stop you.

was gone the next

I

had sworn to myself that

couldn't stay away, and

One

can't let

I

own

...

I

might even forgive you

few years."

I

1980.

I

rivals.

and go off and do something insane on your

to quit

.

it

explained that he couldn't possibly give

go work for the Mondale campaign.

you were

I

McCarthy had promised Cranston

wouldn't do anything to help any of the California senator's

came

And

they were talking about me.

tell

"I'm

was working

I

day.

I

I

wouldn't work another presidential, but

ended up working even harder than

I

I

had in

reason was the sheer thrill of working alongside Tully and Ford

again, even

though we weren't exactly welcomed with open arms by the

people we'd fought against in 1980 on the Carter team,

many of whom

had moved over to help Mondale.

The himself,

other reason

who

for to help

I

loved working on that campaign was Fritz Mondale

turned out to be one of those leaders you would do anything

him

get elected.

To

this day,

I

think that of

all

the presidential

candidates I've ever seen, he had the best temperament, experience, and

preparation for the office.

But he was

The

first

in trouble before the

place

we had

primary season even began.

to stop the bleeding

was

in

Maine, where

a number on us. The Maine straw poll conventions number of delegate tickets and he'd wrapped up more than win it. We were screwed.

Cranston had done

had

a limited

enough

to

Looking

many of the

at

the jigsaw

map

of Maine's sixteen counties,

I

realized that

smaller towns hadn't held caucuses to elect delegates to the

straw poll. But there didn't seem to be any reason

why

they couldn't. Ford

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

28

band of young, unkempt organizers we'd trained

to

run on

adrenaline, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and beer (those old

enough

and

had

I

a

and

to drink)

we

raced around the

cuses in three days.

was

It

up ninety-three new cau-

state, setting

bunch of delegates

a fast one: Elect a

in

no one knew about and hope the Cranston people didn't find out to put

up

And

a fight.

it

worked.

We

elected a

bunch of new

the straw poll convention and caught the local state

off guard. But

The

we

didn't

still

Dems and Cranston

would be enough

if it

in time

delegates to

to win.

night of the count, Ford was on the floor of the raucous conven-

tion hall, calling in the

them announced

numbers or holding up the phone

right there

Carter/Mondale guys were fair, it

know

towns

on the

Up

floor.

telling Fritz that

didn't look good) but

I

sidled

up

didn't look

it

him and

to

so

in our hotel

we

could hear

room, the old

good (and

said not to

to

be

We

worry.

were going to win.

The

counties were listed in alphabetical order, and Ford was calling in

the results of each one. Androscoggin

County

Right away, the former vice president

.

.

.

Aroostook County

way behind and

fell

guys nodded solemnly and told him to be prepared to

"Nope, you're gonna win,"

With one county guys were writing

"Oh

yeah?"

I

to go,

it off,

said.

I

"Watch

Ford called again from the

it

.

.

lose.

repeated, drawing raised eyebrows.

Mondale was

saying

.

the old Carter

was

still

behind and the old Carter

over.

this sucker."

"Are you ready?"

floor.

He

held up the

phone.

Each time states

do

at the

something flavored

like:

ice

county read

a

national party conventions.

and

I

ner of my eye,

We

sat there,

while they droned

York County, the county of dogs and yellowfish and crab-

cream

(or

whatever the

5 for Cranston. Mondale Fritz

was stretched out, the way the

its results, it

is

hell

was) casts

321

votes for Mondale,

the winner!

leapt out of our chairs I

it

and high-fived, but out of the cor-

could see the old Carter guys just didn't seem

as

They'd been wrong about the outcome and the victory had come

happy. at

the

hands of two Kennedy guys and our young peanut butter and jelly troops. It

was culture

clash,

pure and simple, and

I

was troubled by

campaigns had been about brotherhood and working for cause. This exist in the

was the

first

time I'd seen two different

same campaign and struggle

to

come

it.

a

For me,

common

political cultures

to terms

with each

THE FIRST CAMPAIGN

other.

But because

Fritz

each other completely ing sure both sides

and

his

campaign chairman Jim Johnson trusted

—and because Johnson what broke —

knew

the rules (and

lines got crossed or petty fights

together

as a strong,

campaigns,

when

would

I

would

power

to stop

out)

the

tear a

would be

to pay if

Mondale campaign held

team throughout the primaries. In

there.

later

that trust wasn't there, or

almost always meant that any in-

It

campaign

no

apart, since

single person

had

it.

we had

After "the Maine miracle,"

Iowa Caucuses. This time, had ninety-nine.

did a masterful job of mak-

hell there

what happened when

chairman wasn't

a strong

ternal struggle

the

effective

see

29

And

But even running

to scramble to get ready for the

ran the whole

I

state.

Instead of one county,

I

the pressure increased by about the same ratio. a

whole

on

state

the

ground

like that, it's still

about

make with them. Unlike TV advertising one-to-many field organizing is best when it involves people in the organization, in a dialogue, back and forth, many-to-many. You work with people who go out and work with other people and soon you create a community built on respect, mutual interest, and loyalty. those people, about the connections that you

—

—

I

stop"

suppose that's why,

would make

speaking in

its

Dubuque

couple of times, a mysterious "high-priority

a

way onto Mondale's crowded or

Des Moines or one of the other

where the candidates spend the bulk of

would rumble

schedule while he was

across the flat farmland

Iowa

The Mondale

their time.

and turn into

larger

a

cities

buses

barn in the middle

of nowhere. Irv Gadient's barn.

"What

the hell are

we doing

here?"

Mondale asked when he looked

at

the enthusiastic, but admittedly small group of supporters in Irv's barn. I

Iowa

tried bluffing: Jones

County was an important cog

strategy, but just then Irv

lived in his house for

and was

like a

son to

came up and

in the overall

told the candidate

two months back when we were both

him and how

it

was nice

that

I

repaid

how

for

I

had

Kennedy

him by

finally

bringing an actual candidate to Jones County, because the candidates never visited Jones

We won

County. Mondale shot

me

a

look but was,

Iowa handily, with 49 percent of the vote, 33 points higher

than our closest

rival,

but the victory revealed some obvious cracks in the

Mondale campaign. His organization had done such itself as

as ever, gracious.

an efficient,

classic

Democratic machine,

a

good job presenting

that the

former vice

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

30

president was vulnerable to the fresh ideas and youthful energy of

Hart,

who

victory in

A from his

followed

New

good

a

Hampshire.

much from

political operative learns as

own campaign and

his

Gary

16-point second-place Iowa finish with a stunning

as

his rivals as

watched Gary Hart,

I

I

he does

was fascinated by

as many way politics had always been done. town and look for that one key person.

campaign. Every other candidate ran around Iowa speaking to

crowds

large

he could

as

fit

in

—

But Gary Hart would pop into

a

the

His pebble. Then he'd drop the pebble into the water.

And

leave. Let that

energy ripple out to the other folks in town.

He

described

it

as the politics

of concentric

circles

—

the idea of waves

spreading out from a single stone thrown into the water. He'd concentrate

charm and

his considerable

intelligence

He

genuinely connect with them.

outward from

that

on one or two key people and

believed that his message

one person better than

if

would spread

he diluted his message in

a

roomful of people. Against the strongest Democratic candidate in decades

—Mondale had

every union lined up, every major Democratic constituency working for

him

— Hart's concentric

circles spread

and he stormed to victories in the

Northeast and the West and was threatening to catch Mondale in

York and Pennsylvania. That's where

went

I

New

next, for another burst of

When arrived in Pennsylvania, we were fourteen points behind Hart. We swung the polls by twenty-eight points and beat him by fourteen. We won in New York, too,

wall-to-wall, nonstop shoe-leather campaigning.

I

securing the nomination, only to be crushed by Reagan in November.

But at the

I

never forgot Hart's strategy.

What had seemed

counterintuitive

time began to seem brilliant to me, especially for an insurgency

campaign, the idea that you could spread like a virus

—

starting

with

a small,

a

candidate or a cause or an issue

key group of people and letting them

run wild for you. Unfortunately, back then there was no tool that would help

you create

Once hausted.

I

momentum. Not yet. when the 1984 campaign was

that

again,

wanted

to sleep through 1985. This time,

was done. Grassroots, shoe-leather organizing was less

physical exertion

this stuff,

I

over,

made

it

a

was ready to move

I

I

was

totally ex-

told myself,

thrilling,

I

really

but the relent-

younger man's game. After nine years of to

what

I

thought was the cerebral side

THE FIRST CAMPAIGN

crafting the strategy, speeches, spots, and substance of the collective elements

time

when

television

known

the message

and

voter apathy.

its

evil

Over

to

I

was arriving

the

at a

was being completely devoured by the medium

the next

like the lowest,

"message." Unfortunately,

—

spawn: negative advertising, constant polling, and

game, the profession that

seem

as

campaign

31

few

I'd

years, as

once seen

I

became an expert

as a calling

most disgusting business

—

politics

at this

cynical

—would begin

in the world.

THE HORROR Thomas

Jefferson, Willie Horton, and

Governor Moonbeam

remember working on

We

campaign

a congressional

were meeting with the candidate

to film a

in the mid-1980s.

commercial about

his

views on abortion. As we were setting up the equipment, going over the

and getting ready to shoot the

script,

that he I

wanted

two

to film

spot, the

informed

me

spots.

He wanted

to

had the crew and everything— pro-life spot.

make

a

pro-choice ad, then

The crew looked to

go home and take

a

ous, unprincipled candidate relying

Shrum, the

media

political

television spots for a variety

the mercurial,

as

we

I

filmed this

we

think

—with

slick,

its

all

vacu-

diminishing

the epitome of what has gone

wrong

America.

After the 1984 presidential campaign,

&

we

as

was over,

on polling and the

—was

politics in

it

shower. For me, that day

power of television advertising

long

go.

each other and shook their heads

guy's flip-flopping ads on abortion. After

wanted

as

make a have one of each ready when

him which way he should

at

—

"turn the camera around" and

-just

That way, he explained, he'd

his polling people told

Doak

casually

was confused. Two?

That's right.

with

guy

wunderkind

I

went

to

work

giants, writing, producing,

for Caddell,

and making

of local and national candidates. Pat Caddell,

pollster

who

had come out of college to lead

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

34

George McGovern's charge and had helped guide Jimmy Carter into left the

firm

not long after

I

arrived

—

the direction of political advertising.

from the other two

a great deal

and

partners,

and competitive, but always creative.

string of luck

I

had

—

media and message

some of the

side

learned

of our very

as if the friction

do our best work.

Sasso,

I

respectful, often contentious

I

think back

be schooled in organizing and

to

Wagner, Tully, Ford, and

years,

David Doak and Bob Shrum. Bob

was

It

office,

was disgusted with

But over the next few

had an especially complex relationship,

I

ferent personalities sparked us to

far

in part because he

politics

dif-

now on

by giants

the like

and then to find myself immersed in the

of things alongside Caddell, Doak, and Shrum, by

best in the business.

My own strength didate, listening to

stump speeches,

on the message

what he had

slogans,

and

side lay in spending

spots.

time with a can-

and transforming those ideas into

to say,

A good example is the

1988 presidential

campaign of Dick Gephardt. That to repeat

year,

Gephardt had thrown everything he had into Iowa, hoping

Jimmy

Carter's 1976 strategy of riding the

win

prise caucus

all

the

way

to the

White House

momentum

of a sur-

—which had become

the

only workable strategy, especially for a long shot. So the Missouri congress-

man

spent 110 days in the state, and even

into an apartment in

But his

message

of places

his 90-year-old

mother

Des Moines.

campaign was

his

moved

flat, his

numbers mired

—which seemed have something congressman —was putting to

to

in the single digits, and

do with traveling

voters to sleep. So

as a

to a lot

spent a couple

I

of weeks with Gephardt, looked over the raw materials of his stump speech, including some trade issue that

statistics

he'd gathered, and helped

would resonate most with

him frame

the

voters: restoring competitiveness to

American workers. That day, when he got up to speak, he nailed the including

a

room blew

reference to the Hyundai, an import up.

A

huge ovation. Soon Shrum was

became somewhat famously known

1

The Hyundai

spot

controversy over matter.

I

together.

became semi-famous among

who came up with

always thought that

it first,

when our

as

the

lines I'd

given him,

from Korea. And the

making what

in Iowa,

"Hyundai"

spot.

1

In

it,

political consultants, in part because of the

Shrum

or me.

The

truth

divergent energies clicked,

is

that

Bob and

it I

probably doesn't

did our best

work

THE HORROR

Gephardt

says

he

American workers blamed"

"tired of hearing

is

trade imbalance with countries

like

Japan and Korea, and he

35

for the

shifts the

blame from the workers to the administration's inability to stand up to Korea, where

—because of

and

taxes

tariffs

—

$10,000 Chrysler car sold

a

for $48,000.

With Gephardt

he said in the ad, the Koreans would

as president,

"know that we'll still honor our treaties, because that's the kind of country we are. But they'd also be left asking themselves: How many Hyundais America

are they going to be able to sell in

$48,000 apiece?"

for

After the ad began running, Gephardt finally caught with voters and he

began to

rise to the

top of the polls in Iowa where he

This was what

would eventually win.

did best, fine-tuning the candidate's strengths (and

I

just as often, the opponent's weaknesses) into symbolic, blunt,

crete messages that stuck

And

yet,

with people.

from the beginning,

kind of politics for me. Even

mately

and con-

soulless. I'd spent

was something missing

there

at its best,

nine years

making

as a

TV

in this

spots can feel ulti-

grunt organizer, from the Iola

Williams bootstrap campaign in 1975 to Walter Mondale's establishment

machine the thing dates,

1984 and while the

in

loved, the thing

I

I

stress

and physical

was best

at.

I

toll

were high,

it

was

had passion for these candi-

and passion for organizing support for them. The people out there

weren't simply raw numbers, or

mirror in a focus group. They were

— them—

performing behind

test cases

real people, in their

a

two-way

homes, and

that's

where we engaged them their doorbells,

by phone or by letter, or best of all, by ringing by coming into their living rooms. And we didn't just try

to spark an effect in

to scare

them or

gaged them in the process, asked them to walk or put a sign up in a window.

calls

some

tap into

We knew

bias.

We

en-

make phone Jimmy Hogans

a precinct or

them

—

the

and Irv Gadients of the world. I

was doing something

candidates

But

I

at

believed

Doak

&

I

believed

in,

alongside people

I

believed

Shrum,

in

1986 alone,

I

than twenty different Democratic campaigns.

most of the candidates whose ads

I

made,

I

worked on

And while I agreed with know what made them

didn't

hadn't even met half of them. This wasn't something

believed in

anymore

—

like Iola

Williams deserving

Ted Kennedy would make

more

spots for

tick. Hell, /

council; or that

in, for

in.

a spot

a great president.

I

really

on the I

was

city

selling

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

36

Who

something.

was didn't

it

really matter.

I

may

as

mak-

well have been

ing commercials for mouthwash.

A

you what

tells

You just

television ad reaches voters passively.

you open

to think, or

a search

you want. And cards, the

box

what you want

engine or eBay or

then, after asks

—

there and the

sit

unlike the Internet, where

Amazon.com and

tell

the box

you order the book, or bid on the

you what you thought of the book and

happy with the auction. This

is

box

if

what

baseball

you were

bottom-up, interactive communication.

Television has a top-down, one-to-many structure, and

it

works by mak-

ing an impression so that the next time you're in the grocery store and you

walk

past the Listerine, an

image

flashes in

your mind of two actors so

taken with each other's minty breath that they begin making out.

with

different

political advertising

on TV: You

over you. If it's done well, some images

sit

no

It's

there and the ad washes

stick, possibly

even some ideas

usually only time for one or

two

visceral reactions to stick. Children playing: good. Pollution: bad.

Old

although in

a

30-second

spot, there

is

people in church: good. Criminals on street corners: bad. This the reasons political debate in our country has been

because media consultants don't want you to think

is

one of

"dumbed down" —not —but because no seri-

ous discussion of issues can possibly occur in 30 seconds. If

you make

these short, reductive, cynical spots for a living,

begin to see the audience not

people organized into communities, with

as

jobs and families and concerns, but create,

numbers

to be

Occasionally,

human

real, live

as a series

moved, prejudices

of

effects you're trying to

to be mined.

media consultant, you might get

as a political

beings in a focus group, but they're like

simply used to find the best

you

way

to identify

to see

rats in a lab

and manipulate the

real targets

of the spot. This reliance on polling and focus groups trend in politics.

It

tested, centrist bullshit. If politics,

it

polling.

I

is

—

bar none

substitutes a candidate's convictions I

have nothing against

much of the

the worst

could rub a lamp and get one wish to change

wouldn't be to eliminate negative campaigning.

best friends are pollsters.)

—

with bland, market-

But

pollsters. I

I'd get rid

(What's the saying? Some of

of

my

have come to believe that polling takes

courage out of politics.

Faced with

this

kind of decaying

rebelled right away, that

I

politics,

I'd love to say that

woke up one morning and walked

I

off into

THE HORROR

what

the sunset. Instead

pert at

I

did during the late 1980s was

37

become an ex-

it.

VOTE FOR THE DEAD GUY Negative campaigning has always existed. Always. That's the

you have

to realize. In fact, today's

hand compared

to the

In 1800, John atheist,

and

mud

Adams

a traitor.

most vicious attack ads

thing

first

are pats

on the

our forefathers slung. called his rival

Thomas

His campaign said that

if

Jefferson a pagan, an

Jefferson were elected,

"murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced."

When

that lovely

bouquet didn't work (You have

the political consultant assigned to

on Crime or

Has No Vision

go negative on Jefferson,

man who wrote

stick to the

went even lower and

laration of Independence), they

tardly thing that Republicans say about

to feel for

to

make

said the

Soft

Dec-

the frickin'

same das-

John Kerry today.

That he was too French.

Another popular negative tack

at the

time was to put some riders on

horseback and send them around to villages spreading the rumor that your

opponent (Jefferson) had died. (Today, focus group

first

for a candidate

Do

lem of trying

test this in front

you think you would be more or

who was dead?) This

of sending out their

we would

own

left early

campaigners with the task

isn't that politicians in the

date has a responsibility to the

guy shouldn't be

The problem,

I

twentieth century sud-

would even argue

American people

to

Order. to

again,

is

us

that a candi-

why

the other

television.

watch Perry Mason reruns on

And The

tell

president. That's not a problem.

Just to be clear, I'm not talking about the device I

vote

to disprove a negative: that the candidate was, in fact, alive.

No, the problem

have one.

a

guys on horseback with the very modern prob-

denly begun attacking their opponents.

I

less likely to

of

Sopranos.

And

baseball.

it

itself,

which

late at night.

The problem

is

the

is

great.

And Law & way

it

fails

engage people. In the last half of the twentieth century, television staged a hostile

takeover of American culture, in just twenty years going from reflecting

American

life,

to altering

American

life:

the products

American

we

life,

to dictating nearly every aspect of

buy, the clothes

we

wear, the things

we

fear.

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

38

Politics didn't escape the onslaught

TV's

first

of TV. In some ways,

it

was one of

conquests.

Harry Truman's

In 1948, different

campaign

back of

a train car.

stops,

presidential

campaign consisted of 31,000

most of which involved him waving from the

Let's say every time that train stopped, an average

of six hundred people gathered to see him lean over the bunting and wave (it's

an arbitrary number; some crowds were undoubtedly bigger, some

smaller,

and many people probably saw him more than once). But

hundred people per

stop,

Just four years later, in 1952,

Dwight Eisenhower reached

TV

see the roots

camera for

a

few minutes. 2 Just

York and standing

in this

one example, you

of the insidious and destructive effect of

Those nineteen million Americans were

man, going down

who saw Eisenhower

TV

on

politics.

Tru-

social in seeing

with other people, talking

to the train station, standing

with them. The people

and

active

those same

New

nineteen million Americans by simply driving to in front of a

at six

he might 've reached nineteen million Americans.

four years later did nothing

but turn on the TV.

when Truman was running

In 1948,

Americans had born,

By

when

the time

for president, only

a television set in their house.

By

Ike was running for reelection, that I

1

percent of

1956, the year

number was 75

I

was

percent.

began filming ads for candidates in 1985, the average Amer-

ican had two televisions in the house. In 1956, the average

watched about four hours of

By

television.

American

2000, that number was above

seven hours a day.

As

I've said,

TV

is

a passive,

top-down medium.

ing television inspires nothing but television.

more

As Robert Putnam writes

ing and especially dependence

upon

in

sitting

to join clubs is

that every

Bowling Alone, "television watch-

3

Museum

are far less likely to

who

call

TV

their

hour of television watching

"primary

go to church, to write

and organizations, or to attend public meetings.

civic involvement.

2

around watch-

television for entertainment are closely

correlated with civic disengagement." People

form of entertainment"

Sitting

around and watching more

translates to a

One

letters,

estimate

10 percent drop in

3

of Radio and Television.

Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), Putnam's analysis of a Roper Social and Political Trends survey.

THE HORROR

39

The modern political dependence on TV is usually traced to that moment in 1 960 when Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy debated on television, and Nixon's afternoon shadow and grim appearance made him seem untrustworthy while Kennedy seemed youthful and

Nixon

long run, of course, I

think the Eureka

Nixon was

energetic. (In the

was untrustworthy.)

moment

in danger of being

actually

dropped

came as

eight years earlier,

when

Eisenhower's running mate

over allegations that he'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar taking

money and

(Look how

gifts

from

special interests in

exchange for influence.

we've come; under George W. Bush,

far

this

the definition

is

of government.) In 1952, Nixon responded with the sticky-sweet and

"Checkers speech," in which he deflected the criticism of

self-pitying

the

money

he'd taken by defiantly focusing on a single gift from a Texas

supporter:

It

was

cocker spaniel dog in

a little

from Texas. Black-and-white

—named

six-year-old

dog and

kids, love the

of what they say about

Just like that, bullshit

I

just

want

had

its

all

the

way

—

And our little girl Tricia, the And you know, the kids, like all

to say this right

we're gonna keep

it,

he'd sent

spotted.

Checkers.

it

a crate that

now, that regardless

it.

own medium. And

far

worse was to come.

Now, fifty years of this stuff has so fractured and dulled our senses even as we have more and more competing channels and more ways to skip around when we're bored or when we know we're being lied to that each year

This

takes

more

problem for

a

is

it

to catch the scattered attention

politics, just like it's a

every manner of product. Each year, inant,

more

ubiquitous, and

TV

problem for advertisers of

advertising

more expensive,

at

of viewers.

the

becomes more dom-

same time

it

becomes

less effective.

This

is

why,

in politics,

you have

First,

we've become caught in

to understand: negative ads work. Perhaps

Thomas Jefferson is George W. Bush is a

nature, but if you believe that

Dukakis

is

less likely

a

a self-defeating cycle.

wimp, or

that

it's

a traitor, or that

blithering idiot,

human

Michael

you

are

to vote for him.

The problem Americans,

is

that as

TV

inexorably decreased the attention span of

political consultants realized that they

had no choice but to go

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

40

with the one most effective

downward

one that

ad, the

to react viscerally, not just to the person they're as a

aimed

at,

but to politicians

whole.

This it

This created the

"sticks."

cycle in our political process because negative ads cause people

why

is

broadcast politics has failed us so miserably.

Not because make

doesn't work, but because the most effective ads are the one that

the ful,

community

a

worse place to

manipulative —

and

negative,

live.

Think about

the best ads

it:

—

deceit-

are the ones that fail the country the

most.

And

people become more cynical about politics because of this

so, as

manipulation and negativity, they become naturally quisitive.

For the

electorate

is

political operatives, the

way

less

brighter the light gets, letting in

someone's eye

less light, so

and the pupil shuts out more

light in

engaged and in-

to reach this disengaged

to sharpen the ads to an even finer point, to

ative. It's like shining a bright light in

more

only

—

go even more neg-

the pupil closes the

you make

light, until

it

brighter to get

pretty soon, the per-

son just has to look away.

When

the topic

was

politics in the late

increasingly looked away. If

TV

advertising

follow that

They had

worked

better things to do with their

in any kind of positive way, then

more people would engage But the

vertising increased.

the 1950s and early 1960s,

twentieth century, Americans

last real

in the process as

TV

lives.

it

political ad-

increase in voter participation

when Jim Crow

would was in

laws were being overturned

and African Americans finally were getting the opportunity to go to the Yet between 1960 and now, the percentage of voting

polls in the South.

age adults

who

cast their ballots for president has fallen

amount of money spent on campaign

cent while the

by about 15 per-

advertising increased

exponentially from a few million to the $1.6 billion that's expected to be

thrown

at

the

2004

gressional races

percent now. time,

4

fell

That

election.

The percentage of people who voted

even further, from about 30 percent in 1970 to about 15 is

not a very good return on investment. At the same

news programs were devoting

less

and

less

time to

Harvard Kennedy School of Government study found a

public policy

in con-

component"

rose

politics.

that

A

from about 30 percent of the newscast

in 1980 to almost 50 percent in the year 2000. In just one eight-year

Thomas

E. Patterson,

The Vanishing

Voter

2000

news "without

(New

York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002).

news

THE HORROR

period, 1994 to 2002, the

paigns on the networks

amount of comparable coverage of political cam-

fell

by 72 percent. 5 People were four times

from campaign

to get their information about a candidate

newscasts.

41

as likely

from

ads than

6

The rock-bottom low point in broadcast politics came in June of 1988, when Michael Dukakis clinched the Democratic nomination and looked like

he had

With

his

worth

good shot

a

to beat then Vice President

primary bump, Dukakis led in the group will

his focus

you

tell

polls

that a

George H. W. Bush.

52 to 38. But any pollster

more

number was

telling

the

candidates' Favorable /Unfavorable rating. It's a

fice

problem for incumbents everywhere when they've been

in of-

long enough for people to genuinely hate them. So in June, while 40

percent of Americans had an "unfavorable" reaction to George Bush, only

20 percent had the same gut feeling about Duke. Bush's "favorable" ing,

meanwhile was 53 percent, Dukakis's

a

whopping

rat-

70.

Obviously, Bush's guys could have tried to improve their candidate's favorable rating, but

it

was

far easier in a thirty-second

TV spot to

Dukakis's. Each campaign does "opposition research" against nents and

when

in attack ads,

the time

right,

is

dumps

"oppo

the

file"

its

lower

oppo-

on reporters and

hoping to define the other guy out of the race

(this is the

current Bush's strategy against John Kerry). In 1988, Bush's key strategist

— and

Lee Atwater

groups

—launched

a

supporting army of conservative political action

a hailstorm

ceral images: a picture

of negative

TV

home

more

for the

(Dukakis

lets

effective: the

weekend Black

as

men

Horton

vis-

image of Dukakis

letting murderers

go

part of an experimental prison furlough plan

= Fear for your lives). The most famous, of course, was

effective.

spot, a minimalist attack masterpiece, paid for

National Security PAC.

It

reported that

as

by the

governor, Dukakis allowed

"murderers to have weekend passes" and then flashed the mugshot of black

5

man named

Willie Horton,

who had committed

a

heinous crimes

University of Southern California's Annenberg School and the University of Wisconsin Advertis-

ing Project. 6

a

on military) and even more

leave jail early

These ads were deadly the Willie

on two

of the former Massachusetts governor sitting in

tank, looking goofy (Dufus in tank = Soft

cynical and

ads focused

The Center

for

Media and Public

Affairs.

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

42

while on furlough. From the picture of Horton, the words: "Kidnapping, Stabbing,

Another

Raping" bled into another picture of Dukakis. one produced by the Bush campaign, reported that

ad, this

Dukakis gave furloughs to "first-degree murderers not

"268 escaped" and "many

that

are

still at

eligible for parole,"

large." In fact, those escapes

were

over a ten-year period and half of them hadn't escaped but simply returned late.

Only

three were actually at large.

were murderers not

the racist tone and the factual errors in the

but the reporting only increased their penetration and in the end, these

By July

visceral missiles hit their target. a

only four of the 268 "escapees"

eligible for parole.

The media reported on both ads,

And

70 favorable

8,

month

1988, just a

after scoring

and two weeks into the Bush campaign attack on the

rating,

furlough program, the Massachusetts governor's favorable rating had fallen 13 points to 57, and his lead in the polls had narrowed to 6 points. Later, the

Bush team added

showed homeless people dressed up

a spot that

as pris-

oners leaving prison through a revolving door. Bush strategist Lee Atwater

was making good on

his

promise to "strip the bark off the

Dukakis and "make Willie Horton

By

running mate."

election day, Dukakis's favorable and unfavorable

actly equal:

much

his

little

bastard"

7

numbers were ex-

45 percent liked him and 45 percent didn't. Bush's stayed pretty

the same, and he cruised to victory not because he convinced

more

people that he should be president, but because he scared more people into believing that his opponent might release criminals into the streets

—some-

thing that any president would be hard pressed to do even if he was so inclined.

By

the time the election was over, 70 percent of Americans wished

they had another person to vote ative ads so effective that

for.

when

This

is

what the system brings

us:

neg-

the campaign was over, Americans hated

both candidates.

The 1988 Reagan's

presidential election

slick spots

was

a sea

change. If you look

at

Ronald

four years earlier, you don't see anything that ap-

proaches the vitriol and ruthlessness of those 1988 ads.

each election since then

—

What

presidential and nonpresidential

followed in

—was an

all-out

war, a bludgeoning mentality, the use of a blunt force instrument to take

out the opponent.

7

Charles Lewis and the Center for Public Integrity, The Buying of the President

York: HarperCollins, 2004).

2004 (New

THE HORROR

We

with

are left

a system

of mutually assured destruction, both par-

—scorched

constantly lobbing nuclear missiles at one another

ties

And what

gets destroyed

our democracy.

is

43

What

is

defeated

earth.

the peo-

is

ple's desire to get involved.

DISILLUSIONMENT AND DEATH Gary Hart seemed

like the real thing,

although in a totally different way

than Walter Mondale. Brilliant and handsome, Hart had thought more

about terrorism in 1987 than most candidates have today.

He

absolutely

recognized the problems that America was going to face and was calling

more

for a smaller,

where the

with the

agile military to deal

real threat

was about

come not from

to

realities

of

a

the old Soviet

world

Union

but from the instability of terrorist groups and the third world.

As goods

a candidate, he could

—

Of

course,

I

know. date

line I

—

that

also

I

I

hair.

had to get away from the deadening,

work of churning out

wanted

go with great

affairs to

had the

— an un-

had vowed to never, ever work day-to-day on another

presidential campaign, but

sembly

also

that rare Clintonian combination of substance and appeal

knowledge of world

rivaled

be aloof and arrogant, but he

political spots for candidates

to return to the kind

of politics

— and

had once been passionate about.

I

was

I

as-

didn't

the kind of candialso intrigued

by

Hart's concentric circle campaign of 1984, and since Tully had gone to

work

him

for Hart,

I

ignored

into battle, signing

But

on

few weeks

just a

my own good as

around.

I

1987, followed

the campaign's deputy political director.

New

he told a reporter from the

me

May

after I'd started, Hart, in the

server, "shot himself in the testicles."

should "follow

sense and, in

words of one ob-

Asked about rumors of his

infidelity

York Times magazine that the media

don't care

.

.

.

if

anybody wants

to put a tail

on me, go ahead. They'd be very bored." 8

The very weekend

that story

was scheduled

to run, a

Miami Herald

him out and spotted Hart with a twentynamed Donna Rice. Soon a photo of the two of

reporter was indeed staking

nine-year-old actress

them taken

8

Peter

a

month

earlier

was

circulating: the blond

on

Goldman, Thomas M. DeFrank, Mark Miller, Andrew Murr, and 1992 (College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press, 1993).

for the Presidency,

his lap in front

Tom

Mathews, Quest

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

44

of the aptly-named yacht, Monkey Business. Within days, he'd dropped out of the race. believed then, like now, that a candidate's sex

I

has absolutely

life

nothing to do with his ability to be president. Obviously, you can question the man's

judgment

—knowing

that his private life

scrutiny and daring reporters to follow him. But

I

under intense

is

wonder about our

also

judgment, the judgment of those in the sensationalist media and

who

consume

eagerly

might have been

him

for.

it cost us, to lose a man who man who knew more twenty years than many of the candidates running

Think of what

we would

face

what happened

for what: a tittering, meaningless story about

between two

of us

a great president, a

ago about the world

now. And

it.

all

A

adults.

transgression that Hart's

own

wife had forgiven

Broadcast politics was more interested in tailing Gary Hart than

he staked out nearly twenty years

in reporting the farsighted positions

ahead of his time. In the wake of September 11, 2001, which mistake was bigger? His? I've

Or

worked

ours? for seven presidential candidates

—they

all

have flaws

— and

broadcast politics seems to exist for the sole purpose of finding them. So

throw out one of the leading thinkers he's not perfect?

Where

does this end,

in

we

our nation on terrorism because

when you throw out

candidates be-

cause they're too human, because they have trouble in their marriages, because they yell in their concession speeches?

Unfortunately, Gary Hart's trouble was just beginning the country's ridiculous obsession with the private lives of our politicians.

Suddenly without

and without

a candidate

a job,

I

landed

as

deputy

campaign manager in charge of message and media for the Gephardt campaign,

which was being run by

rick. Steve

my

old pal

Murphy and Mike Ford were

to approach the

working on

it,

It's

even tried to get Gephardt to do he had died since the too. After the past

last

way

the only a

know

campaign stop

at Irv

caucuses. National politics

flip-flopping candidates,

I

didn't

ill

know

if

to I

after

me.

I

Car-

it

was natural

I'd

brought to

to campaign. In Iowa,

I

Gadient's barn, but

was dying inside me,

few years of making empty, cynical

whole system seemed terminally

Dick Gephardt, but

I

days, Bill

so

1988 campaign with the same gonzo fervor

the 1980 and 1984 races.

sage-testing,

from the Kennedy

also

TV

ads, after

mes-

Gary Hart's implosion, the genuinely liked and respected

could stomach the system anymore.

THE HORROR

We built

momentum

enough

campaign shot

its

no boost from

it.

after the

Hyundai ad

to

45

win Iowa, but

the

wad there and in New Hampshire, and we got almost Out of money, Gephardt began flaming out when the

Dukakis campaign, flush with

cash, ran ad after ad

of

Dick Gephardt

a

look-a-like complete in a gymnast's outfit doing massive summersaults and

on

triple flips

record

known

thing

a

trampoline to an announcer's dramatic

as a flip-flopper,

When

to be

good

in

America.

the race was over,

presidential.

I

was beaten,

I

swore on

my

and broke

bitter,

bursed for $89,000 in campaign expenses).

my

and

wife Katie and

in 1988;

life I'd

I

had gotten married in 1984

—Christine was two — and eighteen-hour

had begun having children

I

Jim and Ted would come along

with an adult trying to

Of course, as

I

I

the

later

really

was done

A

had sworn off presidential

—

life

simply didn't

fit

raise a family.

was in 1988,

the right candidate.

never to do another

have never been reim-

(I still

days and seven-day weeks required to lead a campaign

sioned

of Gephardt's

recital

abuser of gravity, and the laws of physics and every-

I

But

suppose that

a series

at least

I

And

politics before.

might have been

of events convinced

me

as disillu-

lulled

back by

that this time,

I

with day-to-day campaigning.

when I was applying for health insurance as part of my employment with Doak and Shrum I got one of those rejection notices saying that something was wrong with my health. It turned out my blood sugar was dangerously high. I had adult onset diabetes. This is common among pols, caused by stress, poor diet, and lack of rest (pretty much few years

earlier,

the job description for a campaign staffer).

by changing

said,

my

diet,

getting

more

I

could manage

it,

the doctors

—most of —

and

sleep,

all

staying

away from campaigns. hadn't been enough to keep

It

was more

Over

reality

had gone off to be

—

to get

hotel

after

my

father

and

I

had begun

room next

a slow reconciliation.

a "political hack."

The

scrawny old

Italian guy.

had flown him to Philadelphia.

On

dad hated that

I

night of the Pennsylvania prito a 14 -point

for the victory celebration and he to a

my

Mondale how much

we'd gone from 14 points down

Mondale

Fritz

out of the 1988 scrum. But there

coming.

the years,

the road in 1984, I'd shared with

mary

me

My

win

—

was standing

dad.

I

went

in the

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

46

Mondale's comeback had started with and, in front of

he signed them

he told

By

my

my

a pair

of symbolic boxing gloves

on the night of my biggest win of that campaign,

dad,

— "To Rocky Trippi" — and handed them

to

me.

And

then

dad, "I wouldn't be here if it weren't for your son."

Dad and

1988,

were even talking about taking

I

Wyoming

Senate campaign in

a trip together to

country. After Gephardt was knocked out,

Sicily, to see the old

and

I

told

my father we'd leave

took a

I

for Italy the

day after the election.

We

had our

for the

and were

tickets

out to be too close to

Democrats.

told

I

and

call

my

all set

I

dad

few days, and then we'd take our

When me

landed,

I

it

a

turned

would only be

maybe

a short delay,

a

trip.

like

everyone was looking for me. They led

Kentucky

lilt:

"Joe,

I

a

don't

pay phone. The voice

know how

to

tell

you

But your daddy passed away."

He'd died of up

it

where someone was standing, holding

to a wall

on the other end had this.

seemed

Wyoming race

to go, but the

was sent to Casper to oversee the recount

a trip

with

some fucking At

a heart attack.

my

father to his

election in

his funeral,

I

laid

looked around the airport.

I

homeland

I

had given

for this: to recount votes for

Wyoming? one of Mondale's red boxing gloves in the casket

with him. These were hard years for the tribe of campaigners

I'd

worked

with, too.

Tony

In 1988,

whom

Pappas,

I'd

met

my

Ted Kennedy, and who had been working

for

committed

first

as a

day in Iowa working congressional staffer,

by jumping out the window of an eighteen-story

suicide

building the day a Washington Post story repeated rumors that he was gay.

Then, in September 1992, the indestructible Paul Tully died suddenly of a heart attack while working in campaign.

and to

We

his diet

imagine

—

a

had

all

Rock, Arkansas, on

worried about him

but you never think

it's

—

Bill Clinton's

his size, his health, his drive,

going to happen.

It

was impossible

world without Tully.

My own

life

hard to adjust

my

had taken lifestyle,

And

riage had dissolved. natorial race

Little

when

I

a beating in those years, too.

trying to keep

then, in 1994,

got a telephone

call

I

my

I

was working

diabetes in check.

was shooting an ad

saying that

my

My mar-

for a guber-

five-year-old son,

THE HORROR

Teddy, had been hit by

would probably not I

flew

a car

47

and had severe leg and head injuries and

live.

home and Ted's mother, Katie, and I took He was in a full body cast for months

turns keeping vigil at and, because pain re-

Ted's bedside.

induce a coma, was given psychotropic drugs.

lievers could potentially

was torture on both Katie and me, watching

a five-year-old struggle

It

with

the pain and disorientation caused by the medicines they gave him. Then,

one day, we noticed that something about him wasn't

The

him

doctors took

the looks of shock

him

on

into surgery. His brain

literally

watched

it

MRI

in for an

their faces.

he seemed

scan and, to this day,

They turned

MRI

teen hours. But somehow they managed

can

I

at that

He was

scan.

to save his

helped put politics in perspective for me. Here

couldn't imagine that as

I

would ever

I

my

invest as

still

see

moment. They

in surgery for thir-

life.

Ted's accident was the low point of those tough years, and

was gone, dealing with diabetes and

off.

off the machine and rushed

was hemorrhaging right

erupt under the

right;

I

was, divorced,

I

think

my

it

father

son's long, slow recovery.

much of myself in

a

I

campaign

had in the early 1980s. In 1988,

part so that

was

I

I

started

my own

media company, Trippi and Associates,

could be more selective about the races that

1989 races and

late getting into the

of Doak and Shrum. So tential clients.

had no

reel

my

little

Needless to

say,

ads with

in

handled. But

I

old spots were the property

—no sample of my work

to

found myself cold-calling candidates, turning

I

wall and doing

I

all

I

show po-

a light

on

a

shadow puppets.

some people

didn't get

it

— and who

could blame

them?

But when Virginia,

I

did

my

little

shadow dance

Jim Moran, who was making

a

run for Congress, he hired

Mame

the spot. His formidable

campaign manager,

more convincing

shadow puppet guy was

won

who

became

Reiley, took a

good

fit,

but

I

little

quickly

is

Lash. great friends with the eternally sunny

nothing

keteers, rolling itics.

a

me on

her over, along with her assistant, a bright beautiful blond livewire

named Kathy I

that the

mayor of Alexandria,

for the

less

than a force of nature herself.

Kathy and with Mame,

We

were the Three Mus-

around town, meeting every Tuesday for

a

drink to talk pol-

After we'd been friends for years, one day in the mid-1990s

Mame

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

48

suggested that

no way

ask

I

Kathy

thought she had finally

I

woman would

amazing

this

out.

lost

it.

There was

date me. But she did, and in 1997,

we

were married. In the 1990s, for the

first

time,

more time working on technology

my

worked on, only accepting candidates away from day-to-day ing

lion

I

believed

from Virginia Governor Doug Wilder. up-by-his-bootstraps, Korean deficit in Virginia

also

But he didn't want

Not

part of the

—not

Unfortunately,

to

—Wilder

their support.

Some

run

I

focus

his

campaign

who had

erased a $2 bil-

Wilder was

taxes,

groups

earlier,

a natural.

I

it

I

a

be-

gathered wouldn't

When we

Doug

let

out his story next

laid

all

these people a

of them withdrew

was where we stood

you make

it

if it

wasn't possible to use televi-

interactive, use

it

to inspire peo-

of just bombarding them with American

it

flags

was powerful enough to nearly de-

ought to be powerful enough to rebuild

signed on with Wilder,

I

had gone to

restaurant in Washington, D.C., with

Ford, and some other people.

While

a casual

dinner

it.

at a

Governor Jerry Brown,

the political establishment

Moonbeam, Mike and I had alof respect for him. We knew that Brown was conWhite House and we were encouraging him to do

the eccentric Governor

a great deal

coun-

back in 1968.

had begun to wonder

sidering a run for the

as a

hadn't progressed any further than the country

tried to heal

stroy participatory democracy,

as

would simply be

it

But when we showed

shots of criminals. If this thing

viewed Brown

reflection of the struggle

their pictures or names, just their general

that in 1991 this

ple to do something, instead

I

we

of the man.

—without

many ways

Just before

as a

his ethnicity, but

shot to the top.

sion a different way. Couldn't

ways had

to stay

I just don't think he could ever get elected.

Bobby Kennedy had

Mike

my vow

agreed to do some limited consulting for him.

a part

was disappointing

Mexican

kept

people reacted out of pure bigotry, others a frustrating

kind of pragmatism:

mug

hero

began with Wilder's picture, almost

television ad that

A year

I

the sum. This was the kind of campaign that

the

to the other candidates

try, that in

War

without raising

would ignore

that he

man

Wilder's race be simply

It

in.

I

America, the way Jesse Jackson had so effectively cam-

lieved in passionately, and

biographies

was spending

African American.

for civil rights in

paigned.

I

presidential campaigns, but in 1992, got an intrigu-

An

budget

balanced.

picking and choosing the races

call

He was

or

life felt

issues,

THE HORROR

it.

One

we

of the things

using a toll-free 800

Soon

after that,

talked about that night was the possibility of

number I

49

to attract voters.

signed on to do some limited consulting for Wilder

and Ford and ended up serving the same emeritus role for Brown.

So you can imagine

Wilder more than held Jerry Brown,

my

chagrin

at the first

debate in December,

own, but was completely overshadowed by

who answered

every question by holding up a sign with his

it. Brokaw asked Brown number when he answered

800 number on

if

holding up the

questions, and

by holding up the

that question

sign.

he could please refrain from

"No, Tom.

I

can't

Brown answered ." 9 .

.

At Brown campaign headquarters, supporters and money were in,

even though Brown had announced

larger than $100,

Brokaw reached

to years later.

idea of an strategist lists

found out that

I

800 number

away and

800-number

fire, calling

the key to Brown's surprising run

Later,

filed

a frustrated

for the gas can to put out the

rolled into

I

At the commercial break,

Mike Ford and asking him to talk some sense Mike said, and then he sat back and watched as all

rolling

that he wouldn't take any donation

one of those counter-intuitive ideas that

would come back

fund-raising

as

his

—

into his candidate. Sure, that

800 number became

his message, his organization, his

one media-savvy, interactive bundle. at

about the same time

for a politician,

Brown's

I

was tossing around the

brilliant,

young campaign

Joe Costello was having the same epiphany, watching televange-

and those late-night infomercials in which they flashed

a toll-free

800

number and bugged people to call in. In the end, when all the other Democrats in a crowded field had dropped out, only Brown would still be standing, nudging the party to the left against

the best campaigner of our generation, Bill Clinton, and with

$100 donations on an 800 number, reminding people

that this

was

their

system, not the Democrats' or the Republicans' or the special interests'.

was

It

theirs.

Joe Costello kept coming up with ingenious new ways to plug the number and when Wilder dropped out of the race, my partner Mark Squier

and

I

for the idea

9

Peter

make Brown's "We the People" TV spots, which pushed of empowering people to take action for change, and which

stepped in to

Goldman, Thomas M. DeFrank, Mark Miller, Andrew Murr, and 1992 (College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press, 1993).

for the Presidency,

Tom

Mathews, Quest

50

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

were

built

around the 800 number and the idea of getting Americans

involved again. donations.

I

The Brown 800 number

Looking back,

it's

easy to see

Dean campaign, but

to the

raised about $5 million in small

never forgot the lessons of that campaign.

it's

it

as

the first step in

many

amazing how primitive

it

that

was

—

would like

lead

one of

those old washing-machine sized computers, big, bulky, and not quite there yet

.

.

.

but in hindsight, the big, messy beginnings of a revolution.

THE MOMENT Killer

Apps, Open Source, and The Guy

just don't get

it.

You If you polled the staffers

of Dean for America and asked them what

the first thing that pops in your head

an overwhelming majority would of the song

I

went around belting

start

at

when you with

hear the

that phrase.

we were doing

It

—

in the

Trippi,

was the chorus

the top of my lungs for a year

leaders of American politics, media, entertainment,

dark about what

name Joe

is

that the

and business were in the

Dean campaign,

clinging to old methods and ideas that were about to

that they

become

were

archaeological

before their fossilized, corporate, country-club, never-gonna-

relics right

get-it nearsighted eyes.

The media? The party get

leaders?

The other campaigns? Don't frickin'

it.

And

if

I

said this to

your face ...

moron and mean it and said, "You just don't

hole

It's

it

.

.

."

call

but when

endearingly, get

could

watch

you I

a son-of-a-bitch ass-

looked you in the eye

out.

always been one of the hardest things for me, and one of my chief

frustrations

things that

—

with myself

seem obvious

a candidate, his

to

this

difficulty

me. With

message, the

field,

where the potential holes will be whole

I

TV

spots

—

pictures and

and the

sometimes have explaining

issues

I

can look

at

and see in an instant

in the campaign. Speeches, slogans,

words

have absolutely no idea where they

I

politics, for instance,

—come screaming

into

come from and when

I

my

sit

head.

I

down and

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

52

them onto paper and put

transcribe

tle bit

weird.

TV

of a

actly the length

Even

scary.

manic hand- waving .

.

.

say

mad

.

.

.

watch on them, they admit,

first to

are exa lit-

it's

My working style —late-night pacing distracted

—can be

Or

desks.

scientist.

a stop

30 seconds. I'm the

spot:

So

sleep.

someone who

jarring for I

understand people

who

Sometimes when I'm explaining how

is

more used

describe

me

to

as a

to patch the holes,

the person I'm talking to hasn't seen the holes yet and can't see the pictures

my

and words in

onds earlier

— and

head

my

so

hell,

I didn't see

myself until a few

it

patches seem arbitrary, as if I'm frantically

When this happens, can come that: I am short with people dis-

trying to fix a hull that isn't leaking yet.

with people

across as short

sec-

—

I

—

scratch

missive, or just plain nuts.

My reaction

is

sometimes the same to people

There has always been look

at a

a

the world

is

see

what

is,

—just don't get

the precise

Throughout the 1990s, into the other world in

wasn't that

my

lives.

who

look

who

which

/

got

it.

moved comfortably

I

who

it.

moment

had drifted slowly away from

I

at the

between those people who know

see what's going to be,

remember

still

and those people

changing profoundly before our eyes and those people

for one reason or another I

don't see the impacts

disconnect in America between those people

computer screen and

same screen and

who

and other technology are already having on our

that the Internet

politics

and

—technology.

It

passion for transforming the world had dried up. If any-

was stronger than

But the change

worked

thing,

it

snail's

pace compared to the world of computers and telecommunications,

ever.

which were delivering now on edge, and therefore

Whatever

talent

had in

politics

their

own

—mostly

at a

more knowl-

the promise of giving people

more power over I

in politics

lives.

in helping candidates

com-

municate their views and ideas about the specialized world of govern-

ment

—was

also in

demand

in the

"new economy,"

and communications companies that had the Silicon Valley and

was flooding the

this river

spilled over

its

entire country

of technology

banks in Seattle and

with innovation.

And money. In the late 1990s, this was the thing that impressed most people about businesses like

per share.

Amazon.com,

Intel,

and Lucent Technologies

—

their price

THE MOMENT

Not sulting

way as

that

I

didn't care about the stock market, but

with high-tech

startups,

I

when

found myself choosing

I

53

began con-

same

clients the

chose political races, a calculation that Paul Tully used to describe

I

"finding the most progressive candidate

who

actually has a prayer of

winning." I

would become

fascinated by the newest,

most speculative, and futur-

high-tech concept, seek out the business that was doing the best job

istic

working on problems associated with services to help translate

the off chance

computers

we

in political years,

when

my

consulting

and refine the "message" of their technology, on

could get

about

(this is

and offer

that idea,

as I

it

included in the newest wave of personal

easy as getting

someone elected

president).

was immersed in campaigns and had

Even

to keep

one

eye on Newsweek, the other eye was always on Wired. Pols tend to be a single-minded

campaign guy's briefcase and you're

memos, and news magazines. So with

my

I

group during election season. Open likely to find polling

was easy to

spot, the

a

numbers, message

one in the airport

nose in a textbook about multiwavelength optical networks or

flipping through an article

threw everything the only thing

I

I

on the ramifications of infinite bandwidth.

had into the campaigns that

I

worked on, but

it

I

still

wasn't

did anymore. I'd finish a meeting with a U.S. Senator

about television spots for his upcoming race, walk five blocks to a coffee

shop and a chip

sit

down with

a couple

of twenty-six-year-olds to talk about

why

on the southbridge of the motherboard with triple-DES encryption

was the best personal computing security solution. More than

two worlds, with

foot in these

them was narrowing every

The

late

1990s were

this

I

had

a

sneaking suspicion that the gap between

day. thrilling.

The

rate

of technological change in

America was increasing exponentially. Fueled by happy like processing

ever,

speed and chip

memory doubled

investors,

measures

themselves in increasingly

shorter periods of time, allowing for even faster developments elsewhere.

New

innovations shot up everywhere and everyone was looking for that

killer application, the reality,

between imagination and innovation.

For that ity.

gap constantly narrowing between science fiction and

One

of

brief,

wonderful period, daydreams became

my two

lifelong visions

geek-tech wonderland.

that

commod-

we were living in a would have made me happier

was coming

The only thing

a viable

true:

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

54

was

—

in the midst of this technological renaissance

—

to have a

Bobby

Kennedy-style candidate emerge, reenergize people again, and begin re-

making

the country.

But you

can't have everything. In spite of Bill Clinton's popularity,

the Republicans had a chokehold election years, elected, but in

working

I

on both houses of Congress.

So, during

continued to work half-time trying to get Democrats

between campaigns, the

vast majority

of my time was spent

for a handful of companies, mostly startups, in

whom

saw the

I

same insurgent, progressive, bottom-up, long-shot, democratic philosophy that

I

looked for in candidates.

This led

•

Wave

me

to

Systems,

do consulting work

for a

few brash young companies:

which was developing technology

to create trust at the

edge of the Internet, helping people better control the security and semination of video and other content on their

upshot being that you could post your

own

own

music videos, or your secret

recipe for chili online and charge a nickel every time

loaded •

someone down-

it).

Progeny Linux Systems, which was writing software for Linux, the increasingly popular, tant

dis-

computers (one

— — operating system free

bottom-up, and most impor-

stable,

(think of

of

a version

it

as the

anti-Windows) that had

taken the original intent of the Internet and run with

it,

creating an

open-source computer code that invited innovation instead of choking •

Smart Paper Networks, which was exactly what

it

sounded

like

it.

— an

interactive kind of paper that reacted

when you touched

up the reader with web

the thing you'd touched (so that,

as

you read

a

magazine

sites related to

article that

it

by linking

mentioned the music of Bob Marley,

your computer screen could jump to

a

video of Marley performing,

catalogue of his songs or a store where you could order his music.

amazed by

this then,

and

I still

I

a

was

am).

For me, the most promising thing about the Internet in those days was the

way

it

transformed communication, the way

of the more insidious aspects of television.

It

it

actually reversed

was making people

some

talk to

each other again. I

certainly did

over the

web on

my

share.

I

visited chat

rooms and posted messages

all

electronic bulletin boards about investing, politics,

THE MOMENT

technology,

One

sports.

55

of the most amazing online communities

formed around Wave Systems,

room

in a chat

for investors, people called

Wavoids (my on-screen name was "randoml"). The amazing thing was that the company's leaders actually read what their investors had to say.

They

community of investors

could have with this

So

wrote the

I

But they didn't communicate

actually listened.

CEO

and soon

world of Wave for

nical

At

Wave

its

peak, there were

bulletin board.

I

they

was once poster of the week on

a

more than

also contributed to the

I

raucous debates on Raging Bull and Motley Fool, and that

as

at least not in English.

was the one translating the highly tech-

I

lay people.

1,000 posts a day on the

—

well

as

I

can proudly say

board devoted to Baltimore Ori-

oles fans.

In the late 1990s,

companies

spent a lot of time

I

I'd invested in, like

games for PlayStation and was

a small tech

happy club of

investors,

one company called

GameBoy and

company

that

game

on web

reading about

sites

THQ,

which made

game

other video

consoles.

had grown successful and there was

players,

and the curious

who

It

a

gathered on

web to read about what was happening and comment about the company's new games, its developing technology and, generally, what it was the

up

to.

This young day trader named David Haines (he posted

was the unofficial

star

of the

THQ

bulletin board.

what David would write. He was twenty-nine or

as

HAINESDA)

Everyone came

informative, and if you followed David, you got a real report on the

pany

—which games rocked, which apps — opposed killer

what the company was up

to

com-

around the corner,

lay just

to the

as

to see

thirty, funny, articulate,

rows of cold numbers and

corporate jargon in the quarterly reports that traditional companies send out to their shareholders.

And

unlike a corporate report, you could actually talk

back to David and he'd answer your questions, comment on your laugh

at

in four

your jokes. At one point,

a

group of online investors even chipped

hundred bucks to send David to

a

gaming convention because they

couldn't imagine not having David's take

on

it.

At the convention, the

THQ engineers took David on a guided tour,

treating

investor, but like a partner in their innovation.

This was

ness model,

shared nesses,

it

the

company sharing information with

with the people

which viewed

its

who

use

idea,

it

and invest in

it,

him a

a

not like a small

whole new busi-

key person,

who

unlike the old busi-

customers the way the military viewed targets,

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

56

making with

a

marketing plans and then "unveiling" them on the public

secret

manipulative advertising

blitz.

In the truest sense of bottom-up, companies like

input from the people

who

THQ

responded to

actually used their stuff and invested in their

company, on the off chance that the 200 brightest people in the world

might not

all

work

at their

games and bought

company, and that the people

their stock

might not be

who

played their

morons. Because of this,

total

THQ didn't just have people who used the products —like the people who buy Bounty paper towels or who community, thousands of people

THQ,

who

a

cared enough to get involved with

to engage in dialogues over the Internet, like people at an

caucus whose neighborhood was not

web

—they had

Taco Bell

eat gorditas at

a

row of farmhouses, but

Iowa

row of

a

sites.

But more than

just getting to

posts

on the bulletin board got

wiry

triathlete

with

when he missed

to

the company, readers of David's

know David.

named

a cat

know Sierra

and

It

turned out he was a

couple of posts, he got on to apologize, to say that his

a

wife had just given birth to a baby boy, Christian.

Haines and yet

I

knew him. For two

week, sometimes more.

walked for the

And

I

I

—

I

never met David

checked in with him once

I

his kids

a

were born, when they

time.

first

was there the day someone

built

years,

was there when

David had died the day before of board

tall,

dog named Bruin. Once,

a

around

a

else

got on the board to report that

a heart attack.

For days, the whole

gaming technology company of

into a deep period of mourning.

people eulogized David and

I

sat at

my

mourned him

all

things

—went

PC, crying and watching

the

way you'd mourn

a

as

good

friend.

And I

that

is

the precise

was attending

This was not

a

a

moment

that I got

funeral on the Internet.

bunch of individual people

sion alone, watching a sad program, reaching tissue.

This was

it.

a rich, fully realized

sitting in front

on cue

community,

a

for the

of

Kleenex brand

world of real people in-

teracting with each other, sharing their kids' first steps and crying other's shoulders

when

a televi-

on each

they lost someone they cared about, someone most

of us had never met.

You

get used to things

moving

in a certain direction. All the inertia

carrying us downward, toward the place that society has fallen: a dark,

THE MOMENT

And

cynical, self-defeating cave.

moment

in

which you

moment of hope. This you might be standing at the dawn of

then you have this

realize that

something profound, something that can reverse sonalized and disengaged mass. At keyboards

be

a million,

people

two

million, ten million

who want

to

57

all

this descent into a

deper-

over the world, there could

David Haineses, smart, funny, good

change the world and have just been waiting for that

moment when someone

figures out

how

them

to get

all

together.

AT THE INTERSECTION OF POLITICS

AND TECHNOLOGY So

it

was

Maybe

just plain

the

dumb

Or maybe

luck.

same congenital flaw

that

was why

presidential campaigns

I

was crazy plain

it

made me

daft

enough

to

dumb

luck.

work on

six

was constantly babbling in front of

a

computer screen, surfing Internet chat rooms, company bulletin boards,

Whatever

commenting on out-of-the-way

blogs.

found myself in the right spot

the beginning of the twenty- first century,

maybe

the one

at

guy who might have

grassroots, nuts-and-bolts,

the reason,

chance

a

at

pulling together this

movement

thing,

As the elections of 1998, 2000, and 2002 slime-trailed

TV

screens

—

the

moneyed

scattered head.

technology

I

bored

—with my

riff

my

their

1

—

this idea

across

was germinating

share of people in both worlds

about

way

congressional incumbents winning

98 percent of the races against challengers

my

unwittingly

knock-on-doors, send-e-mails, use-the-Internet-

bulletin board- web site political

American

I

how one

—

politics

in

and

day in the very near future we'd

build huge, involved communities around political issues and candidates,

how the

these people

would be an army, ready

government was doing

that

top-down, trust-us-we-know-what's-best-

for-you crap that people were so sick industry, and corporate are going to learn

At some

would nod

how

You just don't get

1

of.

Government, the entertainment

America better get

ready.

to organize themselves

point, the listener's eyes

politely, or

to mobilize at the first sign that

would

sometimes not so

The American people

and then watch out. glaze over and that person

politely.

it.

Charles Lewis and the Center for Public Integrity, The Buying of the President

York: HarperCollins, 2004).

2004 (New

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

58

No,

would

the person

No. You

When

say.

get

I

it.

the tech stock bubble burst in 2000, the old guard of business

and culture in America thought turistic,

it.

You just don't get

don't.

Utopian, techno

it

had gotten

a reprieve, that all that

hoo-haw they'd been hearing and mostly

fu-

ignor-

ing had turned out to be crap. All together: You don't get It

holds to 75 percent. fastest

Took

the car fifty-two years.

The

1

percent of house-

The

radio fourteen.

innovation to get into 75 percent of households was the television,

which took seven Americans

But house,

it.

took the telephone sixty-seven years to go from

to get

on the

number

this

all

years.

you had

And

that's

to

long

it

took 75 percent of

Internet. Seven years."

When

TV

the

got into the

do was turn the thing on, and bang, Dwight Eisen-

to

become

Red

your living room, warning you about the

in

Menace. Everyone knew what

—

how

a little bit deceiving.

is

hower was standing catch on

about

a

TV

this force that

did.

But

for the Internet to really

could change the world

—

a

few more

Some snow had to be plowed. Amazon.com had to show you that you could buy something on Internet, in this case a book, and the damn thing would actually show That your credit card number wouldn't immediately be e-mailed to

things had to happen. First,

the up.

every criminal in the country. Sites like eBay had to show that an Internet

communities could be

a civil, orderly,

law-abiding, welcoming place. In

1997, eBay reported that only 27 of its 2 million online auctions involved possible fraud. That's .01 percent,

were on the

level.

3

Find

move tomorrow. Or

me

meaning 99.99 percent of transactions

a real city

with that kind of crime

online travel. Early on, people

they wanted on the Internet, but would then

would find

was

faster, easier,

travel arrangements,

What

and

than

show people

and usually cheaper to go online and make your and that you didn't need paper to get on

these sites and others

I'll

the flight

call the airline rather

take the chance. Sites like Expedia and Travelocity had to it

rate

that

own

a plane.

were doing was plowing snow, clearing the

roads for Internet users to feel safe and comfortable enough to spend money,

2

Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New

York: Simon 3

&

Schuster, 2000).

Howard Rheingold, Smart Mobs (Cambridge, MA:

Perseus Books, 2002).

THE MOMENT

make

reservations,

and interact on the web in

a

59

While

million ways.

cor-

porate leaders and stock analysts continued to miss the point by focusing on the rise and

fall

long after the

of admittedly inflated stock prices, the truth

—

bubble burst

were doing more things on the Internet than

uphill climb

—except

few

for a

number of phones and

that not

is

—more it's a

years during the Great Depression

radios took a small dip. If there

was

Now

imagine

you owned

if

early days of radio, in those fourteen years before

had

What

a radio in their houses.

if,

penesteady

—when

a similar

downtick with the Internet and the bursting of the stock bubble, even more short-lived.

people

ever. If you look at the

and the radio into American homes,

tration of the telephone

the

maybe

couple of months

a

was

it

a radio station in the

75 percent of Americans of losing money, you

after ten years

sold that station?

So go ahead and pretend the Internet died with the stock market bubble.

In the words of Clint Eastwood,

Of course,

there's a fine

and being the first

Do

you feel lucky? Well, do ya?

but excruciating line between being the

to succeed.

There can be

between the visionary and the

vision.

So for the

naysayers win, and just before the thing

whole bunch of people give up on that

I

had in 1993,

bunch of great

ing, a

know how we can't

is

it. It's like

as

ideas

about to become a that brick-size

on the

idiot. Start

reality, a

all

of

tech companies lost their pipeline to easy fund-

went under, devices

lived without, services that will

Internet. Start

the

Apple Newton

that, in ten years,

make

so

much

imagine they haven't always been around. Like buying

bankrupt

first

time

first fifteen years,

world, but the precursor to

a failure in the business

PDAs. In 2000,

today's

a ten- or fifteen-year lag

we won't we

sense that

airline tickets

up an online

travel

agency ten years ago and you're

up an online

travel

agency two years ago and you're

a

a billionaire. It's

no

different

didates, like Jerry

with

politics.

I

had watched the "1-800" populist can-

Brown and Ross

McCain's insurgent Republican

Perot, and

I

—

excited that

off before

I

someone was trying

got the chance.

They

number of people, about 40,000, was the Newton of online

John

presidential bid in 2000, the first national

campaign to attempt to make use of the Internet. year

closely followed

didn't.

it,

my

breath that it

to pull a decent

campaign via the Internet, but

campaigns.

wasn't quite mature enough yet; enough

held

McCain managed

into his

political

I

but terrified that they'd pull

it

The technology simply

snow hadn't been plowed.

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

60

As

I

daydreamed about

how

this

thing might work,

tom-up, interactive Internet campaign that

away from working

eight or ten years ter

of plowing snow, or of getting

would

if you

No,

were developing

a

all

new

to build this startup, first

I

thought the bot-

I

was visualizing might

And

in politics.

it

still

be

wasn't just a mat-

the technology in order, the

way you

chip or a lighter laptop.

you needed

to

go out and find the guy.

A SURE LOSER I

was dead. Midway through the 2002 election

my

ever been in

life.

sleep through the

was

I

2004

sick.

I

cycle,

was intending

presidential,

Instead,

I

made a

in the fall

Series.

the mistake of taking a campaign.

And

not just any

knock-down, drag-out donnybrook, one of the

most negative, most hellacious campaigns of my It

as tired as I'd

through 2003,

maybe wake up sometime

of 2005, just in time to see the Orioles win the World

campaign, but

was

I

to sleep

was the 2002 mid-term congressional

hardest,

life.

elections,

and Karl Rove and

on Congress by taking

the Republicans had decided to cement their hold

advantage of the once-a-decade reapportionment of congressional districts.

five

What

they did was redraw the boundaries in five

districts, so that

Democratic members of the House of Representatives woke up one

morning

to find themselves living in a mostly Republican district, the

boundaries of which

now extended

like

comic-book thought bubbles

around their houses. In these five Republican districts, there were

now two

incumbents:

one displaced Democrat and one heavily favored Republican. The Congressional Campaign Committee, the D-Triple-C,

cratic

priority to put I

that

violated

to

a

good

fight in these five districts

made

it

a

and called out the big

was pissed off enough by the cutthroat and blatant gerrymandering

guns. I

up

Demo-

my

doctor's orders and

my own common

sense and agreed

work day-to-day on one of the campaigns. I

was rewarded for

Holden,

a conservative

the newly

my

stupidity with the toughest of

Blue

Dog Democrat who found

drawn Seventeenth

66 percent of the

district

Distict of Pennsylvania,

all:

Tim

himself living in

which contained

of Republican George Gekas and about 33 per-

cent of Holden's old district. There were 50,000

Democrats

them

in this district.

more Republicans than

THE MOMENT

was

It

Tim had

tics. Still,

And

a sure loser.

I

was completely fed up with broadcast

team, guys like Bruce Andrews,

a great

campaign; Daren Berringer, the field director being the

state director

trumped

my

my

As

the time

arrived,

I

I

would

it

were coming

damn

since this

work on

every day,

seemed,

it

power grab

Holden campaign.

the

head about

my

as

ugly

barrels.

We

a helicopter

—

would

district,

firmly behind

When fight

I

its

so

back, the

good guy

from the White House

when

tools

I

have.

I

and

at

and

on the couch

walked

Penn-

the country

I

was

don't pull any punches.

learned a long time ago that

some

point,

I

Not on my watch. So

lose.

I

to

if you

I

hold

gets killed.

going to

Inn.

—

president and his campaign against terrorism.

Tim Holden was

Congressman, and he didn't deserve to get pummeled

slept

And

President Bush, Vice President Cheney,

That's what was happening here.

aline kicked in,

they

from Washington, D.C.,

take off

get in a political fistfight like this,

with whatever

I

were being outspent three-

for Gekas. All of this at a time

war

now

attack ads to deal with.

was only 140 miles or

and deliver some special guest

campaign

sanity,

anything I'd ever seen.

as

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell sylvania to

Trish

it.

morning we had three new

district

later coerce into

did amazing constituent ser-

my own

was already

him with both

after

to-one, and every

poli-

ran the

Tim Smith and

they hadn't done enough by redrawing Holden' s

if

who

the blatant Republican

at

agreed to

have no qualms in

I

ended up begging to work on

By

who

staffers

outrage

reservations and

Actually, because

I

of Michigan for Dean; and

Reilly-Hudock, congressional vice work. Eventually,

61

in the

moved

a

good

The adren-

Tim Holden

wasn't

to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,

campaign headquarters or

precincts, rang doorbells,

good guy,

like this.

just decided that I

a

at

the local Quality

and worked myself ragged, just

like

the old days.

There were three partners in

my media firm

—

Steve

McMahon, Mark

— and we usually worked on different races

Squier, and myself times.

While

I

was going through holy

kept getting phone his

longtime

calls

hell

at different

on the ground with Holden,

I

from McMahon, who was consulting with one of

clients, the

governor of Vermont, Howard Dean,

who was

considering a run for president.

"Hey," Steve running."

said

on the phone.

"I think

Dean's really serious about

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

62

"That's nice,"

my

trench. I'd

been on

our heads bashed

my

to hell,

in.

nerve endings

fall

there

start to jangle,

if

I

Go

"Okay.

mered

all

gonna do

screw yourself."

I

was

You ought

it.

me

Eight days to go,

"You want

Now

tell

a

move. In the

McMahon

.

.

.

McMahon

called

my life, It

was

ham-

McMahon

and

like calling a

him you drove by

a

good

was

guy

cliff that

called again.

know where I'll be me the fuck alone." Democrats

last days,

and then I'm

to get involved."

in eight days, Steve? Sleeping. For a

As election day neared, the media began noting that the the five targeted

a

off.

to

leave

began

I

in dying in a bunker, getting

about doing a presidential?

jump

he might want to

Some

sixty days and then I'm

sleep for a year. Fifty-eight days

I

who's being bludgeoned to death to

year.

—

go

day, every day in the worst fight of

calling to ask

get pneu-

I

to get off the couch.

to

getting

awful.

felt

I

to

blood sugar goes

down, and

exception.

thirty-eight days to go until election day,

again. "I really think Dean's

we were

still

my

sleep for a year. Fifty-nine days

done. Fifty-nine days and then

With

get run

I

was going

I

were sixty days

done. Sixty days and then

hung up and went back

I

during election years,

And 2002 was no

wondered

really

I

countdown when

And

to hell."

campaign for months, and

this

Every

monia. Like clockwork. mornings,

"Go

said.

I

to survive,

Tim

least likely

of

Holden, was actually making

they were saying Holden was the one candidate of

the targeted five with an outside chance of pulling off an upset.

Election night. cent behind.

But

all

With seven thousand

night, the vote kept creeping

to the last 10,000 votes,

2 a.m. the

morning

we were

—

a

geted by redistricting, Holden

win

—was

I

—

I

we

had just bought

a

couldn't wait to actually see

toward our

passed Gekas.

the one the it

we were side.

15 per-

Down

behind. Finally, somewhere after It

Of the

five

numbers

said

miracle finish.

the only one to pull

Kathy and and

still

after the election,

big stories of the mid-term

to

votes counted,

was one of the

Democrats was

tar-

least likely

out.

farm on the eastern shore it,

to spend

some time

in

there.

Maryland

Two

days

when I was getting ready to go to bed for a year, He started by buttering me up, congratulating me on the amazing Holden win, telling me how it was the talk of Washington. "Look," Steve said, "Howard Dean is out in Iowa. You gotta do me just after the election,

McMahon

this

one

called again.

favor.

You know Iowa.

Just take a trip out there, see

what

it

feels

THE MOMENT

hook him up with some people. Then you can go back home and

like,

for a year. this

63

I

sleep

understand. But before you go to sleep, you've really gotta hear

guy."

MY RESPONSIBILITY AS AN AMERICAN Every

made

it

was

telling

me

Then

how

it

again,

always

what could one

starts.)

So

I

event in Des Moines. This was

Don't do

to say no.

through the Holden campaign, the

to Iowa. thats

my body

cell in

last

CITIZEN

thing

it!

I

had barely

needed was

I

a trip

you

trip hurt? (Addicts will tell

flew out to Iowa, for an early campaign

more than

year before the caucuses

a

my

and there were only two candidates there,

old boss

Dick Gephardt

and Howard Dean.

Gephardt went

Dean got up and

and nailed

first

fell flat

heard.

He

afraid.

But honestly,

on

his face.

told

me what had

to

Linn County for another event, and

happened. For weeks, he'd been out in Iowa by him-

campaigning with no other candidates around. But Gephardt had come

self,

out and given Dean's speech. Ironically,

look like he copied Gephardt's speech. fly,

Dean was worried that it would So he made up a new one on the

went way off message, and came

across looking discombobulated.

We

him

talked in the car and

I

gave

things around, change the structure a

from Gephardt. That same first,

and

this

were both at

I'd ever

to be genuine, and un-

wasn't sure what the big deal was.

That night, we were driving back

Dean

was the worst speech

It

He seemed

was an intriguing guy, sure. I

stump speech. And then Howard

his

the

what

at this event,

I'd thought.

I

the first time

looked over

In this environment

sat

move some

to

to differentiate himself

County

event,

Dean

got up

at

three had been in the same place

all

Gephardt and Kerry, and

They both had Oh

for disagreeing, here

and Kerry

how

ideas,

little bit

day, at the Linn

shit looks

what Gephardt was thinking: Where was

We

few

time he blew the roof off the place. Gephardt and Kerry

same time.

a minute.

a

that

guy

on this

it

their faces.

was I

morning?

where your patriotism could be questioned

was the former governor of a tiny

don't have the evidence

to

there slack jawed, their

go

to

war.

I

just

knew

state saying:

watched

as

just

Wait

Gephardt

mouths open. The looks on

their

He's out of his mind. Ninety-eight of ninety-nine senators had recently voted to cede civil rights to the Patriot Act with no debate. The

faces said,

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

64

resolution giving President

Bush authorization

had passed

to attack Iraq

overwhelmingly. So Dean was courageous.

But Iowa,

he didn't have me. Not yet. Having worked for Gephardt in

still

knew

I

candidate: he

he had

would

and shake hands and sign autographs until he was

He would

the last candidate there.

So

hung around

I

about dinners where there was more than one

a rule

stay

to see

always be the

bused from the table before Kerry

one to

leave.

dishes hadn't

been

But Gephardt and Dean both

left.

They

circled

around each other, shaking hands,

signing autographs, and talking

— each

occasionally glancing over to look

stayed to

work

last

what would happen. The

the room.

other guy. Finally, there couldn't have been twenty people

at the

left

and

was coming around, but he didn't have me. Not

yet.

Gephardt gave up and went home. Only then did Dean So he was tough.

The next

I

was another event,

day, there

There were probably 300 people there and

I

at a

leave.

house in Linn County.

was looking around, thinking

when someone asked Dean the oldest question was Dean running? I'd heard the answer a Americans back to work or to restore pride in Amer-

about old Iowa Caucuses,

Why

in presidential politics:

million times: to get ica, to

give

you

this

and get you

But then Howard Dean swer.

I

started talking.

when

wanted

a

said,

it

good school

for

your

I

wanted

kid.

It

can citizen and your responsibility

sissippi,

kid.

this wasn't a

"because there used to be

wasn't enough that

work together

it's

And

prepared an-

could see that he was genuinely answering the question.

"I'm running," he try

Whatever.

that.

for

good

a

as

time in

my

this

coun-

kid or you

responsibility as an

an American citizen that

Ameri-

we

schools, not just for our kids, but for kids in

all

Mis-

Alabama, Oakland, California, and Harlem. I'm running because

not just enough to want health care for

We

good

my

was

a

school for

have

a responsibility as

American

my

kid or health care for your

citizens, a responsibility to

other, to provide health care for those kids

each

from Oklahoma and Min-

nesota and Arizona ..."

And yelling:

that

Get

was the moment he got me. Every synapse in the hell out of there! If you don't

now, you're going to

start

I

believed.

He

bitch got to me.

said that

He

talked

America was

body was

run to the nearest exit right

believing this guy. You're going to

and by tomorrow morning you'll be working on

The son of a

my

this

fall

in love

goddamn campaign.

from the heart about the things

drifting toward

war

in Iraq for the

THE MOMENT

wrong

reasons.

That the country was too beholden

65

That

to special interests.

the greatest nation in the history of the world ought to be able to provide

health care for

its

people.

I

guy

listened to this

waiting to hear a candidate say for twenty years and like a I

fell

the

been

say the things that I'd

damn

schoolgirl,

in love.

I

raced

home and

tried to forget about

I

had

beer with

my

a

Holden campaign,

old friend Steve

too,

what

I'd just seen.

Murphy, who had just come off

how tough

and we were commiserating about

the political consultant business had gotten.

He

told

me

that he'd heard I'd

been looking into the Dean campaign. "You're not stupid enough to get sucked into that presidential

"No

A

way.

shit this year?"

I'm too

presidential?

old.

he asked.

No way

I'm doing

How

that.

about you?"

"No

Steve shook his head.

Four days

later

I

way. Never again."

heard that Steve had agreed to run the Gephardt

campaign. Still,

held out. For weeks,

I

kept up the dance, taking trips to Ver-

I

mont, advising the Dean people on the campaign, but trying to keep from

committing myself. Each time convinced: There was no

behind and

his

way

campaign was

I

returned from Vermont,

I

could take this campaign.

point and said that he'd heard

I

it,

totally

Dean was

so far

work on this thing dayMike Ford even called me at one

I

was thinking about working on Dean.

bro," he said. "I don't want you to be the next Tully."

didn't need

much

on even the simplest

manned

was

so unlikely, that to

to-day would be a death wish for me.

"Don't do

I

vessel like

convincing.

No way was

I

in any condition to take

presidential campaign, let alone a creaky, under-

Dean

for America.

And yet I found myself thinking about it: Maybe this was the guy. Maybe he was the real thing, the one you wait for your whole life. Maybe this

was even the guy

who

—

could finally lead a real insurgency

a

ground-

up, honest-to-god revolution.

Stop

it!

In February, after I'd been sultant, Steve

McMahon

up

convinced

to

Vermont

me

was scheduled, along with the other

to

six

a

couple of times

as a

con-

go to Washington, where Dean

announced candidates,

to address

the Democratic National Committee's winter meeting, one of the

first

hurdles of a prospective presidential candidate and an important measure of

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

66

his viability as a candidate.

he'd been scheduled event.

all

As befitting such

was the most important speech of

It

campaign,

a seat-of-the -pants

over the country in the days leading up to this his career to that point: a

who

chance to define himself in front of the Democratic Party leaders,

would

be "super-delegates," an automatic four hundred voters

all

Democratic convention in Boston. But the

his

people had done very

at the

little

in

way of promotion; while other candidates had brochures and penDean for America had virtually nothing on the tables or in the hall

nants,

where he was speaking. So while Kelly together a

McMahon

Dean

little

and Howard's small

care package (the end result

scrambled to put

staff

was perfect

Vermont maple syrup, Dr. Dean's Prescription-for-Change with spare change

—

get

it,

Dean

for change?) another small

—

a shot

of

bottles filled

group huddled

with the governor. They had been yo-yoing him around the country and the poor

guy showed up with nothing prepared. Well,

clearly this

was not

going to be some focus group-tested, TelePrompTer-delivered plea for party support.

huge bomb.

guess that was good. But

I

He and

his aides

Dean

deliver the usual

were talking

fare, health

had the potential of being

it

in

hushed tones about

coverage for

Americans,

all

a

how to when I

spoke up.

"Look,"

"You know what? members for a couple

DNC

to these

I've

said.

I

been walking around, talking

You know what they

days.

really

want? They're waiting for someone to walk up to that podium and

'What

the fuck

is

going on here?

on Howard Dean

It

was not

lost

sisted

of a few

lines

public.

He

the fuck

about

if

is I

looked

And with word to the

notes as

'What

me I

that he

we

the fuck happened to our party?'

my

that

first real

him con-

ask,

'What

could also see he liked the idea.

"How

calmly. "Joe,

want

to

took out

talked about

I

know a

is

I

go out there and

can't

—

" '

few index cards and made simple, one-

how

he should ask what the hell happened

Democratic Party's principles over the

intently as Steve

advice to

:

of a public speech that couldn't actually be delivered in

at

going on here.' " But

say,

What

ask,

Grossman

(the closest thing

last

three years.

we had

to a

He

listened

campaign chair-

man and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee), McMahon, Dean campaign manager Rick Ridder, and offered our advice on the new speech. He nodded a few times, jotted down some key I

THE MOMENT

phrases

on those index cards of

thought: That's

his

and put them away in

his jacket.

When

Howard's turn came,

he looked around the room, stepped up to the microphone, and hit the park.

"What "What

erupted.

want

I

to

know

why

is

want

I

porting tax cuts

.

.

to

I

gress about the Patient's Bill

What

child in this country.

No

The room

is

want

to

be standing up for health care for every single American man,

the president's

out of

why are Democratic Party leaders supknow is why we're fighting in Conof Rights when the Democratic Party ought to

know

What

.

it

world the Democratic Party

in the

supporting the president's unilateral attack on Iraq!"

is

I

it?

Seven candidates were delivering speeches.

leadership

67

I

want

to

know

Child Left Behind

why

is

woman, and

our folks are voting for

bill that leaves

every child behind,

every teacher behind, every school board behind, and every property tax payer behind."

The room was become

perfunctory election tradition had

a rally for the forgotten ideals

of the people's party. Someone in

the audience screamed out,

And

A

staid,

liquefying.

then

watched the

—with

a

"We want

mixture of

know, too!" joy and complete dread

total

goddamn

over the

ball sail

to

fence.

said in that forceful, matter-of-fact voice,

—

"I'm Howard Dean," he

"and I'm here to represent the

4 democratic wing of the Democratic Party."

The day was

his

now. The story of the winter meetings was Howard

Dean, and the media took

had stepped up to that he

was

tell

calling

its first

real

look

at

him:

at this

candidate

who

the Party leaders that they had gone off-track and

them on

it.

In one twelve-minute-and-thirty-second

Howard Dean had announced that even if he might not win the he was going to make some noise. And I could feel myself slipping in

burst, race,

behind him. After that, the pressure picked up from every corner of my

McMahon

had somehow convinced Kathy to

portantly, she

knew me, and

she worried about I

had even gotten

ganizer for

4

The

my

first

health, she also a

phone

Ted Kennedy,

fall

for

she could see through

call

whom

I

knew

that

I

Dean

my

life.

Steve

and, just as im-

protests.

needed to do

So while this.

from David Bender, the old campus orhadn't talked to in twenty- three years.

person to use this line was actually the legendary Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone.

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

68

David

said that

had signed the

he wanted to work for Dean, because

unions

civil

me

that he'd

bill

"Oh, by

couples in Vermont.

met Dean

governor,

as

Howard

guaranteeing the most basic rights to gay

the way, Joe," he said, "I'm gay."

several years earlier,

He

told

when John Kennedy Jr., had

brought the obscure Vermont governor to an editorial board meeting of

George magazine, where David was

David

me

Dean, and he wanted talents

and contacts

know

to

as a political

contributing editor.

a

said that he'd read that

was thinking of consulting with

I

he was ready to bring his considerable

and entertainment industry contacts to

the campaign. I

him

told

What It

was

that

but

swell,

I

wasn't working the frickin' campaign.

guy?

if this is the

was an open

Dean and

secret that

Kate O'Connor

his top aide

weren't happy with Rick Ridder, the capable, veteran campaign ager. People kept calling

telling

know

them if

no.

I

was

could do

I

ironic later

from Burlington no condition

in

it.

didn't

I

when some

know

to see if

to if

people said that

them other names,

around me. They'd be

Vermont

much

It

I

was

interested.

campaign.

it.

few days he turned said.

found

it

tried giv-

run

circles

Mike flew up

better off with Ford. So

was an impossible job, he

(I

I

said could

I

kept

managed and

Remember?)

that.

I

didn't even

I

hadn't effectively

Mike Ford, who

like

to take a look, but after a

went back home.

a

anyone could do

I

organized the campaign. Yeah, I told you ing

run

man-

right

to

around and

Everyone was too

green up there. The campaign was two years behind and falling further

behind every day.

No

the candidate didn't

one was in charge, there was no organization, and

seem

likely to

taking a campaign like that.

wouldn't

let

me

take

it

do anything about

Not only wouldn't he

But the pressure was coming from other

came

to a head.

night, the governor

take

it

It

was

suicide,

but he said he

either.

and David Bender, until quarters

it.

finally, in

Word

March,

got out that

was prepared

to ask

from Steve and Kathy

places,

the situation at if

Ridder

I

Dean Head-

flew to Burlington that

to step aside

and make

me

the campaign manager.

Every

me

to

five

minutes that day,

go to Vermont. They

That night. Dean did I

this

all

my

cell

said the

phone rang with people

same thing.

I

telling

had to go right away.

kind of thing on the spur of the

wasn't up there right now, the opportunity might be

lost.

moment and

if

THE MOMENT

Kathy was standing

want

do

to

this.

my

the door with

at

69

know you

packed bag. "You

Go. Get on the plane."

said no.

I

Outside the weather had deteriorated into

why

wasn't

want

want

didn't

I

to go.

But

to sleep for months.

"Go

was

I

sick

still

that wasn't

it

But

a full blizzard.

from Holden, and

that

really did

either.

ahead, darlin'," Kathy said. "Get on the plane."

just stared at her.

I

Steve

McMahon

"No,"

I

Bender

called.

"Come

on, Joe. Get

on the plane."

"I'm not going."

said.

"You have

called.

you've got to do

it

to

do

it.

You've got to get on that plane and

tonight. If you don't

do

it

tonight,

it's

not happening.

Get on the plane." drove to the airport. But

I

flight.

sat there,

I

mont and taking I

called

I

trying to figure out

kid, I've

had

"This

I

gonna sound

is

might need you to

this horrible

important that

crashes.

Now

know

I

I'm

But

with

Then

I

get

on

I

it

I

know

is

So

I

was frozen with

was

my

it.

telling

me

tell

Ever since

I

on

to get

do and the plane

maybe

fear.

I

I

I

and that

on.

What if this is the guy? The truth is that there are

if

No

only

campaign, just

a

I

takes off.

And

moment."

tell

my me

plane was

something, kill

me.

down.

really felt that

way

I

should prob-

one would blame me. The world

few people who ever get the chance

like there are

get to play shortstop in the major leagues.

my dream.

a

wasn't crazy (although, remember, he hadn't seen

would go

a presidential

was

don't get spooked

was sure

the plane really was going to go

said that

you

a plane. It's

this feels like that

subconscious trying to

around and go home.

never

when

need to

I

precarious health, a presidential campaign could

in twenty-three years)

run

through

an empirical thinker.

ably turn

to

me

talk

a plane.

a scientific guy,

Maybe

my

again,

David

me

flight that night

crazy, but

sounds crazy, David, but

it

that night,

going down. that

to Ver-

nightmare.

"In the nightmare everyone

easily.

up

to get out of going

There was only one more

this job.

said.

I

something and

it

how

David back.

"Look,"

really

couldn't board. I'd already missed one

I

only a few people

who

love baseball, but that was

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

70

There was

a slight chance,

my dream

however, that

an office in Burlington, Vermont.

And I might

never

was

know

sitting

unless

I

up

in

got on

that plane.

"Screw

it,"

I

said to David. "I never let that

nightmare get to

before. I'm forty-six years old. I'm sure as hell not going to let

me

it

get to

to begin

would

me now." I

walked toward the jetway. The journey

be the most amazing and unforgettable of my I

would be witness

quickly

grow

to

to the

beginning of

I

was about

life.

a tiny

movement

hundreds of thousands of Americans, the

that

first step

would toward

rebuilding the most fundamental cornerstone of this country, one that had

been

lost in the slick

cynicism of broadcast politics

solutely vital involvement

The Dean cornfield.

underway.

plane

would eventually go down

But by then,

it

—

the profound and ab-

of the people in choosing their

own

government.

... a year later in an Iowa

wouldn't matter. The revolution would be well

THE PLACE WHERE THE FUTURE HAPPENS

VERMONT Phish, Chicken Dinners,

Burlington, Vermont, tle,

cream

store

—

Vermont

capital

them

fit

no

variably

— about

the same

number

all

home

as live in

when one of its

real political gravity is

mentioned

at all

begun with

the

rest

of the United

by the national

We

Vermont

Green Mountain

ever dramatically turned there.

States.

the possible

Vermont

On

the rare

political press, it's in-

voters.

State

(Among

No

eccentric, liberal, in a ski

electoral strategy has

and no presidential race has

the things you'll never hear in

were doing great until Vermont.)

Its

last

the first thing

place you'd think to

you require

go

and unpredictable

to begin a

a

people take great pride

of rugged northeast individuality. This makes Vermont but the

El Paso, Texas.

commune —Berkeley

in being politically independent, progressive,

live,

more

election-year pork or vice presidential candidate has ever been

floated with the idea of wooing

campaign:

—with-

to just

senators switches political parties,

on the

dubbed "the People's Republic of Vermont," an

No

also

With

in an arena for a small Phish concert.

out-of-the-mainstream, bed-and-breakfast sweater.

It is

of Vermont, Montpelier, has only 8,000 of those people; you

occasion the state

ever

& Jerry's first ice

and the counterculture jam band Phish.

the second smallest state in the union,

is

exception of exerts

town of 39,000 gen-

the stupidest place in the world to launch a revolution.

than 600,000 people

could

beautiful, bucolic

fleece-wearing souls, the rustic birthplace of Ben

out a doubt

The

is a

and the Deanie Babies

— an

island

a great place to

movement,

since

for a populist insurgency: a populace.

it

lacks

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

74

Like the state he governed longer than anyone doesn't seem,

on

Howard Dean

else,

glance, like an obvious candidate for a grassroots,

first

Or on

power-to-the-people insurgent campaign for president.

second

glance, for that matter.

Born

Dean

III

make

Howard Brush

Side,

was just another twenty- four-year-old Yale graduate on Wall

on

Street,

on Manhattan's Upper East

to privilege

his

way

the fourth generation of

an investment banker,

his fortune as

course. Uninspired

becoming

to

when

by the thought of spending

around and driven by

1973 and began secretly volunteering

It

says

at a

moving money left

Wall Street

Greenwich Village

hospital.

something about the expectations in the Dean clan that

go to medical school was one he had

resulting decision to

to

he suddenly changed

his life

deep desire to help people, he

a

in

Deans

his

to break to his

family.

the

Howard was summer of

taking pre-med classes at Columbia University when, in

1974, his brother, Charlie

George McGovern's

presidential

— an

outgoing volunteer for

campaign two years

earlier

—was captured

and eventually killed by Laotian guerillas while traveling with

a friend

through Southeast Asia. Charlie's death affected Howard deeply and per-

manently (he wore Charlie's scored his desire to live a

life

belt every

at

He

of meaning and service.

school in just three years and

begin his residency

day of the campaign) and under-

moved

to Burlington,

graduated medical

Vermont, in 1978 to

the University of Vermont. Three years later, he

ried Dr. Judith Steinberg,

whom

he'd

met

in medical school.

They

set

marup

a

family practice in Burlington.

He issue

got into politics right away, over the quintessentially Vermont

of whether

a hillside

served with a bicycle

trail

overlooking Lake Champlain would be better or by

bikes and was elected to the

he

won

his first

of two terms

some condos. He smartly went with

Vermont as

state legislature in

pool in 1991, Dr. million debt

Dean

a heart attack

whose

total

quickly established an amazing record

When

the governor,

while cleaning his swimming

stepped in admirably

(this in a state

1982. In 1986,

lieutenant governor, a mostly ceremonial

job that rarely interfered with his medical practice.

Richard Snelling, died of

the

as

budget

governor, erased a $65 is

only $1 billion), and

as a disciplined, bipartisan,

nonsense leader, frustrating ideologues on both sides with his confident physician's approach to governing.

By

no-

logical,

avoiding either side's

VERMONT

politicized rhetoric, he in the

country by

was

able to pass

them

selling

made Vermont an example

cess

some of the most progressive laws

commonsense measures, and

as

75

for the rest

of the country

in the pro-

—extending more equi-

the most basic rights to gay and Lesbian couples, providing a

system of funding public schools, and extending health care to 97

table

percent of Vermont's children and 91 percent of its adults.

Over four more not

as

terms, he

grew even more popular and more

the oratorical spark of a populist

probably become), but fact, in

my

as a

movement

respected,

would im-

(the thing he

pragmatic, get- the -job -done regular guy. In

opinion he became one of the greatest governors in the coun-

and

try's history,

such, was never seriously challenged in an election, and

as

never had to spend more than a million bucks getting reelected. This was great for

Governor Dean

in 2003,

who had

meter dash

—

in the 1990s, but not so

never run a serious

state race

good

—

the equivalent of a 200-

alone the marathon of a presidential campaign.

let

Dean

for Candidate

And

so he

arrived in a national election with no national plan, no national team, no

money, and next

no campaign experience

to

—

were fresh-

seriously, there

man members of Congress who had more tough races under their belts. And no help in sight. No one really thought he had a chance. In a story in

New

magazine,

York

one observer described the Dean campaign

"quixotic," "preposterous," and "the server was Howard's

In those early,

own

silliest

thing I'd ever heard." That ob-

mother.

empty- wallet days of the Dean

America campaign,

for

anyone coming to Burlington from Washington, D.C. winter of 2003

—

felt

as

—

like

I

did in the

obliged to pass on the $580 flight to Burlington in

favor of Southwest Airlines' discount $79 ticket to nearby Manchester,

New

Hampshire.

That meant borrowing

New

a car

and driving three hours, across half of

Hampshire, over the Connecticut River into the white pine and sugar

maple

forests

of Vermont, winding up Interstate 89 past White River Junc-

tion, Bethel, Montpelier,

Winooski River

and Waterbury, between the rolling

hills

of the

Valley, until finally Burlington appeared in the trees like

the last civilized outpost before the wilds of Lake

Champlain and the

Adirondack mountain range.

When same thing

you

arrive in

to you:

great skiing

.

.

.

Vermont

"Welcome

to

the first time, everyone says the exact

Vermont, where

we

have eight months of

and four months of really lousy sledding."

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

76

And

the thing

snowing there

is

until

.

.

.

May

they

mean

In 2003, for instance,

it.

it

didn't stop

29, and immediately started up again on October

arrived that winter to find everything blanketed in a sleepy cover of

1. I

snow, especially

Howard Dean's

presidential campaign.

That January (two months before ager), the

Dean campaign was

still

I

would

take over as

away

squirreled

in a

There were

six people

for America,

office.

They were,

—seven

if

—working

you counted the governor

most of whom had been longtime for the

most

cramped, 1,000-

Pub and Brewery.

square-foot second-story office above the dark Vermont

Dean

campaign man-

for

aides in the governor's

part, smart, energetic,

good people, com-

mitted to Dean, but their experience in politics came from governing

within

a

400-mile

radius, in a state

where the biggest pressure

ing the governor prepared and on time for a

By January

lier.

town

political

machines, raised war chests of

millions of dollars, and compiled computerized

key

states,

the

lists

Dean campaign had none of these

of potential supporters

for America, in those early days,

by one writer

The day

as I

had raised only

things,

$315,000, and had spent two-thirds of it just remaining on

Dean

keep-

2003, one year before the Iowa primary, while the other

campaigns had built sophisticated

in

lay in

meeting in Montpe-

hall

life

support.

was euphemistically described

"charmingly modest." Or, put another way, broke.

climbed the

stairs past

the

Vermont Pub and Brewery

I

couldn't believe this was a presidential campaign one year before the Iowa caucuses. There

was

a

of the governor's had

set

up an

—

Dean headquarters and a relative web site but it wasn't even turned

in the

early

—

They had gathered about 9,000 names of "Friends of Howard," peo-

on. ple

computer

who

had, at one time or another, told the governor that they might be

interested in helping if he ever decided to seek higher office (although

of those people would have guessed that he would go stead of being readily accessible for sorting

on

a

this high).

But

few in-

computer database, these

names, along with names of thousands of other potential supporters, were scrawled on business cards, contact sheets, and scraps of paper and stuffed in a

few shoeboxes In his

USA

—not even one shoebox

book about

Today

political

for each state.

One Car Caravan,

the early part of the campaign,

columnist Walter Shapiro

"Rubes on the Road" and opened with

titled

a description

his

first

chapter

of Dean's "seductive

fantasy" of being the Democratic nominee, "outlandish as

it

seems for

candidate without money, campaign staff or national following."

a

VERMONT

In fact, during Howard's first

served

mind

months

77

candidate, he essentially

as a

own campaign manager and political strategist (bringing to saying about the man who serves as his own lawyer and

as his

the old

.

.)

.

spokesman was whoever happened to answer the phone. His only

the press

traveling aide

was

mop-haired, fiercely loyal thirty-nine-

his rail-thin,

year-old chief of staff Kate O'Connor, closest aide since he

who sometimes

who

had

flitted

around Dean

was the part-time lieutenant governor

acted as if she was on

summer

vacation

as his

and

in 1989,

—mailing

post-

from Iowa ports of call and filming the whole thing on her per-

cards back

sonal video camera.

Throughout 2002, while the other campaigns were slow-dancing with the top political operatives in the country, hoping to secure their services

2004 run, Dean held back, trying

for the

the top guns wouldn't

come

sign

to conserve

on with such

a

money and assuming

long shot anyway. Finally,

he did pick up a few aces, including the very able Rick Ridder,

worked

for

strategy

Bill Bradley's presidential

was the sound, time-tested idea

traditional one).

Gary Hart and

He

chairman

Democratic leaders and bases

also got Steve

who

hailed

campaigns, and whose

Dean begin by courting

that (or

who had

by courting someone

.

.

the

any-

Grossman, the former national Democratic Party

from Massachusetts and threw away years of

personal friendship with Senator John Kerry the day he signed

Howard Who? And Stephanie young, smart, tough

.

as nails,

close

on with

Schriock, his amazing finance director

and the only person in the campaign

could scare the daylights out of me

when

I

made

her mad.

who

When Grossman

signed on the entire political establishment thought he had lost his mind.

When for

Schriock told her friends she was heading up to Burlington to work

Dean, they told her

it

would be the end of her

career.

Dean was getting very little media coverage in those cold, dark Vermont days, other than those stories about how little chance he had. The first Dean stories all had headlines like "The Invisible Man" and "The Darkest Horse."

That January, Dean boldly told reporters

whopping $10

—

This number

sound

million, a fraction of

that he intended to raise a

what the frontrunners would

small by presidential campaign standards

like a pipe

dream coming from

the tiny

Dean

—

still

office

(it

raise.

managed was

to

like the

painfully behind-the-times Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movies threaten-

ing to blow up the world unless he

is

paid

u

one million dollars"). While

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

78

other candidates

moved around on

private jets,

own luggage on Jet Blue and Southwest

Governor Dean carried

flights and, rather

in hotels, he spent nights sleeping in the spare

his

than pay to stay

rooms of

his supporters'

houses. In most polls, his "support" was

less

than the margin of error of the

When

arrived in January,

Dean had

been campaigning in Iowa by himself for months, and yet he was

tied there

2 percent here,

poll:

percent there.

1

with the Rev. Al Sharpton

at

2 percent, badly trailing the "serious candi-

dates": Gephardt, Lieberman, Kerry,

up

their massive

I

campaign machines

who

and Edwards,

yet.

there alone, he had by far the lowest

Most

name

hadn't even fired

months out

distressing, after

recognition

— 20

points worse

than any other candidate. Forget supporting him, in January 2003, 82 percent of Iowa voters couldn't say tor

Tom

Harkin had

who Howard Dean

had been brought in to

I

But looking

at the

assess

as

when

Even

the

Even Iowa Sena-

how

a

forum he

Dean campaign was

progress-

"John Dean." the

organization that January,

at the

polling numbers, and, especially, at the fund-raising,

dering

1

problem identifying him back then. At

a

had painfully introduced the governor

ing.

was.

damn

I

message,

couldn't help

at the

won-

thing was going to begin.

for the type of

campaign Dean wanted

to

run

—

a classic insur-

gent riding in from outside the political establishment (my specialty)

was two years behind where he needed left to

to be.

And

there was only a year

go before Iowa. Some of the other candidates had been preparing

for this

run

—

for a fact that years. I'd sat

raising

money and

gathering supporters

John Kerry had been considering with

his close adviser

Ron

a

—

for years.

as

Ron

explained that

would almost be

that

2004.

dred

By

Kerry didn't run

better, because the

knew

run in 2004 for fifteen

list

list. I lis-

in 1992, 1996, or 2000,

would be

that

much

longer in

the winter of 2003, these campaigns were armies, with a

staffers,

We

if

I

Rosenblith in 1989, and brain-

stormed ways in which he could build up Kerry's direct mailing tened

—he

computerized databases, and millions of dollars

were seven people

sitting

around Vermont with

hun-

at the ready.

a

bunch of

shoeboxes.

And

yet,

even with

thing appealing about

Zogby

International Poll.

its

stunted beginning, there was undeniably some-

Howard Dean's

quaint operation

—something

real.

VERMONT

The

resolve of Howard's team, the candidate's refreshing honesty

of political guile, and the sameness of the other candidates

The

the whiff of a true insurgent.

challenge was finding some

forward the usual campaign building and, dismissive

TV

media and appeal

all

and lack

Dean

gave

way

to fast-

at the same time, skip over the

directly to the

Talking about the Democratic field

79

American people. James Carville,

at the time,

Clinton's old political consultant, mentioned

Dean

as

Bill

an intriguing after-

thought: "If he could raise money, he'd be dangerous."

SYSTEM FOR SALE There

is

world of auto racing: the

a dirty little secret in the

over long before the cars get on the track. just builds the fastest car

they unload the car from the ness

is

built.

you've got

it's

the most

money

over the minute

That driving around the track busi-

trailer.

mostly for show; the race was

When

The team with

and gets the best crew, and

races are often

the best car,

all

but over

when

the engine was

only driver error, serious tactical

goof, or an act-of-God crash can lose the race for you.

This

true of politics as well (substitute sex scandal for car crash).

is

become

Since 1960, elections have

a race to see

which team can get

most wealthy people and corporations to donate the most money to candidate. ads,

The team

that raises the

it

most money buys the most television

then uses these blunt instruments to

And,

not voting for the other candidate.

up, the

guy with the moneyed

to victory.

car

Between 1976 and 2000,

dential candidate

who

raised the

the

their

is

pummel

the most Americans into

long

the driver doesn't screw

as

the one

as

who

cruises

around the track

the Democratic and Republican presi-

most money and qualified for matching

federal funds in the year before the

primary season, was the party's nominee

every time.

The Buying of the President 2004, Charles Lewis, the executive director of The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonIn the book,

partisan research organization, writes that the focus

on

early fund-raising

ultimately takes the democratic process out of the voters' hands, that "the race for the tually cast.

White House

The

dirty

is

little

substantially decided before any votes are acsecret of

American

presidential politics

is

that

the wealthiest interests essentially hold a private referendum the year before the election."

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

80

As George W. Bush has single-handedly proven, when you get hundred people from Enron

to donate

two grand

each, there's a

chance the mother ship might want something for

once the race

over.

is

to special interest

dirty

work

When

added

for him), the result

is

may

Brock, former chairman of the Re-

have put

it

from

officials solicit these contributions

when

best

over campaign finance reform,

he testified under

that:

officials.

interests

who

When

chologically beholden to those

who

contribute.

amounts of money

access to

who

rosive and

This

money know

who

improve their

as

officials

The appearance of corruption

is

cor-

undermining our democracy. 2

such blatant transactional politics

pure transaction between the candidate and the moneyed in-

navigate campaign laws to float his candidacy, with the full

expectation of

a seat at

ministration: the table in turn

this.

on

and wealthy individuals give these

to political parties so they can

how we've ended up with

is

fund-raising terests

is

un-

inevitable and

It is

and influence over elected party members. Elected

raise soft

psy-

at least

contributors, for their part, feel they have a "call"

these officials. Corporations, unions large

elected

almost always

have matters pending before the Congress (they) become

The

empowers

the governing table (or in the case of the

itself,

and the

chairs,

and the rugs

the corporate and special interests,

.

who

.

.).

Bush ad-

This system

provide another

source of the fuel these campaigns are really after: cash. Each year,

money cycle

This

is

needed for

— and is

TV

ads

— an

more

estimated $1.6 billion this election

the new fuel simply makes the thing that much more corrupt. how we ended up in 2004 with thirty-three lobbyists for every

member of torate,

made

system in which both political parties,

a

These contributions compromise our elected

avoidable.

good

half million bucks

to the massive corporate donations

sale. Bill

publican National Committee, a lawsuit

its

few

groups (whose campaign spots often do the candidate's

and most candidates, are for

oath in

a

Congress,

a presidential election

campaigns run exclusively through

with

TV

a totally

ads,

detached elec-

and filthy rich candi-

dates beholden to special interest groups.

2

Charles Lewis and the Center for Public Integrity, The Buying of the President

HarperCollins, 2004).

2004 (New York:

VERMONT

81

now who are prominently mentioned for president, almost all of them who have any chance at all are millionaires or multimillionaires," former President Jimmy Carter said "If you look at the

"An

recently.

of candidates

list

average person like

was, just a peanut farmer back in

I

—would be means Democratic or Republican Party — and 1976 (running for president)

that there's a criterion for success in

American

that

to

major wealth.

And we

politics,

and

am

I

which

that blight or cancer

I

more than

hate

consultant

of 2003,

— and

all this

it

car

it

—

the

affecting our

from the

campaign manager

on the

television age), but

—was

my

challenge

to figure out

how to raise money, raise momentum going into Iowa .

as a

how

to

our candi-

track,

and create some

system of

will be lying in a heap

was the only game in town. So

later as the

Howard Dean's

date's profile,

do

is

this self-defeating

confident that one day soon

alongside the road (along with other artifacts in the winter

to

now

"3

There are few things

get

politics

extreme wealth or access

is

are the only democratic nation in the world, in

the western world, within

system.

which

absolutely impossible,

.

.

and

how

with no time, almost no support, and no framework in place

for a national candidacy.

Early on, the

we had

meeting to figure out

a

Dean campaign around.

We

identified eight basic strategies,

through what

it

would

George W. Bush was election, so

we

own $200

went through

going to bring

this exercise in

wrote them on

a

which we

white board, and went

take to accomplish each of them.

in the process

It

didn't look good.

of raising some $200 million for his re-

we somehow won the Democratic nominamoment the notion of hell freezing over) we'd need

figured that if

tion (putting aside for a

our

how we were

million to

make

a serious

run

at

the presidency.

We

could

look for help from political action committees of course, but that was the antithesis

of the Dean campaign

—

like asking the oil

companies for money

to create alternative fuels.

The

other campaigns were going the $2,000 chicken dinner route, but

we knew

there simply weren't

enough

money. So maybe we could appeal

them

to donate a

hundred

where one thousand

ibid.

real

rich people for us to hit

to regular Americans, get

up

for the

two million of

dollars each. If we could have a dinner each night

Americans donated

a

hundred

dollars each,

we

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

82

could raise a million dollars in ten nights. In raise ten million. In a

we

thousand nights,

Of course, two W. Bush would

thousand nights,

thousand nights

to decentralize the

and

his handlers in

.

.

we

could

W.

Bush.

five-and-a-half years and George

is

see that

all

our only hope for winning

now

campaign, ease control away from the candidate

Vermont (myself included), and

making come from

.just

nights,

be retired on his ranch.

was

river

hundred

a

could raise $100 million. In two

could raise $200 million to defeat George

So right away we could

the decision

we

open the flood

the people

—

let

the

momentum

and

stop trying to control the

where the current took

gates and see

us.

—

Howard Dean recognized this himself after every trip he would come off the road and tell me we had to find a way to decentralize the campaign (his word, not mine). Decentralizing was the only chance he thought we had. We would never have enough money to build the campaign right, and the more he kept asking me to find a way to decentralize things the more

I

got excited.

Like someone whose entire

life

has been building to this point,

without looking what our only hope would be: the Internet. waiting for this

New

moment

for a long time. In a story

by

me

Beckel remembers doing

talking about

a panel discussion

knew

had been

Noam Scheiber in

the

Bob Beckel

re-

Republic, the veteran Democratic campaign strategist

called the first time he heard

I

I

it.

with him not long

after the

1984 campaign, when Trippi was already talking about an early version of the Internet and

how

it

could change

politics. "I said, 'Joe,

have any idea what you're talking about,'

Now, up

almost twenty years

to the task.

later,

When John McCain

I

still

"

Beckel

didn't

know

had tried to use

I

don't

recalls.

it

if the

Net would be

to drive his

own

in-

surgent campaign in 2000, the technology had only proven mature enough to create a small

buzz around an interesting candidate. Not enough snow

had been plowed by Amazon.com, eBay, and for a political candidacy to

all

the online travel agencies

make much headway. Making matters worse,

in

the four years since McCain's short run, the Internet bubble had burst

tech stocks losing it

had gone

Net

more than

much of

half their value in the stock market

the futuristic

as surely as electricity

optimism

and computer chips.

that

— and with

had once powered the

VERMONT

But what other

we

tool did

83

have to take our campaign directly to the

—one two more and two more —

people in such a short amount of time, to build the campaign virally

person infecting two more,

who

that water rush in and see

our boat was ready to

So while

I

if

was excited

ternet insurgency, honestly

We'd make

scenario:

infect

to finally I

to let

float.

my

be launching

didn't give

it

much

chance of success. Best case

quirky sidelight to the campaign,

a little noise as a

home on my

quickly fade away, and in three months I'd be back

And January,

so, I

on

my very

offered

first

up the

In-

first grassroots,

farm.

day in the Dean campaign headquarters, that

closest thing

had to

I

a strategy:

"We

need to put

web site, Meetup.com, on our campaign web site." I had come across the fledgling Meetup by accident, when I was trolling around Internet web sites and blogs. One night, months earlier, I had visited a blog called MyDD.com and read a posting by a guy named a link to this

Jerome Armstrong,

who was commenting on

paign season and specifically, an idiotic quote he'd read from some it-all political I

menting on

I

"Hey Jerome.

It's

Trippi ..." and defended myself.

was reading Jerome's blog

my own

stupidity.

said,

jumped over

Despite every time

would get

when

I

its I

to the

name

same look

Tom Bradley's

buy one of

political

(it

Meetup.com

I

helps people

a

to

someone

in early 2003,

people that

it

site

I

might help us with

these newfangled computers, or

web

meet up)

got twenty-two years earlier

organizing on the Internet to

They just didn't get it. Meetup.com is simply

to

site.

tried to explain the concept to

that blank stare, the

organization to

site called

went up

cities.

Meetup

perfectly descriptive

tried to explain to

brought up

web

I

some Howard Dean supporters were using the Internet

get together in a handful of I

and occasionally com-

regularly,

Then, in January, right before

Burlington, Jerome wrote in his blog about a

where, he

know-

hack: me.

fired back,

Pretty soon

cam-

the early presidential

Bob

when

I

first

Beckel.

where people of similar

interests

(it

Howard Dean) are matched and meet, organized by the web site, which reserves

could be anything: stamps, Star Trek,

given a time and place to a

public place in each city (Starbucks are very popular) and notified

the

members of that

interest

group of the time and

place.

all

of

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

84

As small ple),

it

as this

thing was (most meetings were just a handful of peo-

was exactly the democratic vision of the Internet using this technology

way

that

had always

I

for people of similar interests,

believed

in,

passions,

and causes to find each other and instantly form into communi-

ties

—

tiny

little

as a

Iowa caucuses made up of science

fiction fans

and curling

enthusiasts and knitters.

Meetup.com had only been brought

my

to

it

attention.

for the various candidates.

Dean

—dead

last

among

in business for a short time

But people were already using

And

the first thing

—was

number of his

who wanted

was

maybe one compared

supporters

Howard

actually leading in this one category, the to

meet up.

number, 432 supporters across the

a tiny

to organize

noticed was that

the Democratic candidates in almost every other

meaningful measurement

It

I

when Jerome it

in Seattle, three in

Los Angeles,

to the other candidates, he

was

a

couple in

killing.

entire country

New

York

—but

There were only 310

who wanted to meet up for Kerry, 141 for Edwards. The only guy who didn't have an area code number of supporters was Dick Gephardt, who had something like 40 people signed up to meet and talk about him. people

stared at these

I

them. Clearly,

this

numbers and wasn't

And

what

to

make of

wasn't a representative sampling. At the time, Kerry's

nomination was assumed to be ond.

entirely sure

yet, in this

a

done

deal,

sewn up, with Gephardt

one arbitrary measure, Howard Dean

maybe two percent of

the vote, a

pick out of a criminal lineup

—

a

sec-

guy with

guy 95 percent of Americans couldn't

—was drawing

the

most

interest.

Then, an amazing thing happened. After we put Meetup on the web site,

I

checked back, and suddenly there were 2,700 people

meet up leaps

who wanted

to

Dean. The number had taken one of those exponential

for

—what would turn out

to be the first of

many. The second-highest

candidate, Kerry, had only gone up to 330 names. This was more than just a statistical quirk.

Something was going on out

visionary developers

there.

About

ofMeetup.com contacted me and we

that time, the

negotiated an

agreement for them to continue organizing the governor's supporters for

—not

a

a bad initial investment for a site that would eventually Dean members. Later, as the other campaigns caught on to the phenomenon, they would call the Meetup guys and ask for what had come to be known as the "Trippi Special." The other campaigns were

fee

of $2,500

boast 190,000

VERMONT

about six months too

On

No

late.

was

Dean campaign's embrace of embrace of Howard Dean. The answer is that the

first:

of both. The curtain was rising on the Internet

a little bit

movement

mover can be everything.

me which came

the Internet or the Internet's it

one was ever going to get that deal again.

the Internet, being the first

People often ask

85

we made

right about the time

political

on the

the decision to turn

lights.

But we almost missed our cue.

A date's

couple of days after

web

site,

I

I

had suggested putting Meetup on our candi-

checked and the link

still

that

some people another

a link to

in the

web

It's

it

up

named Bobby

campaign didn't think

it

was

is,"

said,

I

"a bunch of web

easy to imagine the

Dean campaign

like to use a cell

first

time

mitted that he didn't reflected

its

up

sites

linking to-

as

always being plugged

I

in,

who

didn't have cable

phone, and had only been using e-mail since

2001. Early on, he was the only candidate

The

idea to put

be further from the truth. The candi-

date himself was a self-described "technophobe"

puter.

com-

there."

but in the beginning, nothing could

TV, didn't

good

a

resident

Clark, explained

site.

"That's what the Internet gether. Just put

The

wasn't there.

puter expert (and the only one), a great guy

talked to

who

didn't travel with a

him about having

know what

that was.

And

a

com-

campaign blog, he ad-

so, early on, the

campaign

candidate's gun-shyness about computers and those nine

thousand names remained on those scraps of paper in shoeboxes some-

where under Kate O'Connor's desk. Kate and out the campaign

by marking I

a line

—where

she

made me

Getting the campaign to use I

its

thought.

idea for decentralizing, turning the

Bobby

Clark.

Several days after

on the Dean web

"What

in those early days

like the

equator that

one untapped resource, the Internet, I

talked myself hoarse explaining

campaign over

the tools and the support, and letting

early on, the only person

puter whiz,

welcome

cross.

proved to be harder than

them

shared an office through-

with masking tape across the floor

was never supposed to

giving

feel

I

I

my

to the people out there,

them do

the work.

But

could seem to convince was the in-house com-

And

he was the one person already on

Bobby and

I

began suggesting

site.

the hell are they thinking,

Bobby?"

it,

Meetup

my

still

side.

wasn't

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

86

Apparently, the campaign brass had decided to run

make

just to

sure there

were no

legal issues

it

past the lawyers,

having to do with in-kind

contributions.

we

Lawyers? In-kind contributions? Christ. Here

were, running a

seven-person campaign in frickin' Vermont, hugging the margin of error in the polls, and we're going to play bureaucracy?

we want

to spend our last hours talking to lawyers?

Go home,

told myself.

I

for a couple of weeks, to

them some

to give

tips

Now

site.

Go home

work with

people

and sleep for

a presidential.

I

was just here

I

didn't need this.

pestering, the link to

who

Meetup.com went up

logged on to the Dean for America

were given the opportunity to go to

get involved in the campaign and ple to get involved

a year.

the scheduler and the political people,

on running

week of my

Finally, after a

on the web site

We're dying here and

a place

where they could

—even more important—

And

with them.

this burst didn't

spot or scheduling speeches

was the people taking

—

come from

432

to

own,

specialized version of

Meetup

to

170,000 people on

own.

So

how

did

we

its

at all.

Meetup.com would run

its

TV This

own

The same way it

—

the GetLocal tools,

to create our

which would

drag our feet and almost miss what would become the

effective organizing tool

missed

campaign

more than 190,000. Eventually, we'd even have

grow most

the campaign buying a

in fact, this wasn't the

over. For months,

to 2,700,

campaign, the number of people meeting up growing from that ini-

parallel tial

actually

find other peo-

Within weeks, the number of Meetup people had shot up then 8,000.

web

of the Dean campaign?

other campaigns,

the

and continue to miss

it.

companies, and corporations

Forty years of reliance on television ad-

vertising has atrophied creativity, forcing everyone to approach every prob-

lem the same way. In

politics, for instance, television advertising

the only solution to every problem, and so far

menu of those $2,000

more thought

fund-raising chicken dinners than in

is

seen

as

put into the

is

how

to actually

get people involved in the campaign. It

really

may sound is

like just

empowerment. The

represents one vote. that like

is

another

not true

fallacy

Anyone who

—knows

new

age,

techno-buzzword, but the key

of polling

has seen an

is

that

one person always

Iowa caucus up

that there are Iowans,

close

and then there

Jimmy Hogan. Those 432 Dean supporters were

is

far different

knows

someone than the

VERMONT

people

we would

Jimmy Hogans, campaign managers who

87

reach by television. These were the

the

432 individual

got

organizers, and connecters,

on the Internet and began doing what

could never do.

I

THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE They

showing up. Kids mostly,

just started

and sundresses, in

in parkas

cargo shorts and hooded sweatshirts, clean cut and shaggy, some with piercings or a bit

odd

of

bits

of facial

with briefcases and resumes, some with

hair, others

with experience

political experience, others

games. As soon

as

at

Frisbee and video

our campaign went up on the Internet,

we

discovered a

small but intensely devoted group of people there waiting for us.

own

they began to take the campaign into their ering other people.

And

few of them even got

a

And now

hands, organizing and gathin their cars

and began

showing up on our doorstep. That spring and early summer, young people from took

a

Dean

drove to Vermont to work on the aptly

over the country

all

break from college or quit their jobs, hoisted their backpacks, and

named them Deanie

hadn't seen anything like

Babies. it

I

for

America campaign. Someone

had never seen anything

since 1968, the days of

like

it;

politics

Bobby Kennedy and

Eugene McCarthy's "Children's Crusade." In Vestavia Hill, Alabama, an earnest nineteen-year-old

named Gray

Brooks listened to Howard Dean once on the radio, got on the Internet to research him, decided

knew, was in

his car

for the campaign, to

handsome, clean

"Look,"

And I

he'd

say,

work seventeen-hour

swear to God,

you. Got

they could

days and sleep on the floor.

if

you

call

as

me

sir

A

couldn't help

one more time,

sir."

later in the

campaign,

Democratic opponents, and some

a difference

when Republican

in the press caricatured

pierced, vegan weirdos.

Here

for the first time

involved — and believing — and they were being painted some kind

were young voters inspired

make

you

it?"

without irony, "Sorry,

young Dean supporters in decades

the next thing

Boy Scout and Baptist, Gray everyone ma'am or sir. Even me.

would think of Gray often

operatives, our

good man," and

cut, lifelong

I'd say, "I fire

"a

and on the freeway, driving to Vermont to volunteer

but be courtly, calling

I'm going to

Dean was

to get

of freak show. For wanting to be involved!

that

as

It

was

like the

baby boomers in

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

88

power had forgotten how long

who

they were the only ones

was another generation stop an unjust

war and

embraced

new

this

their hair used to be. Like they believed

could try to change the world. Here, finally,

rising up, getting involved in politics, trying to

take back a corrupt system. If anyone should have

era of activism, you'd think

it

would be young

children of the 1960s. Instead, they ridiculed these

me

pissed

the former

people. This

off more than anything else in this campaign. Didn't these peo-

watch

ple learn a frickin' thing? Didn't they

All spring and across the country.

summer, young people

own movie?

their

Gray were drifting in from

like

They were undoubtedly drawn war

lonely opposition to the

in Iraq (as

to

Howard Dean by

young voters of

McGovern) and

flocked to Kennedy, McCarthy, and

my

his

generation

new

his call for a

kind of politics. But they were also drawn to the Dean campaign because

someone was

finally taking the time to reach out to

Studies had just

begun

time on the Internet

as

to

show

watching television

represents a profound shift in

what

— and more

what America

becoming. As one of the

it's

into this

first

is

dulled and deadened

TV

politically.

watchers, these

They were out

and just waiting for someone

who

in

and, even

some

more

as

lived.

much

cases.

This

to the point,

mainstream organizations to tap

demographic vein, we were learning

be engaged

them where they

young people were spending

that

that, unlike generations

young people

of

actually wanted to

there asking questions, organizing,

could speak their language back to them,

the language of the Net.

Not for

all

Dean

of them came to Vermont to get involved, of course. Students

groups, with no connection

up on college campuses, not

a

computer was

cussion,

March, one hundred eighty by July. And

you had

able to join the discussion

it.

We may

a staff

Americans,

all

a staff

the bloggers helped

of thirty or so by March, but there

sharing ideas and urging others to join the cause.

communities, and by spring, volunteers stepping up in

—

dis-

of thirty could match the brainpower of 22,000 engaged

Soon we had people volunteering

hungry

and once you joined the

The campaign was what

have grown to

was no way

evision

— anyone

effectively joined the campaign, because eventually, the

discussion was the campaign.

make

our campaign, began popping

of them were young. Middle-aged people, elderly people

all

with

thirty by

at all to

a

to

campaign

all fifty states

work on that

the

ground in

own

had no national structure had

—most of them

attracted not by tel-

the old flaccid warhorse of political campaigns

Internet.

their

—but

via the sleek,

VERMONT

One

soon

day,

we'd moved

after

Burlington office park,

to

looked up to see

I

a

South

larger quarters in a

this tall

89

young guy with an

ear-

ring and a nearly shaved head wandering around the office. Security had just

grabbed him and was hauling him away when he yelled out to me:

"Wait!

where

I

blog on

I'd first

MyDD.com!"

and they brought him back in to me.

yelled,

I

name was Mat

turned out his

from Moab, Utah, and he'd been

Gross.

calling

He was

thirty-one, married,

Dean headquarters

for months,

come

trying to get a job with the campaign. Finally, he'd just decided to

Vermont. He

around for

much

couple of weeks, trying to ingratiate himself, but hadn't had

him on

hired

I

America web

Dean

the spot to be content director for the

on one condition: before he went back

to

Utah

things he had to create a blog (for the uninitiated, this

is

short for

log"

—

site,

for

to get his

"web

the increasingly popular, online daily journals and amateur reporting

about anything under the sun, in this case, about told

to

hung

hadn't even packed, he just hopped on a plane. He'd

a

luck.

site

heard about Meetup.com.

"You're hired!" It

web

This was, of course, the political

him

that as

soon

as

a presidential

campaign).

I

he got a campaign blog up and running he could go

back to Utah, get his things, and come back to work.

Within 48 hours he had created "Call of any presidential campaign.

knew what he was doing and

to Action," the first-ever blog

could see two things right away:

I

(2)

he must really have been in

back to Utah to pack. This was the

a

(1)

hurry to get

ugliest, messiest, unfriendliest site

you've ever seen. There wasn't even a place for readers to add their

comments.

It

was

cated, interactive

like

AMC

an

BMW blogs

Pacer

that

Mat

when compared with

we'd be driving

a

own

the sophisti-

few months down

the road.

And

yet,

even

later,

fully realized sequel,

ization that

we'd

all

from the beginning, blind

dog

that

when we were

in the process

of designing

"Blog for America," we came to the shocking

grown loyal

strangely attached to

and

it.

It

its

real-

had been there

true, like that twenty-year-old

gimpy,

you keep around even though you know the most humane

thing would be to just put

it

down.

It

took us months to finally euthanize

Call to Action.

At

first,

Rick Ridder and

had taken over the reins

as

I

had worked side-by-side, but by March

campaign manager and

beef up the Internet side of the campaign.

When

I

I

immediately

I

had arrived, there was

one person devoted to the entire category of "computers"

set

—Bobby

out to

Clark.

I

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

90

quickly picked off one of the most talented people on the campaign, a dy-

namic young death penalty lawyer and Vermont native named Zephyr Teachout,

who became

the director of Internet organizing and one of the

campaign's moving forces. But

I

was always on the lookout for more

help,

and now, when these young people would straggle in from the road, first

question to

them was whether they had any experience with web

my

sites,

blogs, or e-mails.

Along with Zephyr and Mat, the most important a

guy named Nicco Mele,

hire of that time

funny and bright graduate of

a caustically

William and Mary College, whose foreign-service parents had in

Ghana and Malaysia. David Bender had worked with Nicco

Cause and called to vacant

me

tell

Dean webmaster

that he

He

Burlington.

—hopping

in his

later

still-

driving straight up to

new

politics:

with an amazing knack

the Internet, and a natural understanding of an in-

surgent presidential campaign. If Paul Tully or

twenty years

Common

hired Nicco on the spot,

I

turned out to be the perfect blend of old and

on

at

him

somewhat questionable

Honda and

a big, bright, tireless, larger-than-life personality

for reaching people

raised

had the perfect candidate for the

position. Despite David's

track record for spotting talent (he'd hired me),

and he didn't disappoint

was

Mike Ford had been born

and gotten into computers, they might 've ended up

being Nicco Mele.

One

of my favorite bloggers in the early days of the campaign was the

"CarlwithaK" blog

from

his

—written with wit by none

other than Karl Frisch

Dean outpost somewhere in California. One day I got on my make daily rounds to my favorite blogs and when I

laptop and began to

got to CarlwithaK like

"hey everyone,

I

I

couldn't believe the post

have been Hogging for

in Burlington, the place in the

is

house for a frickin'

amazing ..."

week and

blog? "Get his ass in here,"

I

I

said. "I

I

a

I

—something

was reading

week now from Dean

HQ

was stunned. CarlwithaK was

had to read about

want

to talk to

it

on

his frickin'

him." Karl would

turn out to be another great addition.

With

these singular personalities and the constant influx of new

people, the

web room buzzed with

Frisbees and

life,

Nerf balls flew around

the heart of campaign headquarters.

the room; there

down the hallways, all who loomed over the room with

skateboards and scooters flew ful

eye of Nicco,

young

leadership and a dazzling collection of yoyos.

were

squirt

gun

fights;

of it under the watchhis easygoing, natural

VERMONT

me

Their energy worked on

like a drug.

I

91

loved imagining the quiet,

professional offices of the other campaigns, twice as big and half as inter-

was

esting. It

kids' idealism

as if

first

and by the feeling that

we came

time

my

were on

I

to

work.

campaign again

we were changing

contributed slogans from

I

—driven by

these

the world every

my own

ancient

youth, like the Gil Scott-Heron anthem The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,

on screen

which quickly became

motto of the web room, written

and signs posted around the room.

savers

New

1969

bies about the

the

most of them weren't even born in 1969), the most derdog baseball team to ever win their slogan,

to

told the

I

York Mets (with the harsh

a

World

Series,

lovable, unlikely,

signs

and walls

at

campaign

un-

and soon we'd adopted

"Ya Gotta Believe," which went out on

show up on

Deanie Ba-

realization that

the

web and began

every city the gov-

rallies in

ernor visited.

was

It

as if

the world were shifting right before our eyes, the ground

rumbling beneath our

would

that the Internet

were,

at

the place

the future

As

feet.

techies,

we had been

radically transform

where

American

life.

Well, here

we

of the things that were supposed to happen in

all

were happening

hearing for a decade

right

now. To

us.

In those early days, you could gather around the computer screen and

campaign beginning

see the

to

come

to life

on web

sites

and in blogs, in

e-mails that ricocheted around the country, each hit and blog and message representing a real person learning about

up

do

to

his or her part.

Each day

You could

in the beginning,

see

Howard Dean and

stepping

it.

Zephyr and

would check

I

first

with

Meetup.com, which posted the number of people getting together meet

in

steadily tial

each area of

— 3,000

interest.

As we watched our numbers climb

to 5,000 to 8,000

campaigns behind

us,

to

—we quickly

but there remained

Meetup numbers were higher than

a

left

the other presiden-

handful of groups whose

ours, including a surprising

number

of people interested in vampires, goth, and witches. Especially witches.

By

early

March, we'd passed the vampires and goth fans and soon,

all

remained were the witches.

that

But the witches sorts

(actually very nice people interested in

Wicca and

all

of interesting things) were tough. Eventually, we'd get to 11,000,

then 13,000, and 15,000, and ing to

grow by whatever

it

still

the witches remained ahead of us, seem-

took to keep us in the number-two position.

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

92

how many

"Christ, asked.

It

wasn't

fair.

frickin' witches

We

can there possibly be out there?"

were only drawing Dean

I

from the United

interest

who wanted to meet up in every counnew witches. Or maybe they could magically create new witches when we got too close. "I've been thinking. Maybe it's not such a good idea to pass the States,

but there had to be witches

try in the world.

Maybe

they were recruiting

witches," Zephyr offered one day. Finally, in early April

seem

could see her point.

I

we even blew by

to suffer any adverse effects.

Now

there

the witches

— and

didn't

were 27,000 Deaniacs on

—

Meetup.com and counting. The old guard of the campaign watched all this with enthusiasm. The standard measurements of a campaign poll

numbers

and the

—

—were showing some improvement, but

real effect

a

kind of careful

fund-raising and

was

there

a lag

time

of this shadow Internet campaign had yet to show up in

energy of the

Some people had trouble connecting the freshman-dorm web room with the business of actually getting traction in

the race. In a

few months, they would understand what was going on, but

the old measures.

initially,

they just didn't get

it.

Internally, every political

campaign

is

a

balancing act between forces

The

trying to steer the candidate and his message. these forces

longtime

—

staff;

insiders

message people, money people, and strategy people

kind of equilibrium, so that everyone tion.

I

is

had worked on campaigns that

when

of-war, especially

might

also

best campaigns keep

and outsiders; campaign pros and the candidate's

determine

literally

came

things began going well.

who becomes

—

in a

pulling in the same direc-

at least

from

apart

When

this tug-

every decision

chief of staff to the president, the

weight of campaign decision-making changes.

Any power

dissension in the

grabs,

Dean campaign

from naked ambition, or

come from

those kinds of

desire for pure control.

I

can say

Everyone on the Dean for America campaign honestly believed

this:

what he or she was doing was the very fight

was

acting in

a sincere

what he or she saw

power. In

my

as

the best interest of the campaign.

experience, there

than two factions

best thing for the campaign.

that

Every

attempt to do better and every person seemed to be

can make for more bitter fights than

ests

didn't

who

is

if the division is

nothing worse in

a political

honestly believe that their plan

of the candidate and his campaign

— and

But

this

caused by a thirst for

is

campaign

in the best inter-

that the other

view will take

VERMONT

the

campaign

No

one.

an iceberg.

straight into

Even when both

Who

93

walks away from that fight?

sides clearly agree there

an iceberg ahead

is

one side honestly believes that turning to port will clear the iceberg and that turning to starboard

is

that turning to starboard

the only

When

is

suicide

—

the other group honestly believes

way out and turning

to port

enough

usually each side grabbing the wheel long

But on the Dean the relationship

do

to

ship,

No more

we added

than on other campaigns,

new

kids

idealistic,

young, wired people

something new for the simple reason that

would spend

it

who

say.

the middle, a road that

I

and the

sometimes wanted to do

months explaining

the next ten

TV ads;

these groups to each I

believed existed

was beginning to believe could lead

all

the

to Washington.

By people

—

spring,

—

as

split

what we

the burgeoning

many

into

place to be.

my

would

was new.

other and trying to get each side to see the road that

lier

and

another dynamic that needed balancing:

and tested things that worked, polling, focus groups,

down

I

plays,

between the old experienced campaigners who knew the

tried

—

is

zig-zag straight

a

So there were plenty of disagreements, power

behind-the-scenes drama.

way

suicide.

there isn't a strong chairman in place to sort things out, the result

for the iceberg.

I

is

as

Web Team would

have

a

half-dozen

had worked on the entire campaign just weeks ear-

two groups,

the

They worked and

web

side

and the blog

side.

This was the

chattered and ate and slept at their desks in

called the bullpen, a long office split

by

a half wall right outside

door.

The location was no accident. The geography of a campaign headquarters is important both functionally and symbolically. You can see the internal politics of a campaign who's making the decisions, who's on the outs by the way the

—

offices

—

and desks are

ditional

campaign

laid out. Early on,

offices

—

what confused (and maybe the

Web Team

—

I

could

like the political

and

a bit threatened)

these strange people,

tell

the people in the tra-

field offices

—were some-

by the importance

some of them

over laptops, headphones over their ears, tapping

at

just kids,

computer

I

put on

hunched

keys, so that

room always sounded like there was a light rainstorm inside. To my mind, in some ways, this room was the Dean for America campaign, the engine of so much that we were doing. This was the most difficult thing for people to understand, inside and outside. The campaign

the

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

54

wasn't in our headquarters.

Michigan.

was

It

.

.

It

wasn't in Iowa, or

New

Hampshire, or

.

Out There. You

couldn't see

And

it.

so this

was the thing

was, had taken on a

it

life

media

Howard Dean movement, what-

missed, at least early on, the fact that the

ever

that the traditional

of its own, becoming

a living,

breathing

organism. Other campaigns in the past had talked about being decentralized,

moving

We

ferent.

Michigan.

making out

didn't turn the

We just

would catch It

decision

to people in the field, but this

campaign over

turned the thing loose.

circles

on

"Yeah

Iowa or

out there to see

steroids.

One

day

I

sat

—but

in

who

the Internet was like concentric

down with

former Hart operative and

a

talking about Gary's pebbles in the water, and

Joe, but

my

old friend said,

with the Internet you guys are raining down pebbles

And

over the place!

We

it

dif-

it.

was Gary Hart's old strategy

we were

to organizers in

Threw

was

all

the ripples could be amazing!"

tried to tell the pundits

and reporters early on that there was

groundswell, a wave just beginning to

rise,

but

wasn't something

it

could show them, except perhaps, in relation to the

this

we

number of vampires

in

the world.

No,

at least in

we

could point

that

Dean moving

February and early March, there wasn't to,

or an endorsement, or a poll that suddenly showed

up. There was this sense that people were gathering, decid-

ing to get together. There was just this the sound of people beginning to ask

But

it

a single rally

hum

of excitement and activity,

what was

possible.

wasn't only the media that was missing and underestimating

what was going on out

there.

we knew something was happening, but you to find anyone who would've guessed the extent to which these things we had theorized about were beginning to come true. It wasn't really until the first week of March that we saw the Inside the campaign,

would have been hard pressed

real-world results of

March staff

that

we

saw what

all this

realized I'd

online talk.

we had

It

wasn't until the

something, and the

been ranting about

all

rest

those weeks.

It

first

week of

of the campaign wasn't until the

week of March that we knew we had a shot at this, and that we just had one more person to convince of that fact before we made our move: Howard Dean.

first

NEW YORK Regime Change, September

meetup guys were

The The

and Pennies from Heaven

dying.

idea behind Scott Heiferman's and

beautiful in

its

simplicity:

—schedule every month — and then Setters

Irish

11,

a

Matt Meeker's web

site

Gather people interested in some topic

meeting time

—

say,

was

—

say

the second Thursday of

find venues in the cities with enough people for a

meeting. If there were twenty people, maybe a Starbucks would work;

might

fifty

bump

it

up

to a

TGI

Friday's.

They had developed a system based on human nature and prior experience to tell them that if forty vampires signed up for the February meetmaybe thirty-two would

up,

good

at

And

We but .

.

.

feed

as

then along came the

show, and so they had gotten very place.

Dean campaign.

hadn't really paid attention to the January and February Meetups,

the

thing it.

really

matching up the group to the perfect

March

all

events approached,

we

could

feel the stirrings

we were doing everything we on our web site, all of a sudden in

over the campaign and

With

the

Meetup

link

of

this

could to the days

before the event the numbers were increasing by the hour.

Based on the February numbers and the people signing up, the Meetup guys had booked Starbucks coffee houses in Los Angeles, San Francisco,

and

New York for the Dean

for

clear that Starbucks wasn't big

America meeting. enough

It

was rapidly becoming

to hold the fifty or sixty people

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

96

who were

saying they were interested in getting together to talk about the

candidacy of Howard Dean.

So

a

week before

New York

the

March

Meetup, the people

5

were scrambling

offices

Meetup. corn's

in

to find bigger quarters.

As soon

they

as

found someplace big enough to hold fifty or sixty people, suddenly the

number would jump

New York,

to

one hundred.

And

they'd be scrambling again. In

by Monday morning, two days before the event,

people had signed up.

By now

three

York, from a twenty-person place to a fifty-person place, to

person place, to

wondering

people looking for

all

nor

as

you

hundredthey were

worked. This was not seven

to talk about Irish Setters.

can't

Buxton was Dean's

old redhead, wise

their site

of this from Dean headquarters,

ideas that seems so obvious,

sooner. Sarah

meet

a place to

monitored

I

New

they needed a five-hundred-person place. Something bizarre

if

was happening. This wasn't the way As

a

And now

two-hundred-fifty-person place.

a

hundred

they had gone through four venues in

imagine that

I

had one of those

didn't occur to

it

you

scheduler, a bright, twenty-three-year-

beyond her years and nearly

as

protective of the gover-

Kate O'Connor.

On

Monday, two days before

the

March Meetup,

I

sidled

up

to her

and casually asked where the governor would be on Wednesday. She checked the schedule.

New York.

"Wouldn't

said, "if the

York Meetup

it

—

be great,"

I

"No, no, and no," Sarah

said.

his time, a

and she needed to make sure they didn't burn the candidate out

bunch of

through

New

York

traffic for

some bizarre Internet meeting

the most efficient use of the candidate's time.

It

who

was easy

to

I

thing.

And

that

was her job

it

we had to

make

she certainly wasn't the

thought that the Meetups would turn out to be online hype.

imagine no one showing up, or worse:

demanding

nuts

him

small, pointless events. She wasn't about to send

no control over. Her reluctance was understandable;

only one

The governor's many demands on

"Absolutely not."

schedule had gotten "out of control" earlier, with too

with

New

governor stopped by the

to

know Governor

Dean's policy on

a

half-dozen Internet

UFO

abductions.

explained to her that three hundred people had signed up for this

Three hundred people.

was playing

to

No

presidential candidate a year before

Iowa

crowds of three hundred people without giving away

free

NEW YORK

beer and pizza. Even

if

it

three hundred of them. All day, fit.

(Scratch that ...

though

it

was

that day, this

I

would be

threw

I

nuts, there

cajoled.

a fit.)

I

may

were

still

have thrown

She reluctantly agreed,

a

al-

something had to be dropped from the schedule

it.

The day before the event,

who had

begged.

I

definitely

clear that if

UFO

was three hundred

97

we

sent an e-mail to

some of our volunteers

signed up for the Meetup, saying that the governor was going to

by the meeting. Within hours, the thing had exploded, blow-

try to stop

ing out the three-hundred-person venue. E-mails rocketed back and forth:

What? He's coming? We hold a meeting and the candidate actually shows up? In a few hours, the number of people signed up in New York to see Howard Dean was at five hundred. At the web site offices, they had to scramble again to find a place that would accommodate twenty times the

number of people they'd originally expected. This would turn out to be, to my thinking, the March 5, 2003. I was traveling with the campaign

—

and

first

great

moment of

the governor that day

decided to skip out of the event he had scheduled just prior to the

I

Meetup forty minutes early, to see just what it was that I would be walking him into. The Meetup guys had settled on the Essex Lounge on Manhattan's Lower East Side, because it held 550, which would give them a little bit of room in case everyone who had signed up came something that had

—

never happened. I'd never been to the Essex, or to that part of New York,

and so

I

was disoriented

town Manhattan. "Holy

shit,"

I

rode in the back of a yellow cab through mid-

Finally, the cab

turned the corner onto Essex Street.

said.

I

The block was deep

as

—coming out

solid people.

They formed

the door of the Essex, going

block and around the corner. For than a year before the election?

lounge was closed, or

some other

I

if there

I

a political

—

all

three, four people

the

just sat there, staring,

was

a

way down the More

candidate? In March?

wondering

if

the

chance they were gathered here for

reason.

Right then, and

a line

thought,

a

oh

New York great, the

Police

Department

governor

is

up

to the curb

going to pull up and the police are

going to be busting people for loitering. Yeah, that will be good.

car pulled

Maybe

a riot will

break out.

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

98

I

walked up to the cop, trying

to figure out

what

to say: Listen, this

either an Internet miracle, or something on the Internet

is

awry. I guess

it

depends on how you look at

sort of

The cop was

gone hopelessly

it.

when he

talking to the people in line and he turned

saw me. "Hello, officer," explain

—

"Oh

yeah," he

know who

don't

I

said,

"I'm with Governor Howard Dean and

is,

can

been talking to these guys about him and

said. "I've

he

I

but do you think

I

I

could meet him?"

Fifteen minutes later the governor pulled up and stepped out of the

His jaw dropped.

car.

He had

always had to remind

that, I'd

look of sheer wonder on his

a

him

to

mention

face.

Before

after his speeches, that if

people were interested in getting involved, they could go to Meetup.com.

Most of

the time, he forgot.

religion about

want

to

it,

do something, go

would hold

But

and he'd never

the first

to

with her

paign;

we

Dean was

life.

Meetup.com.

in

we were

This was one of our

decided to

would make

to say, at the

And

Howard Dean would after that, Sarah

let

in that day

first steps

get

end of his speech, If you

Wednesday of every month on

by the Meetup in whatever city it

after that day,

fail

Buxton

his schedule for a stop

— and

she

would guard

toward an open-source cam-

the people choose the campaign events. If Howard

your town on the day of your Meetup sure of it, and she and

I

—he was coming. Sarah

ribbed each other about

it

for the rest

of the campaign.

That day, there were

five

hundred people inside the high-ceilinged

Essex Lounge (more would've crowded

in,

of a few recent, horrible nightclub

closed the room). Another three or

fires,

but the Fire Marshal, conscious

four hundred people were waiting on the sidewalk outside. There were at least eight

on

a

hundred people! Eight hundred people gathering, on their own,

weeknight on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to have

a

meeting

about a long-shot candidate for president.

We last

took Dean to the end of the

people reaching for him, patting fighting, thanking

him

Sometimes, your

As

line,

halfway around the block, to the

way forward, shaking every hand him on the back, encouraging him to keep

person lined up, and he worked his

I

for finally saying the things that they believed.

own

thoughts circle around and catch you off guard.

stood there guiding a buoyant

Howard Dean through

that raucous,

NEW YORK

adoring

line, all

Harlem or Los Angeles,

street in

Bobby Kennedy, walking down

could think of was

I

narrow

into a frenzy.

Howard

ple and gave them

a

the

the crowds forming around him, the

hands reaching out, a generation rising up to Inside the long,

99

restaurant, five

him onto

lift

hundred people were worked

down

stood on the balcony, looked rip-roaring speech.

their shoulders.

The Bush

at

the sea of peo-

administration was

steaming relentlessly toward war with Iraq, and the governor decried the president's single-minded and

misguided obsession with toppling Saddam

Hussein's regime. "It

time for regime change!" he

is

Washington!" The room went nuts. in trouble

with the media weeks

no reporters around,

someone

said.

a line that

later,

but

when Dean

was one of

my

all

who

passed

coined

reporters

political

—and would continue

there

were

to

cover this

to pass for months.

biggest frustrations in those early days: this

amazing groundswell of support

it,

had been waiting for

it.

had tried to convince several

I

would get John Kerry

was

roomful of people

just a

need regime change in

It

to have the courage to say

Meetup, but they

"We

It

was the most

I'd ever seen in presidential politics,

and

because this thing was happening out there, on the Internet, in places

where the mainstream media

The the

reporters

way

it

all

believed they

had always worked. If support didn't show

—even more importantly

or

the

amount of money But, of course,

before

it

know to look, no one was covering it. knew how the system worked, which was

didn't

would

ing rooms and

it

a

in the eyes

candidate raised, then

was happening.

It

was happening

classrooms

It

in real time,

It

was happening

over the country.

all

where the venues couldn't hold

March Meetup ple

who

— and

eyes,

it.

no candidate

And

it

was happening in

where Governor Dean looked

over me, and

He

got

it.

I

the people at

could

see:

at all

its

It

liv-

was

venue and

San Francisco and

Seattle,

who showed up

for the

these Meetups —

Howard Dean and wanted

supported

something about

there was

all

in

in

weeks

was happening in

happening in Los Angeles, where the Meetup blew through

had more than 200 people.

—

wasn't happening.

it

register in polls or in fund-raising.

dorm rooms and

itself in the polls

of the reporters and pundits

-just

to get involved

New

peo-

and do

York, right before our

those people and then glanced

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT DE TELEVISED

100

MAKING A DIFFERENCE So why Howard Dean?

some ways,

In

When

the media finally

months

patrician,

it

Why

had

state?

Was

it

his refusal to speak in

because

new,

headquarters, three or four

many

we were

cliches

What

first

campaign

run

the Internet and other

replicate

these

to effectively

they were really asking was even

anyone step in and

Would

in Iraq?

and prepared speeches? Was

—using emerging forms of communication —

organizing people?

their view,

war

his prescient opposition to the

campaign

the first-movers, the

significant: could

reporters

thing crystallized around an unknown,

this

our campaign on the Internet?

more

Dean

at

Democratic presidential candidate from what was, in

an insignificant it

showed up

the fifty million dollar question.

groundswell began, that was the question

after this

wanted answered.

Was

would become

that

our early success in

same people on the Internet have

rallied

around anything that took the step of reaching out to them on their

level,

through their medium?

—

The answer to all of these questions is yes and no. From that first day in Burlington, I had gone out with one message: Internet, Internet, Internet. Howard Dean was going to be the Internet candidate, returning

power

to the

American people.

When

you looked

at

him, you were going to think Internet and personal empowerment in the

same way you thought Vietnam hero when you looked Southern optimism when you looked they began to see idential

at

raising, the other

campaigns would belatedly follow our cue and

startling successes. In the first quarter

Kerry inherited much of our online

John Kerry, or

John Edwards. By summer, when

how much money we were

on the Net. Most of them missed the

ers

at

start

2004 pres-

courting vot-

boat, although there

were some

of 2004, after Dean dropped out,

momentum

and raised more than half

of his $50 million war chest from online donations, including $20 million in

two ten-day Web-a-thons. But other than

raising

generally continued to treat the Internet like a

TV

money, the campaigns with keys

(a

Web-a-

thon?) and ignored the ways that this technology actually invites people to

be involved, rather than just throwing pictures and slogans

hope

that they donate

people on for

money. Kerry, for

Meetup.com two months

America

still

after

instance,

still

at

them

in the

had only 80,000

Dean's campaign ended. Dean

had 165,000 and he wasn't even running any more.

NEW YORK

Generally,

on

in 2003,

all

of the campaigns made the same sorts of mistakes. Early

most of the candidates simply put up

place for people to get involved (the exception

considered another run for the

more

ter,

101

—

web

sites

my

had, to

with no

who

was Gary Hart,

White House and

interactive blog than ours

static

briefly

horror, a bet-

And even when

for a while).

these

other campaigns did venture further onto the Internet, they tended to view it

the

way most American companies view

one-way medium,

a place to get their

what was good

to tell the

what soap they needed

for them,

They seemed

message across.

computer was just another box from which

the

another top-down,

as just

it,

to think

American people what car they

to buy,

needed to drive, what presidential candidate they needed to vote

for.

The other campaigns condescended to the people on the Internet. Like so many American corporations do, in their tone and content, the other campaigns talked down to these people. They didn't engage them or listen to them or invite their opinions. And they made it abundantly clear that they didn't respect the power that these people had.

A

story by

the "inordinate

Ryan

amount of time"

grassroots campaign.

And

betrayed

it

waves of people becoming

that

I

New

The

Lizza that spring in

Republic referred to

spent using the Internet to create a

how

the other campaigns

politically involved

on the

viewed the

Internet:

Aides to some of the other 2004 Democratic candidates regard Trippi a bit

of an eccentric

who

as

wastes precious campaign time e-mailing ob-

scure bloggers and hanging out with political oddballs at the monthly

Dean Meetups. "Some of from Star Wars,"

says

these

Meetup

events look like the bar scene

an adviser to one Dean

This became one of our rallying

cries.

fund-raising and then our poll numbers,

rival.

As our web

we wasted no

throwing the "bar scene from Star Wars" back in the paigns, reminding

them

that they

success fueled our

opportunity in

faces

of other cam-

had been too busy to waste their time

with the "obscure bloggers" and "Meetup events" that were just beginning to propel us into the race.

So, yes, the other campaigns definitely missed the boat and even

pushed away some of their online support. As

on

television

still

1976,

I

I

watched Bush and Kerry

marching toward the November 2004 election

was amazed

that they

still

didn't

seem

to get

it.

as if it

were

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

102

But

in

The

some important ways,

Internet

is

was never

it

theirs to get.

tailor-made for a populist, insurgent movement.

Its

ARPAnet, its hacker culture, and its decentralarchitecture make it difficult for big, establishment candi-

roots in the open-source ized, scattered

dates, companies,

loathes

what

it

and media to gain control of it.

can't control. This independence

And

is

the establishment

by design, and the In-

community values above almost anything the distance it has from slow, homogenous stream of American commerce and culture.

ternet

the

Progressive candidates and companies with forward-looking vision have

an advantage on the Internet, too. Television

medium. People

will

documentaries on television

as a

way

by

its

nature, a nostalgic

to tap into their pasts.

Reagan's campaign ads in the 1980s

promising

is,

watch twenty-year-old sitcoms and Behind

—they were

is

a

at

Music

Ronald

masterpieces of nostalgia

return to America's past glory and prosperity.

a

the other hand,

Look

the

The

Internet,

on

forward-thinking and forward-moving medium, em-

bracing change and pushing the envelope of technology and communication.

do think

I

ladder

—

as

this gives the

long

as it

Democratic Party

can Party

the

is

make

to

command and

a

blog

is

really

nothing more than

comment. Nothing

communication It's

is

the world better.

The Republi-

control party, the very definition of

top-down management. That's why what for reader

up on the Internet

continues to be the traditional progressive party, in-

on moving forward, trying

tent

a leg

a

the

Bush/Cheney web

bunch of press

seeps

releases

site calls

with no room

up from the supporters;

all

of the

delivered top-down.

not that conservative and reactionary forces are unwelcome on the

Net. Everyone

is

welcome on the Net.

A

2004 Harvard Kennedy School

of Government case study of blogging, for instance, reported the perception

among many

observers that, at least initially, "the strongest voice to

emerge from the blogosphere came from the right end of the

political

spectrum." In part because of what has been called the digital divide (the fact that

lower income people are slower to get onto the Internet) the per-

centage of people online the

registered Republicans (36 percent) in

2000 election was higher than the percentage of registered Democrats

(28 percent).

1

who were

1

Steve Davis, Larry Elin, and Grant Reeher,

Change

Political

Apathy

On Democracy: The Internet's Power CO: Westview Press, 2002).

Click

into Civic Action (Boulder,

to

NEW YORK

But wherever they share a afraid

few

common

of change

—

fall

on the spectrum, Internet

activists generally

they tend to be younger, they tend to be un-

traits:

in fact they

demand

it

— and they tend And

mass media to express their particular viewpoint.

so

Drudge Report or Daily Kos, the most successful web the Net have about them the unruly whiff of rebellion. This

is

how

to distrust the

whether

sites

it's

the

and blogs on

former wrestler and third-party candidate

a

103

like Jesse

Ventura could use his outsider status to focus the Internet community into

of his campaign donations and driving his victory in

raising two-thirds

the Minnesota gubernatorial race of 1998.

And

it's

how

a

Republican Senator

like

John McCain could use the

win

Internet to raise $6.4 million after his shocking shire primary. Despite spending a life in

run

as

in the

government, McCain was able to

an outsider by aligning himself with campaign finance reform,

on web

populist issue that remains a hot topic

But these campaigns would prove

sites

and

technology was years, politics in

grow

America.

What

we were

still

believed this

they underestimated was the Internet's ability

movement.

not using the Internet.

It

ment. The campaign didn't create

this

What

they never under-

was using

us.

Although

I

didn't create this

move-

movement. Howard Dean

didn't

have seen this potential before most people,

create this

blogs.

not decades, away from making a real impact on

rapidly, virally, to create a

stood was that

may

if

a

be limited or primitive uses of

to

the Internet, and in the spring of 2003, most experts

to

New Hamp-

I

movement. In many ways, the movement created the Dean

for

America campaign. Certainly, Dean's early opposition to the

people. But, as

Ryan

war mobilized many of these

Lizza noted in the same story in

May

in

The

New

Republic, this wasn't a one-issue campaign, like the antiwar campaign of

Eugene McCarthy: While many predicted

Dean would

that

longer a salient issue, there governor's supporters

—

is little

originally

fully speaking out against

war

fade

away once the war was no

evidence that the former Vermont

drawn

in Iraq

—

to

Dean when he was

force-

are deserting him. In fact the

Internet might account for Dean's staying power.

Later, Lizza described a recent

which

wave of e-mails by Dean supporters

in

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

104

very few mentioned the war. To the extent any of them dealt with sues, they

defended Dean

as a

New

Democrat-style

were nonideological, simply praising Dean for bring independents and nonvoters into

As much

as

centrist.

But most

and

ability to

his passion

politics.

Howard Dean,

they were responding to

icans responding to themselves, to their

is-

own

were Amer-

these

involvement in his campaign.

many ways, engagement became the point of their engagement. The movement became the focus of the movement. I think there are many reasons for this renewed enthusiasm in particiIn

patory

politics.

Certainly some of

it

a backlash against fifty years

is

broadcast politics, which treated the people

than fund-raising targets,

Dean,

who

points

as

on

Some of

a poll.

of

they were nothing more

as if

it

was Howard

refused to be packaged like other candidates and was out there

for everyone to see, warts and

all,

one of their own,

a real

person running

for president.

But

think the genesis of this participatory

I

to the terrorist attacks of

September

movement can be traced wake of the attacks,

11, 2001. In the

most studies showed that Americans were

fearful

and anxious, but there

was another trend running beneath the fear that people missed.

may have

tacks

paralyzed

many Americans, but

Countless people saw the terrorist attacks their

as a

The

at-

others were awakened.

reason to get involved in

communities again, in government and in public service

—

especially

the young.

A November

2003 Young Citizen Survey by the Center

racy and Citizenship found that two-thirds of

were more

said they

the attacks. Fifty-six percent said they

community or

tively

ered.

we saw

to

likely to

work

in

as the

swing voters all

in 2004, not soccer

grown up and eager

for

some-

in.

yet, until

something

went online and asked

wanted

adults (67 percent)

and voting because of

would be more

NASCAR dads, but their kids,

thing to believe

And

Democ-

service.

These were the people

moms

young

likely to participate in politics

for

like the

Dean

for

America campaign ac-

for their help, these

young people who

do something were not being mobilized and didn't feel

The same study found

thought that they could make

that

empow-

62 percent of the young people polled

"little

or no difference" in the direction of

NEW YORK

number who had

the country, 10 percent higher than the

two

young people were

years earlier. These

ernment and

its

And

ability to solve their problems.

powerless

felt

also less trusting so,

105

of the gov-

CDC

the

as

study reported: Despite their stated intention to participate more vigorously in politics

and community

life,

young

adults' civic

and

political

involvement has

not increased in recent months. Voter registration and volunteerism rates are

I

lower in

think that deep

down, we

want

all

survey than in previous national surveys.

this

down we

ing the world better. If

campaign,

it

we

want

to

make

Deep mak-

a difference.

commit

ourselves to

Dean

did anything right in the

who wanted

These young people

I

really

America

for

was simply finding new ways to involve people in the process.

process found others like

could

all

to believe in something and

to

them on

do something but

felt

shut out of the

the Net, and found a place

where they

—DeanforAmerica.com.

come together

think in hindsight,

young people

we

will see this campaign as a crossroads for

in America, for

what might be the

generation raised

last

under the dominant thumb of television, the generation that moves away

from the tube and onto the web, from It

most

was something lasting

this election.

I

began

a passive

world to an active one.

telling people in that spring

of 2003, that the

accomplishment of the Dean candidacy wouldn't be

Or

felt in

am conwho cut Gray Brooks, who

even the next. But twenty years from now,

I

vinced there will be twenty-five or thirty members of Congress their political teeth

will look back alized they

on the Dean campaign, people

on the spring and summer of 2003

had the power to make

like as

the

moment

they re-

a difference.

SOMEONE OUT THERE we have no clue where the idea came from. All we know is that it was brilliant. The day after the March 5 Meetup, an e-mail written by a Howard Dean supporter somewhere went out to all the others connected to

To

this day,

Meetup.com. "Listen," the e-mailer wrote, 22,000 of us Howard Dean supporters

at

"as of last night there

Meetup.com.

If every

were

one of us

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

106

sent the governor ten dollars

what

we

think

I

tion, so the

really help the

a

campaign

But

out.

put a penny on the back end of our dona-

is

campaign knows when they get ten

coming from a

should do

would

it

dollars

Meetup

person. So give whatever

working

in the

and

a penny,

it's

— and

you can give

penny."

We

were

all

New

veling at the amazing the

On

fund-raising quarter (March 30),

first

guru

I

Dean campaign

headquarters,

York Meetup and preparing

when Bobby Clark

counted on to figure out everything) came

our web

Bobby had been monitoring

the campaign and

mar-

end of

(the tech

looking confused.

in,

people could use their credit cards to donate

site,

still

for the

money

to

on-

a surprising spike in

line donations.

"A weird thing

We

all

"We're getting with lars

a

is

happening," he

looked up.

all

these contributions, they're

penny attached. Twenty- five

They

said.

"What do you mean?" dollars

and

all

hitting the server

penny.

a

A

hundred dol-

have this penny attached."

and

a

We

had no idea what was happening. This hadn't come from

penny.

had come from out

all

there.

Out

there, the original e-mail

up and posted on blogs and web

sites

us.

This

was being picked

and the money was flying

in.

By

the

end of the quarter, about $400,000 had come in with pennies attached.

We

were being taught the most important lesson of the campaign

American

the one that most

institutions have failed to learn.

under the Field of Dreams paradigm: If you build

from 1993

to 2003, they built their

web

sites

it

They

they will come.

— and

operate

And

so

and waited for the people to

arrive, assuming they'd just appear one day like ghosts out of the corn.

We

couldn't wait for ghosts. So

proved on

it

seemed

like

operated under a different para-

From the moment those pennies everything we built, someone out there im-

digm: If you ask, they'll help build started rolling in,

we it.

it.

This was also one of the

first signs that

our efforts to engage people

on the Net were paying off in our fund-raising.

It

was quickly followed by

other signs.

One

day,

tional Public

my

I

was

computer over

tions.

sitting at

my

desk, waiting to

do an interview with Na-

Radio about our Internet campaign, and to the server to see

I

happened to

click

what was happening with our dona-

Nothing much was going on, the number was just

staring

me

back in

NEW YORK

when

the face. So talked about

the interview started,

tions.

I

Net,

it

pump on Labor

I

to look

back

democracy, and in the

in

my

at

computer

there a

hit

new

poll?

screen.

was seeing. The numbers were rolling

Day. Click,

Then,

after

like a

Forty-eight contribu-

click, click.

started surfing the Internet, trying to figure out

Was

ing.

I

what

couldn't believe

frickin' gas

happened

We

looked away from the screen.

empowering people, getting involved

middle of the interview, I

I

107

what was happen-

about ten minutes of searching the

me.

looked from the screen to the telephone to the radio and back again.

I

The connection was

right there. People

were hearing

me on

the radio,

going to their computers and donating to the campaign. The Internet was

making

it

possible for people to register their feedback immediately. After

we would

that,

chart the effect of newspaper, television, and radio stories

how much money would come

and be able to predict accurately after

Dean appeared on

know which media The campaign

to

Hardball, or after a story in

go

Today, and we'd

to in the big fund-raising pushes.

fund-raising year

end of each quarter the

USA

in online

staff is

is

divided into four quarters, and

expected to

file a

at

the

fund-raising report with the

Federal Elections Commission. This fund-raising

number

gives reporters

and campaign watchers an early picture of the horserace: which campaigns will be contenders and

which look

quarter, the last day of

March, Dean for America posted $2.7 million

quarterly fund-raising, most of it

like also-rans.

from more

At the end of the

traditional

campaign

Steve Grossman and Stephanie Schriock had saved the

campaign

—when

it

last

week of

—but

roughly $600,000 in total for the quarter

enough

to pay for shutting the

that

in

sources.

Howard Dean

should have been impossible to save. Sure our

Internet thing had raised $400,000 in the

first

little

the quarter and

would have been

campaign down and sending the

staff

home.

Schriock and her finance team, along with Grossman and some others,

somehow had

raised $2 million the old fashioned

for every dollar. Getting people like

ernor of Virginia, or

mer

DNC

Mary

Roy Furman,

finance chairman in

—working

the phones

Beyer the former lieutenant gov-

the respected investment banker and for-

New

York, or Rick Jacobs and Steven and

Swig, the anchors of our campaign in California to sign-up and help

raise the

money

that kept us alive.

our growing Hogging community line

Don

way

money

to

make

it

happen

We

needed time to give the Internet and

a fighting chance.

—and

They

got none of the credit.

raised the life-

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

108

I

was both

what they had accomplished, and pissed

ecstatic at

had raised just enough to make sure that

Vermont. the

I

LBSOS

nickname

throughout the

me

I

I

spent another winter in freezing

thought of that prospect by giving her

—Low-Balling

Sack of Shit

we would be

quarter that

first

what she and her crew convinced

know what

Schriock

let

that they

At one

actually brought in.

—

me

for swearing to

lucky to raise about half of

of our dire financial position that

I

had so

point, Schriock

made

sure

Kathy and

I

maxed out with $2,000 contributions each. Then to make my pain and humiliation even more profound, on my birthday, Schriock and Kathy con-

me

spired to convince

booth and

let

a target that

it

would be

a great idea for

the campaign staff (the people

would

I

me

flush a toilet full of ice cold water

damn

a picture of the whole

people to contribute to the twisted birthday present

—

sit

in a

dunking

throw

at

on me. Then they put

thing up on the BlogforAmerica and asked

Dean

for

America campaign

me! There was nothing

to

to

yelled at every day)

some kind of sick

as

like sitting in a

dunk-

ing booth for hours in the freezing drizzle while a bunch of adrenaline-

pumped

got their revenge.

staffers

The only

pluses

were

hundred bucks and that Governor Dean was on the road

wicked put

I

and

fastball

me where

who knows how

I

—

for her

was no way we were going

—when

Even with ers,

the

raised six

—he

has a

he would have reacted to the chance to

this trick

by marrying

could only add another L to her nickname

Balling Sack of Shit

quarter

we

the fishes sleep.

had already gotten even with Kathy for

To Schriock

that

that day

knew

she

mind-numbing

insistence to

her.

Lying Low-

me

that there

to put over $3 million together in the second

full

well

we were

Stephanie's sleight-of-hand,

two Johns: Edwards, who had

going to do

we were

at least $ 4 million.

well behind the lead-

raised $7.4 million, mostly

fellow lawyers, and the obvious front-runner, and Kerry,

who had

from

topped

$10 million.

To

we were

the media,

derfunded and outgunned

wanted

to

know

if

maries started, or

in the

—too

same position we'd always been

little,

too

late,

and too

liberal.

in,

un-

Reporters

the governor would drop out of the race once the pri-

if

he planned to run a symbolic campaign, getting his

ass

kicked until the very end. In Burlington, line strategy,

but

we were just beginning

it

would be

traditional measures of polls

several

and

to reap the benefits of our

weeks before

cash.

it

on-

translated in those

So we were brainstorming about

NEW YORK

what other innovations might help us reach these voters

begun

on the Internet

to find

had decided months

—and

earlier that the

that

109

we'd

to bypass the traditional media,

just

which

long shot Dean for America campaign

was unworthy of coverage. I'd

had an idea for some time,

campaign into

a reality television

candidate every day to film the

hind the scenes and on

notion that could essentially turn the

—send

a

camera out with the

and debates, everything going on be-

rallies

No

stage.

a

program

secrets,

no backroom dealings

the campaign and let the people see inside

a

it,

—open up

running journal of

a

cam-

paign, an all-access video blog.

This

is

way

the opposite

that political

campaigns generally function,

of course. Most campaigns do everything in their power to control every element of the candidate's image and message, from the clothes he wears to each

word out of his mouth. But we had

a candidate

up

in the fact that he

was

didn't like to

only two written —he — and whose very was

have his image or his words packaged speeches during the entire campaign

who

delivered

identity

tied

own man.

his

That spring, we launched HowardDean.tv, using cool technology from Wavexpress, a company

day

I

had once consulted with (and

I

took the Dean campaign job). HowardDean.tv was a web

video of speeches, campaign events, and, best of

Dean

supporters around the country.

channel, but because

we were

still

It

never quite lived up to paign, 50,000 people clips

The

broke that spring

of

rallies

by

clips shot

a fully dedicated

TV

when we hatched

the

cameraman out with him)

expectations, though by the end of the

on Dean.tv turned out

—commercials and

it

cam-

to be the pieces

made by our

testimonials and over-the-shoulder glimpses

and other events, and among these were occasional glimpses of

moments

that

I

had hoped to

on Dean.tv. These moments were incredible and only deepened

someday ple

ran

were catching some of the 24 hours of Howard Dean

the kinds of powerful, unscripted "reality"

get

video

site that

and speeches that aired each day.

best things

supporters

my

all,

was to be

idea (we couldn't even afford airfare to send a

video

lost as a client the

—

a

campaign will do

especially the

fer seeing the

—

young

this to perfection, will

see

through the

slick

world raw and unscripted, not

Avenue conference room or

a

Hollywood

belief that

understand that peo-

packaging of TV and pre-

as it's

studio.

my

imagined in

a

Madison

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

110

My

favorite

moment on Dean.tv came when

the governor arrived to

speak to about twenty young voters on a college campus.

The amateur-

run camera caught up to him, arriving

late,

him and guide him

the camera jiggling over his shoul-

der, he entered the

him

troduce

to the event.

door to

two

to the

I'm skipping

do

like

that."

my

I

in his tracks

He

said.

"I'm so excited

and turned to face the

looked for

all

kid.

"What? What? You

a heart attack.

For just a moment, he didn't look States.

to in-

organized the event.

He

can't

like a candidate for president

the world like a worried parent.

You need

don't want you doing that for me.

to get back to class

now."

right

was an amazing, sincere moment and

It

have pulled off the

full

Dean.tv experience.

ome of the campaign I wanted filter

who had

be here."

final to

he was going to have

of the United

"Look,

campus building and someone stopped

a

students

The governor stopped looked

volunteers running up to brief

meet you," one of the students

"It's so great to

that

With

of ABC and

FOX

choose what they want to

But

in the spring

see,

around the

track.

—

made me wish we could

would have been

the epit-

by the people, taking out the

and allowing the viewers to not only

but to produce

it

as well.

we just didn't have the time, the money, or we wanted to do. It's funny to read about our

of 2003,

the people to do everything inevitable success

to run, driven

CNN

and

it

It

as if

we

and watched

just rolled out the car

I'm really proud of everything

we

did,

but

I

it

tear

know how

much pushing uphill we did. Sometimes I find myself imagining all that we could have done if we hadn't started two years late, with no money and a tenth the number of people we needed. Hell, if we'd had one more year who knows what we might have accomplished.

—

HOLD THE LINE

One

day,

John Kerry just

started

That might have been the

headway

in the outside

Internet

community

world

that

whacking

first real

—

make

sign that

the world

we were making some

beyond the borders of the

tight

we'd been building. At the end of April, the

Kerry campaign suddenly turned on process, they helped

us.

us.

its

heels

and came

after us.

And,

in the

NEW YORK

From January

June

to

I

111

what was hap-

couldn't get the media to cover

pening in our campaign, but something in Kerry's polling numbers must've tipped all

him

off to the deep rumblings of our grassroots movement, because

of a sudden, the

Howard Dean's

landing in our backyard:

shells started

stated belief that the

United

States

"won't always have

the strongest military" raises serious questions about his capacity to serve as

Commander

in Chief.

No

has ever before suggested that he

serious candidate for the Presidency

would compromise or

tolerate an ero-

sion of America's military supremacy.

I

from Chris Lehane, Kerry's communications

stared at the press release

on opposition

director and an expert

Time magazine

quote, taken out of context from a

diplomatic solutions to world

blow mean? polls,

We

research. This

What

crises.

was

a

two-week

story about searching for

the hell could this kind of

weren't a threat to Kerry.

old

He was

still

low

killing us in the

in fund-raising, in all the traditional establishment measurements.

Every campaigner knows you don't pick

a fight

with someone you're beat-

ing. Especially in April.

But

that's exactly

what they'd done.

When

a staffer

from the other

campaign attacks your candidate, the candidate can never lower himself to respond. So our communications department has to respond to their

munications department. The only problem was have a communications department.

I

that, in April,

we

comdidn't

was the communications department.

So the retaliation had to come from me:

The statement by Senator John Kerry's campaign is absurd. As Comin Chief, Howard Dean will never tolerate an erosion of

mander

—

American military power

Trippi said if Kerry supports Bush's ap-

proach to foreign policy "then John Kerry tion of the

A

wrong

few minutes

with another press

—

and

is

running for the nomina-

party ..."

after

my

response went out, Lehane fired right back

release, saying that

—

the adrenaline flowing

"blank check" and on and on

I

my

statement was "a non-answer,"

fired back that

we

Kerry had given Bush

a

went, the tag line on each press release

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

112

getting longer and longer: "In a response to Joe Trippi's response to Chris

Lehane's response to Joe Trippi's response ..." I

hadn't had a good political fight like this in years and

With

nately invigorating and exhausting.

money and

staff,

neighborhood

their

it

was

alter-

advantage in

10-to-l

fighting the Kerry campaign was like taking

on the

my

car and

bully. In

between each

salvo,

I

raced

down

to

cranked the stereo on Peter Gabriel's song "San Jacinto," yelling out the chorus over and over: I hold the line

—

through the fear

J hold the line.

Lehane had fired back this

at

—

me

the line of strength that pulls

Then

run back upstairs to see what

I'd

me. Back and forth

we

went, until

finally,

sent

I

message, and effectively ending our "feud":

In a response to Chris Lehane's response to Joe Trippi's response to

Chris Lehane's response to Joe Trippi's response to Chris Lehane's statement, Joe Trippi says,

The nothing

"Who

the hell

is

Chris Lehane?"

and Lehane (thank God) didn't respond.

press laughed

left at that point.

I

had

was exhausted.

I

The thing about an insurgency campaign is that you are always chasing. You're always running from behind. You start behind and you finish behind. With a front-runner, you have all the money you need. You start with ers,

tions I

a staff

of a hundred people, the best schedulers, the best speech writ-

the best field organizers; you've got

department than Howard Dean had on

worked on

the

more people

the

Mondale campaign and

it

his

was

in the

communica-

whole campaign. a cruise ship

I

know.

compared

to

Dean campaign. In the beginning,

normally have, did

Howard stump

still

for

was handling the duties

field

work, fund-raising,

that a press secretary

political directing,

would

and with

unwilling to ask his wife to campaign (when she finally did

him

some events

I

—

was amazing),

in Iowa, she all

I

was even

jobs that the bigger campaigns had

mal campaign manager day

started at eight in the

with meetings with labor leaders and

a surrogate speaker at staffs to

until

my

My

morning and was

politicians, decisions

buys and campaign events and message and strategy and

make up a campaign when I'd get on the

do.

all

filled

about media

the things that

day began winding down, around 10

Internet, read the blogs,

nor-

p.m.,

and post myself. At about

midnight, I'd answer e-mails for a couple of hours.

With

the

Web Team

I

NEW YORK

would work on e-mails done and approved

the

to our supporters, often not getting the final draft

until

and get up and

sleep

two

morning. Then

And

few hours of

I'd get a

wasn't just me. Everyone on

it

campaign was working that hard. Everyone was doing the work of ten

It

called

I

that

I

would get

a

and

more than

if this

staffing

—

was crazy

hundred people

a

anyone

to

could think

I

work

—

field organizers, press

Most

of.

for such an underdog.

would balk

at

flatly said

I

asked

My

fly.

one

Ken Bode, someone

had known

Dean

us,

before

real regret in

I

no and

Sometimes, when

much money

spending that

thing was even going to

came when

at his

on-board

heavy hitter to think about coming to work for

his close staff

knew

Ken had

during those campaigns

—but

I

remembered

ways admired that take-no-bullshit I

side

NBC's

as

cam-

on

just signed

luctantly Still,

(I

as

always been tough on

me

and

al-

his political smarts

of him.

think he was almost crazy enough to the dean of journalism at

we

terms of

national political correspondent in the 1984 and 1988 presidential

paigns to head up our press operation.

and

on

Nicco

slept at their desks. Eventually,

didn't try to get experienced campaigners

people, message people

me

sleep

to sleep.

we

wasn't that

that spring.

told

few minutes

to catch a

going home, pulling his hat over his eyes and slumping

when he needed

desk

someone trying

web room, people

couch. In the

just stopped

I

in the

over again.

start

people. There was always

my

113

I

badgered and begged

come on board

DePauw

—but he had

University, so he re-

think) took a pass.

alongside the campaign rookies and eager techies,

ning to attract some talented young liked to think of himself as

something of an expert on what

wanted (namely, him); and the quick-witted,

who came on

as

we were

pols, like the tireless Paul

begin-

Blank,

women

who

voters

irrepressible Tricia Enright,

communications director and crackled in the part

like

Katharine Hepburn in one of those old forties office comedies.

But even though we were seemed to door,

And

I

fall

attracting

further behind each day.

thought:

Oh

good people

The

first

to the campaign,

minute

I

we

walked in the

god, we need thirty people and we only have seven.

the thing about an insurgency

is

that

you won't catch up. Ever. You

think you need thirty people, and you get to twenty-eight and then your candidate does something like the

park

— and you're

to fifty-eight,

thinking, holy

and you

realize

DNC

shit,

speech

—whacks

now you need

you need

eighty.

it

out of the

sixty people.

You

get

At seventy-eight, you need

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

114

a

hundred and

And

fifty.

never stops. In an insurgency campaign,

this

you're always outrunning your supply

lines.

you don't have, relying on people who boat that survive

is

it.

sinking under your

You

ride

it

on

like a surfer

night without leaving

and you just keep

Except when

it

a

don't

falling,

works.

Then

is

and

tsunami.

it

like

money

water out of

a

manage an insurgency; you

You can never go home

more work on your desk than when you

Managing an insurgency campaign falling,

aren't there, bailing

You

feet.

You're always spending

at

arrived.

one of those dreams where you're

falling.

feels like

you're flying.

JUMPING FROM A FIFTEEN-STORY BUILDING Puerto Rico, the Russert Primary, and Overlooking Snail Nail

44

| |

H

ow's

it

look?"

I

asked nervously.

"I'm not there yet," Howard Dean said

toward

a

campaign event in

2003,

eight

still

he walked from the car

Seattle.

had good reason to be nervous. That early in

I

a

campaign

months before the Iowa Caucuses

hard to gather people for a campaign event. a

as

hundred people. The biggest event

—

it

A decent-size

—mid-May

was notoriously

crowd might be

I'd seen for the other

campaigns that

spring was a breakfast in Iowa with five hundred people and free food supplied by John Kerry. Here at

an event in a

state that

"I'm walking up the

we were

trying to get a

crowd with no food

wouldn't be on the table for months. steps, Joe."

Every time your candidate goes out on the road you hold your breath, half afraid he's going to be speaking to himself in an

The the

biggest campaigns can usually build a

ground

—

hit

churches. Hell,

we had no

official

anywhere, except in Vermont, and shire.

For

us,

crowd with

up the unions or churches

empty room.

their support

on

—but we had no unions or

campaign organization on the ground a little bit in

Iowa and

every campaign stop was a small leap of faith.

New Hamp-

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

116

"I'm opening the door."

But we did have the was

also

events, meetings,

and

we had

we

good, but

it

an event,

Meetups were spreading, and

Internet.

only one day a month.

A

campaign

was

ten years of

compressed into one year's time. So whenever

rallies

turned to the best organizing tool

net. In Seattle, for instance,

is

that

we had

sent out about

we

had: the Inter-

two hundred e-mails

to

our supporters in the local Dean organizations, hoping they could help us raise a

maybe even

decent crowd,

get a few hundred people without hav-

ing to resort to free bacon.

"Well?"

I

There was governor

said.

asked.

"Good

a pause.

"There have

There were, in

to be a thousand people here."

twelve hundred people waiting for

fact,

They had

Hall in Seattle that day.

And

Lord, you're not going to believe this," the

to close the doors

him

at

Town

and turn people away.

an event the next month in Austin, Texas, was even bigger.

We

sent

out four hundred eighty-one e-mails to Austin supporters, and on June 13,

more than

governor of a distant vote was

agers, putting

word on

—what would happen

up

signs

the rest of the campaign

two hundred people became

and posting

flyers,

leaflet

couldn't have done that

known to do that. If we hadn't realized becoming This

clear:

what

is

it

hundred eighty-one people

every Latino neighborhood in Austin.

from Burlington.

before, by

May

We'd put same

We

would never have

and early June of 2003,

it

was

This was no ordinary campaign. I

meant when

I

said later that the biggest

campaign. They were managing the campaign.

a

campaign man-

myth of the 2004

was that Joe Trippi was managing Howard Dean's presidential

Burlington;

and in

little

arranging media, and passing the

to their friends. In Austin, those four

had decided, on their own, to

election

former

seven months before a single primary or caucus

state,

that in Seattle, those

We

for a

cast!

What had happened was

showed up. Three thousand people

three thousand

a

it

was out

there.

new campaign

It

wasn't headquartered in

Anything we could do, they could do

flyer

up on the web

site for

better.

people to download,

few minutes, we'd get e-mails with new, improved versions of this

sign.

We'd

post those

provements on the

new

on

flyers.

the blog, and

someone

else

would make im-

JUMPING FROM

we had

Early on,

Net

in using the

gotten some guidance from MoveOn.org,

to raise

money and

battle the Clinton

1998 to

in

117

a

pioneer

awareness for political causes.

Formed

impeachment and,

Bush administration and

against the

FIFTEEN-STORY BUILDING

A

later, to raise

for other liberal causes,

money

for ads

MoveOn

didn't

Dean campaign, offering its help to all nine of the Democratic Party contenders. But we were the only ones who accepted the offer. And so Zack Exley from MoveOn came over to show us what had worked for support the

1

we

them. But the most valuable lesson was one

learned on our own: If you

pay attention to the community you're building, then the community will step

up and do the work. Every

One

we

day,

put up

Dean" and "New Hampshire signs

day,

we saw

for

Dean"

were downloaded 87,000 times

passed before an e-mail

new example of this.

a

on our web

fifty state signs

—from Alaska

to

is

not a

made

pasted and

a

state,

Puerto Ricans

"Hey you Even though

in Puerto Rico:

get to vote. So

Puerto Rico sign and two minutes

later

it

we

cut and

was up on the

and we immediately got eight thank-you e-mails from Puerto Rico.

site

But we

also got a posting

on our blog from

he'd love an "Americans Abroad for

posted

it,

and immediately got

All of this was instantaneous

something, disseminating

on the

post

we

still

for

Wyoming. The

guys screwed up. You forgot Puerto Rico." They were right.

Puerto Rico

— "Iowa

But three minutes hadn't

that day.

came from someone

site

official

it,

on how their

to

own

own

— almost

tiny

moments

—

London saying

we made a

that

that

that sign, too,

woman

in Spain.

no separation between planning it.

We'd

we were thinking of creating what

people and organize Dean —software — and people would respond with

suggestions

fifty

idea even it

more

effective.

Some

people even wrote

in.

early interactions

a flash

find

to help

area

software and sent

Most of these

sign, so

in

getting feedback, and improving on

campaign blog

make our

guy

thank-you note from

a

called GetLocal tools

events in their

Dean"

a

with our online supporters were these

of inspiration here, another there. But these flashes

were going off instantaneously, hundreds of times

a day, like

cameras

at

the

Super Bowl, and these flashes were not just between campaign headquarters

and our supporters, but back and forth between the supporters too,

'In an online "election" between the nine candidates,

MoveOn.org members who

Dean won 44 percent of

all

the 317,000

voted, almost double the support of the next highest candidate.

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

118

through the crowd.

Our

entire online

the sparking of these ideas.

up from the bottom.

rise

around in

circles, in three

And

it

community seemed

moved up and down,

Ideas

to be

lit

up by

wasn't the top simply allowing ideas to

dimensions.

A woman

side-to-side,

in Pennsylvania

sells

and her

money to Dean for America, then mentions it know it donations are coming from all over the sold my bike for democracy. We'd get hit by an-

bike for $75 and donates the

on

a

blog and before you

country with the note: /

Dean had said, and the Google Monkeys would break out their search engines and come to our rescue with three former presidents who'd said the same thing. Two Washington, D.C., students would decide one day to form Generation Dean as a way to get young people involved in the campaign and within months, it would grow to 23,000 members in 1,100 chapters across the country. The multiplying effect of this movement didn't only manifest itself building supporters. Even our ideas were growing exponentially. And other campaign criticizing some innocuous thing that

while we'd been saying

all

along that this could happen

of support building the campaign believed

really would.

it

But

happening before our

eyes.

hyper speed

after those

Meetup numbers paign grew more innovative and

less

groundswell

this

— I'm not

sure any of us

campaign stops in

swelled past 24,000 people,

Austin, as the

it

at

—

tethered to Burlington,

And we began

to talk about

Seattle

the

as

we

what

and

cam-

could see

it

meant

the campaign's next step.

Then, one day in mid-May,

what was happening

I

sat

down

on the DeanNation

in a post

Three months ago Howard Dean was

become such

to try to capture the energy of

blog:

a political asterisk; today

he has

at least a

few

others, that they have taken every opportunity to twist his words,

and

a threat to the

distort his centrist record in

attempt to stop

They a

It is

him

.

.

try.

so obviously

become

a desperate

are trying to stop the Perfect Storm.

storm that has never happened before

The

forces required to

—because

come

it

into sync

could not

were not

.

First the

become

what has

before he can't be stopped.

have happened before. aligned

frontrunner, and evidently,

storm requires thousands, perhaps millions of Americans to

actively involved in determining the future course of our

But how do these Americans find each other?

organize?

How

do they collaborate?

How

How

coun-

do they

self-

do they take action together?

JUMPING FROM

For the

time

first

.

makes

the Internet

.

.

FIFTEEN-STORY BUILDING

A

this possible

readership in the millions, but the one question that

from 432

.

.

.

.

24,000 and

to over

that

military structure.

storm, not fuel

it.

.

.

.

is

building on

Which

gets

.

.

its

me

.

.

a

is

.

and get the

hell

is

to provide the tools

out of the

Maybe

candidate, are

1

—

that never

it

all

—

until

This was the

will be 2 .

.

in place

to step

first

now

—would

are

you

going to

there have

common vision for the future million who contribute $50. But the The

.

.

.

.

tools, energy, leadership

the

wind

of the Inter-

and the right

getting stronger, and the

is

is

building

back and see where to

be

a

this

.

.

.

thing was headed.

The

Perfect

kind of statement of intent for the cam-

part operating instructions, part call to arms.

And

is

a

about these things quietly around the office, but

all

how

when he

time, according to Nicco and others, that they had

Storm post would turn out

them out

and

a big

million Americans contributing $100 each to take

waves are getting higher, the Perfect Storm

—

way when

back to the Perfect Storm. People ask

net makes that possible.

paign

top-

a

own.

answer would be

been any hope of

been able

that gets

have ever been in was built on

I

back their country and promote nation.

be

money?

that

all

My

to

to take ac-

This kind of structure will suffocate the

.

going to win the nomination, or beat George Bush have

needed

campaign organization

(T)he important thing

some of the direction wave

still

growing.

still

needed

is

every political campaign

.

down

(A) mazing

4M months Dean Meetups members have grown

In

.

The other thing it

.

Could the Internet be used by millions

this:

tion off-line.

.

emerged. The Blogging community has grown with

tools that have

answered was

.

119

We'd been

now we began

talking

saying

loud, to each other. then, one day,

I

sidled

up

Howard and

to

told

him what we had

been thinking.

"The people are coming to this thing," I said. "And whatever we do, they take it and make it better. It's their campaign now. We're at the point where,

if this is

have to do

now

going to work, is

like

all

going to be because of them. All

we

have faith in them."

The governor nodded "We've

it's

in full agreement.

been talking about

it,

and

it's

like this,"

I

continued. "It's

we're standing on top of this fifteen-story building. All these people

have gathered.

Now

..."

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

120

"What we have

stepped in closer.

I

to

do

is

jump. And

trust

them

to

catch us."

He

me

stared at

for a while

and

mind. "You're absolutely right," he be that crazy about

said. "I

can see

it.

But do we have

to

it?"

This was for me,

Dean had about both Here was

could see the idea working in his

I

example of the cognitive dissonance Howard

a classic

his

candidacy and his campaign.

governor with

a brilliant

a rare

combination of vision and

dead-level honesty, one of the few people in the country with the ability to lead a full-scale populist

yet also, here was a

by being measured and

to take

logical.

And

back the government.

you succeed

that

government

in

His instincts were those of a

political

not a flame-throwing rebel. Throughout the campaign,

trist,

him

movement

guy who had learned

I

cen-

could see

wrestling with the consequences of the kind of insurgency that he

suddenly found himself leading. After his triumphant speech in front of the

DNC,

when he

for instance,

called out the

Democratic Party for ap-

peasing the Bush administration, one of the staffers mentioned that Senate

Minority Leader

Tom Daschle

old conciliator in

Dean come

"Governor," speed

I

said, "if

was angry about the speech.

to the surface. "Should

you do, you might

I

call

I

well put

as

could see the

him?"

him on your

Because you're going to be calling him every day of

dial.

this

campaign."

When that said

I

Dean

finally left

Howard and

I

from working together

Howard Dean. He

is

for America,

I

laughed

at the

closely.

I

have

a

men

I've ever

There was never any tension between us personally, even on

We

each other, and

think

empowering worked

for candidates

Howard Dean lantic

I

were

the people

Monthly

got

it.

stories

huge amount of respect for

one of the most extraordinary

in the campaign.

news

didn't get along, or that our differences kept us

able to joke

my

known. last

day

with each other and make fun of

we saw the campaign the same way: it was about who had lifted Howard onto their shoulders. I've before who didn't "get" their own message, but

As our

after the

Howard Dean and Joe

pollster Paul

Maslin wrote in

a story for

campaign:

Trippi, although their

work

styles

were such

that

they rarely spoke to each other (and they would ultimately part ways),

were nevertheless on the exact same

tactical

page most of the time

—

if

At-

JUMPING FROM

not always for the same reason.

But Howard was

also driven

cautious about spending too I

121

they were, bold action usu-

ensued.

ally

so,

And when

FIFTEEN-STORY BUILDING

A

never

est aides.

I

though

felt as

when someone

much money on

paign began to

And

quixotic campaign.

a

Howard Dean kept blame Howard. He didn't know me. Once,

I

don't

would've done

I

to high school

lift

off the ground,

For instance, when

it

differently,

I

was frustrated that

became time

it

to step

I

up our

had

a

him

exactly

would charge

Squier,

I

couldn't always

television ad

he was reluctant about committing to spending the contract telling

joked that

aloft.

ing,

McMahon, and

I

with Howard. Because when the cam-

thought needed to be done to keep

I

of outsiders, and

completely had his trust, or the trust of his clos-

asked what

would have gone do what

loyalty, distrustful

never quite penetrated the inner circle that

around him.

so closely

I

by

money

how much my company, to produce the ads.

2

To me,

buy-

until he

Trippi, this

was

when we needed to be acting boldly. "I've been here since January," said to him. "And I haven't been paid a dime. Governor, you should know by now that I don't care about the money. This isn't about money for me. This is bigger than money." Later that day, Dean called my partner, Steve McMahon. "I just quibbling over minor details

at

a

time I

learned something important about Joe," he said. "He's doesn't care about

money.

can't have

I

someone who doesn't care about money handling

campaign's finances." spending.

I

was supposed

implemented,

I'd

think

it

was

details

details;

2

real conflict

never had control of campaign

I

ideas,

I

but

if

I

wanted any of them

circle.

between Howard Dean and me, and

I

of the conflict that burned within him: the

He was someone who was someone who thought focusing too much on

idealist

could sometimes

est difference in

why

come up with

also a reflection

between the

sweated the

to

that's

have to go through that inner

This was the only

battle

And

my

and the pragmatist.

make you miss

the big picture. This was an hon-

our temperaments, but most of the time

we drew

great

and others would question the $7 million spent by the Dean campaign which were produced by Trippi, McMahon, and Squier. Most of that money Iowa television stations to buy ad time. We received a 7 percent commission for making

Later, the Washington Post

on television

went

to

ads,

and selling those ads tire fee for

— half our normal

rate

thirteen months' work, since

I

— and

so

my

third of that was about $165,000,

took no salary

as

campaign manager.

my

en-

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

122

from the contrast

creativity

in our personalities.

And

if

I

represented the

him way to win was to burn down the old corrupt system, then Kate O'Connor and Bob Rogan (the deputy campaign manager) were the pragmatic voices, constantly reminding him that if he burned down the castle, he'd have no place to rule. Most of the time, we reconciled those two governor's wild-eyed idealist side, perched on his shoulder, telling the only

two

halves of the campaign (and those

would always be

vision

until the day

I

Dean generously

one point. "The only problem

to rope in. Usually I

from the

there,

met

finally

my

it's

the other

is,

June was the month. could end

it

down

runway

the

We

all

once and for

I

arrived in Vermont,

from

said to a reporter

I'm not used to having

way around

to see

knew

all.

—

USA

staff that

the staff has to rope

Today I

have

me

in.

COMMON CAUSE

IN

it.

June could make the campaign, or

June was when we pushed

whether

it

would

either fly or

it

this rickety thing

fall.

Back in January, when we'd drawn up our Internet strategy, this was moment we had hoped to get to: June, the end of the vital second fund-

raising quarter.

It

had seemed

like a horrible

was somehow viable by June and to

day

match."

CONE TOGETHER

the

first

the campaign.

left

"Joe's a genius," at

halves of the candidate) but that di-

grow our

how

far

we

But

as

grassroots

if we'd

movement

long shot, but

figured out a

way

if

the campaign

to use technology

exponentially, then there was no telling

could go.

June

finally arrived, there

engine was chugging beneath

us,

was something missing. The Internet

but on top, the campaign seemed to be

Our message was becoming lost and we were much time talking about the things all the other campaigns money and polls and attack ads and press and Iowa. We were

flattening out just a bit.

spending too talked about

being

—

a little bit careful,

big, just the slightest shift in tone.

And

I

As

sat

I

concerns,

wasn't the only one

I

down got

in late

a call

May

from

my

cratic Party's enfant terrible,

California. years, in

Too earthbound.

too cautious.

But

who

it

It

wasn't anything

was dangerous.

thought

to write a

so.

memo

to the governor about

old friend Pat Caddell, formerly the

now

a

writer and political commentator in

Even though he'd been away from hands-on campaigning

my

opinion, Pat was

still

my

Demofor

the most brilliant person in the world at

JUMPING FROM

mood

taking the political temperature and the into a message.

it

The Democratic

bate in South Carolina

Howard was

that

way with

me

tell

that if you vote for is,

power

the

The

line

FIFTEEN-STORY BUILDING

candidates had just finished their big de-

Columbia

the Collision in

we'd helped him write people like

you from

me, I'm going

123

of the electorate and refining

— and

Pat and

beginning to connect with people in

really

lines that

people like

—

A

profound

a

"The

for his closing:

agreed

I

biggest

to solve

all

to change this country rests in

your problems.

.

.

The

.

lie

time

stages like this at election

is

truth

your hands, not mine."

had started with something the governor

said to

me

before the

debate about the truth being that people in this country really had the

power said,

to change things.

"Yeah, yeah

that's

called Pat

I

it

—but

and we talked about

Joe, if that's the truth, what's the lie?" So,

minutes before the debate, Howard and Steve in the holding

easy

—

it

was

room when

and then Pat

it

McMahon

and

I

were

the governor just blurted out that the

politicians telling people, "vote for

me

and

I'll

solve

sitting

was

lie all

your

problems." This became the signature closing of every speech the governor

"You have

gave from that point on:

"He's starting to get

the power!"

Pat said, "but he's got to go

it,"

all

the way. He's

got to go to that point where he shows that he's really different than

all

those others guys."

"That's right!"

said.

I

"Look," Pat began, "I'm working on "I'm working on So a

I

a

memo,"

nine-page

memo it

outlining

politicians

one

rise

two

I

—

worked together

to take the

could go. Actually,

the idealistic rantings of

this

how

memo

said.

flew out to L.A., where Pat and

the only place

many

I

this

it

campaign

all

we had

that last mile, to

was more manifesto than memo,

old campaign warriors

aim too low, and who wanted, with

above

until

who had

all

seen too

our hearts, to see

the bullshit.

"Memorandum. To: Governor Howard Dean," we began. After some debate we left the "From" line blank (there were enough people in the campaign

memo

who would

from me and

be scared of

have been too much). In the

The campaign

A

a

memo

a notorious political

"Re"

line

has gotten to a place

we

like this

bad boy

coming from me;

like Pat

typed: "Definitional

no one ever thought

it

a

Caddell would

Moment."

could get

confluence of your passion, events of the country, the

mood

to.

of

the voters, and the conjunction of history have produced yet another

124

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

moment

that

with precedence in American history

is

—

the transforma-

tion of American politics.

who transformed America into a Democratic Republic, then to Lincoln who saved it, and to the populist/progressive movement of Teddy Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson began with Andrew Jackson

It

New

and then to Franklin Roosevelt and the This

is

another one of those moments

—

Deal.

where the future

the place

happens.

You have

felt this

—you know

here beyond conventional politics. tell

something bigger

that

the people that the future of our country rests in their hands

not in yours.

The room goes

silent

and you

hunger

feel the

the frustration within yourself to explain something that to find the

This

is

words

to express

.

.

you must recognize

the thing

started out that

is

—

a

we were under were expected

we

spelled out

We

being held hostage by special

needed to take the

rest

the road back

could heal

are going to

We

.

.

explained interests.

deals

which

— and

how this had led to And then we showed

politics;

from

define himself

this cynical place,

as

leaders

grease the

our nation the path he politics

back to

draw on America's history and her

kind of poli-

a

traditions.

are going to cloak ourselves in the mantle of our nation's

—

for this

rest

moments, Republican and De-

not a Democratic Party

is

.

.

Campaign

—

this

is

an

.

of this campaign will be the process of asking the Ameri-

can people to participate once again in their

with you and other Americans across

this

common

nation

—

to

be-

the one candidate

a nation.

American campaign

The

.

where the country had gone wrong, how

greatest leaders at our nation's greatest

mocrat

others

.

of the campaign: leave transactional

hind for transformational

tics that

.

do nothing more than "negotiate

wheels of Washington."

who knows

.

the tyranny of transactional politics, in

to

all

may have

it

nerve of unvanquished hunger, and almost

need to transform our country

there,

—

way but you have touched something more powerful

You have touched

From

— and

them and

you have yet

the thing above

not about you

than any other force in our nation's history

limitless

in

.

you must understand. This campaign

We

happening

is

what happens every time you

It is

future

—

to

meet

come together

in

JUMPING FROM

common

cause

—

in

A

FIFTEEN-STORY BUILDING

town meetings and town

American Century from

the

bottom up up

will the greatness of America rise

—from

halls

—

125

new

to forge a

the people of this nation

to rebuild

and reclaim

that has

all

made us what we are The time is now to lead this nation, not run a tactical campaign. And to make sure as Lincoln promised "that government of the peo.

.

.

—

by the people and for the people

ple,

You have

power

the

have the power to make

For Pat and me,

it

make

to

much

its

the

was more than

of our

not perish from the earth."

American people

realize that they

so.

it

candidate to finally rise above the

devoted too

shall

lives to,

a

memo. above

shit,

and that

It

this

was

one

a plea for this

system that we'd both

we both knew was

rotten to

core.

There must have been something in the

my

from L.A. when genius

who

"Hey,

I

this

memo

It

I

had just gotten back

was Joe Costello, the young

political

had developed Jerry Brown's groundbreaking 800 campaign.

think

"Get

phone rang.

air.

Dean

is

close to getting it," he began. "I've

been writing

..."

in line,"

I

said.

And

then

I

invited

work on its message. second week of June, I gave

him up

to Burlington to help

the campaign

In the

For days he didn't say I

a

the governor our

team memo.

word.

should not have been too surprised.

Howard Dean

is

who would

taken to emotional rallying cries, not the kind of person

spond to

a fiery call-to-arms.

the fact that he

is

His amazing success

a serious, deliberate

man,

as a

a physician

not someone

governor was due to

who

doesn't

decision until he has a full diagnosis. Finally, several days later, he to

me,

his face knit

said, "that in

on the planet."

We

thinking

imagining

And

through, the

it

.

.

way he

trans-

stood across from each other for a

when he was

But we weren't done. Over the coming weeks,

off.

a

came up

some ways, I'm the most

minute, and then he smiled that grin he got

walked

make

with deep contemplation.

"You do understand," he actional person

re-

ribbing me, and I

could see

him

processed things, digesting the ideas, and

.

—

The last week of June when we would have no

then, suddenly: finals week.

pivotal point in the

campaign so

to finally step off that building

far,

and see

if

anyone was

the most

choice but

there. If

we had

a

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

126

good week, the nontraditional base

that

Meetups and blogs would show up

in the real

the

at

through web

built

world and catch

sites

and

us. If not,

Dean campaign would be a stain on the sidewalk. That was also the week we were announcing Howard Dean's candidacy

an event in Burlington

after the

had so

(this is a formality, traditionally

done months

campaigning actually begins), and hoping that the press would

nally tune in to

what was happening

—

fi-

groundswell that they

this national

far ignored.

As the

we'd

if that

weren't enough, to kick

week by going on Meet

off,

it all

the Press,

the governor was beginning

where he'd be interviewed by Tim

Russert, the thoughtful, impeccably prepared, and exceedingly influential host. dit

Among

the political class, there

than Russert. Pols talk

among

is

no more respected

(or feared)

pun-

themselves about winning "the Russert

Primary," the early round of Russert interviews that can build major league

momentum

him to be a minor leaguer on a thirty-day contract. The conventional wisdom around Russert was that the first interview or two with him was batting practice, when he'd give your guy the

for a candidate or can reveal

soft stuff so

he could show his strengths. Dean's

with Russert had certainly gone

this

way

—

first

two interviews

friendly, substantive chats about

health care and Iraq and the Internet and the future of the Democratic Party. lier

Some people

with launching

But now,

it

credited Dean's his

was

a

first

interview with Russert a year ear-

campaign. year later and Dean's presidential candidacy was no

longer theoretical, no longer just a bunch of

knew, Russert would bring the and the knucklers and the

so, a

He

This time around,

we

would break out the wicked curves

We knew we

spitballs.

that third interview or Russert

And

heat.

talk.

had to prepare Dean for

would bury him.

few days before the Russert interview, Bob Rogan and

I

flew to Minnesota, where the governor was campaigning, to begin prepping

him

for

what would be the most important

paign to that point. But

was headed back

to

when we

landed,

we found

home

way Dean handled

to be

his son

with

knew

of his cam-

out that the governor

Vermont. His teenage son had been arrested for break-

ing into a country club and stealing some beer. for the

TV moment

this.

He

I

have the deepest respect

stopped campaigning entirely and flew

his family, to deal

with the problem, and make sure that

that this wasn't going to affect the campaign, that

an issue between

a

kid and his dad.

it

was just

JUMPING FROM

FIFTEEN-STORY BUILDING

A

127

For the next forty-eight hours, the cone of silence descended on the campaign. We patiently waited for Howard to sort out his private life. But now we had a dilemma. Russert was now T-minus one day and counting. Which meant there would be no time to prepare. The choice we had now was that classic campaign moment of picking your poison. We could (1) let

Dean go on Meet

an unprepared

pummeled

or

more attention

to

up

We

debated

as a

I

—

hammer

a

or a bat).

It

was

come out looking

could either

In the end

we

—

the gover-

a little.

might be considering which you would rather with

minor story

and weighed our two bad choices

it

than not, get

but in the process, drawing even

this personal issue,

what would otherwise fade

nor's kid screwing

likely

using the perfectly good excuse that the governor

(2) cancel,

had to take care of

more

the Press and,

fifty-fifty.

hit yourself in the

Whichever path looking for

brilliant, or

similar exercise

(a

a job.

decided to go.

Right away, you could

see that Russert

was in mid-season form. The

subtext for the interview seemed to be the question of whether

Dean was

"presidential material."

news interview and more

like a

were in the U.S. military and

him

When Dean

less like a

who

thinks his

on duty

me

how many

how many were

active

duty personnel

stationed at that

moment

in

gave accurate but approximate numbers, Russert chided

mander It

know

to have to

in the

United

"No, no. Not

right

—

—how many troops

it's silly,"

It

said.

if you

was an unmitigated

wreck. The Washington Post called

New

it

"a debacle." But

want

to

be com-

York newspaper

called

Well,

I

We're road

it

kill

now. At

few minutes

least

I

it

"perhaps the worst performance

would get

some

sleep.

later,

Nicco stuck

head-

The New

think they were just being nice.

of television."

thought just minutes into the interview,

land and finally get

disaster, a

"embarrassing."

I

a presidential candidate in the history

fice.

are actively

in chief."

Another

A

Dean

Russert came back. "Not

only got worse from there.

train

now

States military

at all,"

York Times called

by

a professor

for being unprepared.

"For

on

Howard

At times the show played

pop quiz by

student has been slacking. Russert asked

Iraq.

head

suggested,

I

to

his

this

go home to

is

going to be

it.

my farm in Mary-

head in the doorway of

my

of-

"Are you seeing this?" While every pundit and cable commentator

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

128

was on the

air

reading our obituary, something very different was happen-

ing on the Net.

Dean

ours, but

for

"slamming Russert

as

who acknowledged

that the

governor had looked bad, they said

campaign will get over

months before the

Our

over

first

Relax.

it.

criti-

Even among those Dean supporters

big deal. People could see through Russert 's questions. the

all

being inside the Beltway" and

cizing Russert for being an attack dog.

said,

blogs

were humming with even more support for the governor,

him

praising

Not just

the blog was going crazy.

First,

the country

It's

just

it

wasn't a

And anyway,

they

one interview,

six

vote.

supporters were not running for cover.

They were running

to help.

But even more stunning was what was happening with the online do-

On

nations.

normal Sundays, even

we'd be lucky

to raise $3,000.

if

we

got good press that weekend,

That Sunday, $90,000 poured into the

campaign. It

was one of the most humbling and

paign for me. Here

I

ing: that television

illustrative

had allowed myself to

was so all-powerful

fall

moments of the cam-

into the old political think-

that a perfectly

could be ruined by one perfectly bad moment. Yes,

good candidate

Tim

Russert was

a

media bellwether and the king of the Beltway.

But our supporters didn't work the Beltway.

they

knew

They

for the media.

better than to think that a television

watched by

They

didn't live inside

lived in Austin, Texas, and Seattle, Washington, and

show on Sunday morning,

a fraction of the people in the country, could end this thing.

we were the ones, at campaign headquarters, And when we needed them, when we were falling,

For that one moment,

who needed

reassuring.

the people stepped

up and caught

us.

YOU HAVE THE POWER "Today

I

announce

that

I

am

running for president of the United

States

of

America." His trademark sleeves rolled up to his elbows, Howard Dean looked

down

on Church I

at

5,000 people,

Street in

speak for a

a sea

of swaying, blue Dean for America

sunny Burlington.

new American

"I speak not only for

century and

both young people and the young

a

at heart.

new

We

my

signs,

candidacy.

generation of Americans seek the great restoration of

JUMPING FROM

It

is

129

restoration of our nation's traditional purpose in

American values and the the world. This

FIFTEEN-STORY BUILDING

A

campaign to unite and empower people everywhere."

a

was Monday, June 23, 2003, the day

Meet

after

the Press

and the

day Dean formally announced his candidacy. Gray Brooks, the clean-cut

who had

blond college freshman

driven

all

way

the

from Alabama, introduced him with

quarters

to vote for Gray, too.

And

ergy,

and delivered the

message of the campaign:

real

Howard spoke with

You have

the

power

to rid

You have

the

power

to

You have

the

power

to give

You have

the

power

to restore our nation to fiscal sanity

Washington of the

make

made you

speech that

a

want

then

campaign head-

to

politics

clarity

and en-

of money!

right as important as might!

Americans

a

reason to vote again!

and bring jobs

back to our people!

You have

the

power

to fulfill

Harry Truman's dream and bring health

insurance to every American!

You have

the

power

to give us a foreign policy consistent

with Ameri-

can values again!

You have

the

power

to take

back the Democratic Party!

You have

the

power

to take

our country back!

And It

WE have the power to take the White House back in 2004!

was the

the Internet,

largest it

campaign announcement

30,000 people linked up across the country,

web

site

in U.S. history. Because of

wasn't just those 5,000 people in Burlington.

We

about 400 events,

at

had

as

the

proudly proclaimed, "ranging from half-a-dozen people watch-

ing the speech and eating cake

Abiquiu,

New

Mexico,

to

at

the

Bodes General Store

more than 1,200 people packed

in rural

in the

San

Francisco Hyatt Regency."

But once

most reporters didn't get

again,

TV networks only noted the that after cially

and

crowd

it,

and the newspapers and

in Burlington as they blandly reported

months of campaigning, another long shot candidate had

joined the race

left for

dead by

—

blah, blah, blah.

Tim

But we were used

To them, Dean had been run over

Russert.

to being underestimated,

been reenergized by the amazing response of

namic online

base.

And

he announced. As soon

offi-

the as

and the campaign had

this shifting,

money was pouring

in

—

moving, dy-

$200,000 on the day

he finished his speech, the governor headed off

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

130

on the road

week of campaigning. Before he

for a

and told him that

we met with him

left,

looked good, that we'd easily hit our second quarter

it

goal of $4.5 million. Inside the campaign,

we were

in the people out there, to involve

always looking for ways to show our faith

them

in

what we were doing,

to take our

cues from them, to model the campaign on their passionate involvement. At

one of these meetings with Stephanie Schriock, our young finance

we

tossed out the idea of posting our fund-raising

—not

director,

just the results, like

other campaigns, but the goal. Invite the people in and open up the books.

Give them the knowledge and information to raise

— and they'd

We

were

take the responsibility for doing

No

in uncharted territory here.

nounced the amount of money understand:

—how much money we wanted

hopes to

it

raise.

it.

campaign has ever an-

The

reasons are easy to

you don't want the other campaigns

First,

you're doing. This

is

like a football

team sharing

to

know what

playbook with the

its

other team's defense.

But the biggest reason you

tell

is

that all-important question

$4.2 million

—

big as that

as

number

is

—you've

world that you're losing momentum. And in

mentum meet

of momentum. If

the world that you're going to raise $4.5 million and

is

the other currency.

his fund-raising goals

presidential candidate

One

announced

a presidential

raise

to the

campaign,

mo-

story about a candidate's failure to

would have

had ever made

just

you only

No

the sharks circling.

mainstream

his fund-raising goals transparent for

the world to see.

Which was

all

the

more reason we needed

After the governor a

symbol

close

—something

We

"A

like

it.

to our goal.

thermometer and show

But we didn't want

how

to use a ther-

every hospital renovation fund and every church building

needed something

else,

something easy to recognize

baseball bat," said Larry Biddle,

who was

in Stephanie Schriock's finance department.

Okay.

do

go out on the road, we talked about finding

that could rise like a

we were coming

mometer, fund.

left to

to

A baseball

bat

it

.

.

.

in charge of direct mailing

We

all

stared at each other.

was.

That's how, in the final days of fund-raising that June, a baseball bat

went up

in the corner of the

Dean

fund-raising goal of $4.5 million.

for

America web

And we

just laid

site it

announcing our

out

—

presidential

JUMPING FROM

FIFTEEN-STORY BUILDING

A

campaigns in America in the early twenty-first century were raise

money

Bush,

buy

to

TV

would be by

it

raising

more than $100

million, mostly through

we were going to take the Washington, we needed to have the money to do it.

message to

and wealthy donors. If

The next week was

the

most amazing thing

network of grassroots organizations took campaign

campaign began in.

We

own

at their

up

filling

levels.

went up,

upon themselves

as this

camhuge

to replicate

All of the blogs that had followed the

own

their

it

people's

I've ever seen in a

paign. All over the Internet, smaller, individual bats

the

a race to

we had any hope of defeating George W. enough money to combat his huge financial

ads. If

advantage. He'd already raised his corporate

131

bats,

and the money began flowing

had hung white boards and butcher paper up

over the campaign

all

headquarters to measure everything from Meetups to money, and the fund-raising chart

—which

and the

On each.

And

my

hangs in

still

down by

credible story, broken

office at

home

—

tells

an in-

the day and the hour and the half-hour

dollar.

Tuesday, $300,000 came

And this

then,

in.

Wednesday and Thursday: $300,000

on Friday, June 27: $500,000.

A

wasn't a bunch of wealthy Americans

half-million in one day.

fancy dinner forking

at a

over a bunch of $2,000 checks between the chicken l'orange and the

flambe.

The average Dean donation was

were regular Americans grocery

money

to say that they

In the early

wanted

that

—dipping

one week

Commission

into the

their country back.

morning hours of Sunday, June 29,

the Federal Election

hundred bucks. These

for about a

— 21,000 of them

deadline,

I

forty-five hours before

got on the blog and wrote:

As of last Sunday morning, June 22, the Dean for America campaign had raised $3.2 million in

this quarter. Since that

ning with the Sunday Meet the Press interview

eight days.

Of the

net contributions

We

is

a surge in contributions

.

efforts

come from

Inter-

—

know what you had accomplished that your when added up to the hard work of thousands of others, has made a huge difference for our

wanted you

campaign.

crossed the $6

.

to

hard work, and individual effort,

and

now

of $2.8 million in just

$2.8 million over $2 million has .

—begin-

—we have experienced

an unprecedented surge in contributions and have million mark. This

morning

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

132

You proved

team of

that a rag tag

self-organized grassroots can do

compete

a

campaign and volunteers and

what no one thought we could do

financially.

Now

with

less

than 45 hours to go

nobody would have thought

—we

are able to set a goal that

— —

week ago the goal of Monday June 30th you have al-

possible even a

reaching $6.5 million by midnight

ready proven the power of our numbers, and what can be achieved

when each of us

takes an individual action that

is

matched by the action

of thousands of others.

At two o'clock

in the

morning on Sunday, we put up

the revised goal of $6.5 million. Five minutes after the bat

ernor

Dean

called

Nicco from California, where

it

a

new

bat with

went up, Gov-

was almost

1 1

p.m.

He

was, understandably, freaked out.

"We've been hacked!" he

told Stephanie Schriock.

"What do you mean we've been hacked?" "Someone has gotten on our web site and there's a baseball bat that says we have a goal of raising $6.5 million!" "But we do have a goal of raising $6.5 million," Stephanie told him. The governor's end of the phone was quiet for a minute. "What the hell is going on over there?" When Governor Dean left, we had $3.2 million and a goal of $4.5. And, like all of the other campaigns, we kept our goal to ourselves. In the time since he'd left, we had not only upped the goal by $2 million, we had posted the frickin' number on the Internet. "Campaigns don't do this," Howard said. Stephanie, Nicco, and

explained the thinking of everyone from Fi-

I

nance to Field, from the Political desk to the to take this thing all the if the

and

way

people could improve

all

web room

—

that

we needed

to open-source, put the code out there

it,

the

way they had with

and

see

posters and software

the less significant aspects of this campaign. So

why

not also turn

over some control of what was arguably the most important thing: Money.

"You know what?" Howard this!" It

the

said.

"You're absolutely

And

then, as an afterthought, he said, "I

was

a

last

measure of how

measure of

how

earlier

this

far the naturally cautious

few months. After we hung up, Nicco and far the self-described

bracing the Internet. This guy

months

hope

who

was now on the road

I

right. Let's

do

works."

Dean had come

also realized

it

in

was

a

"technophobe" had come in em-

know a blog from a checking his web site on his didn't

log a few lap top at

JUMPING FROM

11:00 p.m., and calling in to weren't sure

what

a

if,

when

us that

we'd been

the campaign started, he

hit

by

133

a hacker.

would even have

We

known

hacker was.

On Monday, many

tell

FIFTEEN-STORY BUILDING

A

the

money was

cascading

And we were drowning. So

in.

people were clicking on Blog for America that

was no hope of getting of watching because so like task

We

back up that day.

were

it

crashed and there

in the

weird position

down precisely much the Sisyphus-

thing we'd built for people to use break

this

many

it

people were using

it.

This was pretty

of Nicco and the other programmers; to build tools that the

rest

of us did our best to overwhelm and break. That Monday, the server that

we couldn't lose. But so many people were contributing that it was coughing and hiccupping and we have no idea how many donations we lost because people got tired of processed the online donations was the one tool

waiting for that

little

computer hourglass

to tell

them

that their donation

had gone through. All day and night Nicco was patching the thing with scotch tape and bubble

Come

on, baby.

At 10:00 forts

Come

We

gum.

You can do

on.

p.m. Eastern

were

Time,

I

today were amazing and in

practically

it.

hugging the

server.

Please don't die.

got on the Blog and wrote: "Your ef-

my

view

historic.

There

is

simply no

precedent for this kind of response over the Internet."

But we had

to keep fund-raising until

and so we worked in the web room watching the numbers stood there staring It

at

roll,

the bat

said $7.2 million.

all

midnight on the West Coast

night and into the next morning,

until finally, at 3:00 a.m.,

on Nicco's computer

"Holy

shit,"

I

We

said.

Zephyr and

I

just

screen.

had raised $828,000 in

one day.

No. They had

raised

$828,000 in one day.

"Uh, excuse me." There was one of those Deanie babies

who

a kid in the

doorway of the web room,

never seemed to need sleep. "I think

you're gonna want to see this."

we followed him into the mailroom. During this we were focused on what was happening on the Inand boxes of mail had been coming in from people who

Dead on our entire

feet,

week, while

ternet, bags

wanted

—what campaign together with —

to donate the old fashioned

"snail mail." Stephanie Schriock

mail fund-raising the result was a

mountain of

way

techies derisively call

and Larry Biddle had put

a great direct

as usual, little fanfare

snail

— and

mail on the floor of the mailroom.

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

134

While we had focused on this new form of fund-raising, the older one had caught us off guard. The LLBSOS never failed to find a way to exceed our goals

— Schriock had snowed me would be $400,000 — almost none of again.

In the end, there

it

$2,000 checks,

but fifty bucks here, twenty there, whatever real Americans could afford. In all,

a

we had 59,000

supporters

at that point,

contributing an average of $112,

groundswell of average Americans that even the media couldn't ignore

anymore. They swarmed our headquarters

as the

Some

—

reporters accused us of sandbagging

looked amazing

when we put into this.

It

The only problem with

a baseball bat

up on

a

computer screen

was the most amazing thing

that theory

was

that

it

would

I'd ever seen in politics.

translate

We

had

the quarter with the ambitious goal of getting to $4.5 million to try

to catch the frontrunners,

Edwards (who

We

raised $5.8 million). Instead,

—

that if

credible people that

ing, the

Kerry (who raised $5.1 million

had taken the chance

the chance

was

it.

it

was amazing. Despite Schriock's nickname, none of us had any clue

this: It

begun

when we topped

fund-raising story got out.

posting a low goal so that

— and we'd

we jumped

that quarter)

and

we had blown past them. Howard Dean into taking

talked

off that fifteen-story building, these in-

would gather and catch

us.

What none of us had imagined

when we finally nudged the campaign damn thing would start to fly.

off the edge of the build-

THE OPEN SOURCE CAMPAIGN Hockey

Sticks, Troll Bats,

was staring that's

what

be

a slow,

cent a year.

hockey

stick. It

took

when

a business

became

But

With

minute

this

at

capital,

it

flat.

And

its

pany

kind of tipping point, revenues take

keep going up, not

company doubling

I

at

had been

in size in a matter

we

Intel.

line

new company might

of profitability rising

company

catches, the

gradual any more. a sharp at a

The com-

turn up, and they

sixty-degree angle, the

of months, sometimes for

a

period of

Step back from this growth chart and

it

looks

stick.

a small investor in a

for a handful of others

and

isn't

4 or 5 percent a year, but

Microsoft or

hockey

a

then, suddenly, the

flows in and the rise

more immediate and

far

turned out, was their collapse). So

money

a

driven by Moore's

and the speculative nature of tech markets

investment

—

of 5 or 10 per-

exponential growth in capacity and speed, the vast

slowly or even staying

like

but

the same rate that the size of chips

slog along, break even for a couple of years,

years, like

at a rate

boom was

and products, the ascension of new companies was

hits a

it,

Moore's revolutionary observation that computer power

amounts of investment

drastic (so too,

to recognize

growth was assumed

its

—maybe

in the 1990s, the technology

would double every eighteen months, shrank.

a

profitable,

steady climb up a gradual hill

Law, Gordon

me

was.

it

In the past, to

at a

and the Sleepless Summer Tour

(my love

for

used to daydream about the

number of tech

startups and

underdogs doesn't end with

moment we went hockey

worked politics)

stick;

we'd

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

136

watch other companies enviously

But the hockey

up.

exhilarating final days of June 2003, as

America fund-raising, hockey

We

number of hits

blogs and sites and

all

in as

—once

was

I

seeing.

campaign.

much money

as

but then, in the

we had

way

—

the

amount of money we were number of mainstream reporters

to Burlington.

we were

would've been nice to take time to celebrate, but honestly,

too tired.

when we

We'd been

sat in

George W. Bush: two million supporters

dollars. Since that

meeting, I'd been preaching that the In-

ternet

was the only tool capable of sparking the

there.

I

had driven the campaign

a presidential election

needed to sprint the as

long

as

is

a

first five

there

staff,

growth required

that

with the idea that

off,

we were

to get

we

so far behind

miles as if it were a hundred-yard dash. I'd de-

was

chance the governor was campaigning some-

a

wanted someone

I

campaign headquarters

until he

was down

cried "Midnight Rule,"

which

so our

viral

both online and

marathon but

where, even on the West Cast,

And

since January,

white board with those impossible numbers that

to reach to challenge

and 200 million

creed that

moment

racing tirelessly toward this

campaign headquarters and worked backward from the gen-

eral election, staring at that

we needed

last

in the previ-

the media saw the

concept they could grasp

their

what

realize

for

quantum growth wasn't just in our bank account. We number of people organizing on Meetup.com and to our web site, the number of links to Howard Dean

the

It

minute to

and

Dean

this

saw

raising, a

in those exhausting

stared at a graph of

I

solid progress since January,

we brought

similar leaps in the

making

a

a presidential

had been making

And

me

took

it

On

stick.

eight days of June,

ous eighty.

had only seen on white boards

I

rooms of tech companies, and

in the conference

A

fortunes took that sudden turn

as their

was something

stick

I

in every

department

—

for the evening

the

much

at

de-

religiously followed myself.

overworked campaign

staff,

most of them young and inex-

perienced, had put in impossible hours and driven themselves to exhaustion to

make

it

to the

marathon would be

end of June, when the

finished.

I

had twenty-two more miles to

The your is

five miles tell

them

of the

we

that

sprint.

best thing about viral Internet

size in a

that

first

didn't have the heart to

growth

is

that

you can double

matter of days. The worst thing about viral Internet growth

you can double your

among the frontrunners —

size in a

-just

matter of days. Suddenly

we were

—

behind Kerry, Edwards, and Gephardt

yet

THE OPEN SOURCE CAMPAIGN

we

still

had the

we

as fast as

we

could, but

how

behind

far

including

how successful we were at reaching our Howard Dean, understood how daunting our

meetings

at

same

"We

matter

talk

got to the top of a mountain no one

climb

— and

this quarter. It's steeper

get to the top of

—

it

and higher than the

much

framework

—

year

I

for a

had seen that

campaign

first

that could

last

work was only beginning. Suddenly we

at staff

with the

start

us

we have to and when we

one

still."

—

Then he would

harder to keep growing.

grow from zero

we

—everyone, —

was

the one

—building

the

$200 million

in a

phase of the campaign

the toughest stretch. But once

as

goals

were.

would have given

at

the next one will be steeper

thank everyone and urge us to work that All along,

Look

guess what?

we

task

would

the end of each quarter the governor

any chance of getting to

began hiring

could never catch up. If anything, our June

fund-raising triumph only emphasized just

No

We

inexperienced staff of a dark horse.

tiny,

137

built

to

in

it,

some ways, the

faced problems no one had ever

encountered before.

By summer, more the Internet.

We

John Kerry whacking could

than half our contributions were coming in over

found ourselves in an era where our biggest worry wasn't

come from

us in a

campaign

spot.

fourteen-year-old kid in

a

we worried about Thailand. Some guy in his

The

attack

garage in Oakland could take out a presidential campaign with nothing

more than Over

his

$500

the years, hackers had taken

Amazon

to

Yahoo and everyone

houses, retailers

with

sites

laptop.

—with Denial of

self-replicating strings

down

all

in between,

the Internet giants

media

Service (DoS) attacks,

jamming

sites

was denied

The Dean tack.

Our

when

the

site

for

web

visit

those

service.

America campaign was uniquely susceptible

funding always came

momentum would

down

week of the

quarter,

to a

DoS

at-

to the last seven days of each quarter,

build and supporters

would inundate

with donations. After June, we quickly realized that

us in the last

their

of messages, or using their computers to

flood other networks with messages, so that someone trying to

web

—from

brokerage

outlets,

we were

dead.

We

if someone

the

web

whacked

could lose hundreds of

thousands of dollars, maybe millions over the course of the campaign.

We

took several steps to be ready, including the drastic measure of

having Nicco build

a

redundant system,

server, in case the first

system crashed.

a

complete replica of our Internet

And

in fact,

we

did suffer three

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

138

DoS

campaign

attacks during the

same reason

give lunatics

feared, the big one, a full last

were never made public

(these

make death any more bad ideas). The

politicians don't

nuke coming

threats public; last

attack

you don't want

to

was exactly what we

the worst possible time,

at

for the

on the

frenzied day of a fund-raising quarter.

But by

By

that time

then,

all

we were

ready.

the campaigns were embracing online fund-raising (though

with nothing approaching our

Texas. So

when

DoS

the

played a message saying

Kerry's

site

Our

hit, all

was down

we were

using, hosted by a

we

The

requiring

Federal Election detailed

reports

rest

of the day.

Nicco immediately switched us

hardly missed a beat. 1

Another problem came from the sheer number and tions.

in

to process donations.

Both of them were down the

for three minutes.

over to our backup server and

company

three campaigns died. Lieberman's site dis-

was temporarily unable

it

didn't say anything.

site

and both Kerry and Lieberman were

success)

using the same server infrastructure

Commission had fifteen

days

up

set

its

of our dona-

reporting rules

—

ended

quarter

the

after

size

in

response to the old political paradigm in which a candidate got seven

thousand contributions of two thousand dollars each, spread out over

three-month period. These

were designed

rules

to keep

a

campaigns from

hiding donors, from sneaking a Mafia boss in with the regular supporters.

But no one had ever envisioned 99,000 less is

than

a

hundred

one of the ways

coming

dollars,

politics

ness, to let the average

is

contributions,

most of them for

in the last six days of the quarter. This

going to have to change the way

American back

it

does busi-

into the game.

At Dean for America, we nearly killed our poor compliance people. In an already short-staffed campaign,

we had

to put

twenty people on

FEC

When

they

compliance alone, just to record every single $25 donation.

were

finished, after fifteen days,

report was fifteen feet

maybe an hour before

deadline, the stacked

tall.

Another welcome problem occurred with Meetup.com. Meetup was an

amazing cially a

tool,

but

campaign

its

founders hadn't designed

like ours,

100,000 members,

its

it

with

and so over the summer,

limitations

became

clear.

politics in as

mind, espe-

we climbed toward a month

Meeting once

The company that hosted our web site argued that the crash was caused by the tremendous amount of traffic to Dean for America. But if that were the case, it would follow that our redundant system would've crashed after we switched over, but it didn't go down. 1

THE OPEN SOURCE CAMPAIGN

was fine for knitting

enthusiasts, but

it

was no way

campaign. Sometimes people had conflicts on the

Meetup venues

hundred people turned out

a presidential

Wednesday of

first

And

month, or they wanted to leaflet on a different day. got bigger, most of the

run

to

as

the

be nightclubs. Yet many of our supporters

to

want our strongest supporters getting So we developed GetLocal it.

GetLocal was

let

Dean meeting, or would help get the word out to them to hood, or have

a

tools,

Dean

a zip

download onto

organizer find others in the area and

help clean up a park, or leaflet a neighbor-

house party. For example,

Fair,

their

code and find the closest

Dean

a single

activist in

Angeles used GetLocal to find four people to staff a table

Junction Street

really

not to replace Meetup, but to aug-

them enter a

we

liquored up, anyway?)

all

software that people could

computers, which would

the

numbers

that could handle three or four

were nineteen or twenty and couldn't get into bars. (And did

ment

139

where they signed up

five

at the

Los

Sunset

hundred thirty-eight more

By the end, there were untold thousands of GetLocal events for Howard Dean around the country, some social, others requiring labor-intensive organizing and community service. And the GetLocal Dean

supporters.

tools could

And

be used for

in the best

all

Open

of them. Source tradition,

we

put software out there for

people not only to use, but also to improve, which they invariably did.

Bloggers like Rick Klau were instrumental in designing and improving

our software. Sometimes, programs would simply show up over the transom: "Here, try this." Volunteers also stepped in to help our Internet people design the

software for DeanLink, which was our version of the

which

links people based

on

their

mutual

interests.

who

DeanLink

also kept

signed the most people up to the campaign and the results

showed the breadth of people drawn old retired union organizer

number of people, but from

site Friendster,

DeanLink gave Dean

supporters the chance to meet others like themselves. track of

web

Sitka, Alaska,

hundred sixty-nine

from

to the campaign.

Illinois

A

forty-seven-year-

brought in the second-highest

computer buff

the highest was a fourteen-year-old

named Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, who new Dean supporters. Jonathan, whose

signed up four parents weren't

even Dean supporters, visited campaign headquarters during his Christmas break.

He

(making

flew from Sitka to Juneau to Seattle to

at least

one leg of his journey on

ney the Ideanarod.

New

a cargo plane).

York

He

to Burlington

called his jour-

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

140

One

phone rang

day, the

campaign headquarters and the

at

the other end of the phone was lucky

enough

to get

my

man on

wife, Kathy. His

He was eighty-nine years old and lived in Lake ElsiHe wanted help printing out some Dean flyers to take local library. He told Kathy that he'd been involved in poli-

name was Lou

Stark.

nore, California.

down

to his

In a poignant series of phone conversations, he told

tics earlier in his life.

her that in recent years he'd sort of given up on

hind by the world. That he thought day, he read the obituaries, to see

own name would

waited for the day his heard

Howard Dean on

and brought

God had

whom

he

that he felt left be-

life,

forgotten him. So every

knew

had died, and

that

be in there. Then, one day, he

the radio and something clicked.

a five-hundred-dollar personal

computer

He went

out

so that he could

go

Dean web site and start reading the blog. Then he signed up for Meetup.com and soon he was the leader of his Meetup in Lake Elsinore. He said the campaign had given him a reason to live again, a reason to fight. Bob Rogan walked into my office after hearing about Lou from to the

Kathy and just looked happens in

that

making

me

and

campaign

this

wasn't the only one all

at

—

there

—

said, "Joe, if this

the

is

the only

good thing

whole thing will be worth

it."

But

it

were thousands of Lou Starks and they were

a difference.

Every day we heard

stories like this, like the elderly

Wisconsin

woman

who

died and, in lieu of flowers, instructed her family to have people do-

nate

money

to a

Democratic organization and her family chose the Dean

campaign (according

to them, the

woman

thought George

W. Bush was

"a

lying whistle-ass").

Every day we met people or talked

up on the democratic

process, but

light again, like people

took to calling Conversation

—

this

a

to people

who

were beginning

who had been

emerge into the sun-

hiding out after a nuclear

incredible ongoing dialogue

blast.

I

The Great American

dynamic online discussion about the direction of our

country. If our leaders weren't going to debate the

and other things,

to

had long ago given

it

didn't

And some amazing help, or just to see

mean

that

war and

Americans had

people began showing up

what was happening

—

at

the Patriot Act

to be silent.

our doorstep to offer

experts on politics, government,

and technology. Some of them were heroes of mine, people whose books and articles

ing

it,

had been the building blocks for the campaign, without them knowlike

William Greider, longtime Rolling Stone writer and author of

such wonderful books

as

The Soul of Capitalism, and Richard Goodwin,

knew

Even

in 1957,

apart

my mom's

1

set.

this

machine would be the death of us. Pulling

peggy scheuler

I (with my kids Ted, Jim, and Christine, were married in 1997, in true pol style, with political buttons announcing the occasion. (Notice which one of us is the running mate.) neshan h. naltchayan/paul cullen (button)

The wonderful Kathy Lash and left

to right)

Dean campaign we were so broke I went into a dunk money on my birthday. We raised $600 from staff for

Early in the to raise

Governor Dean, kathy

II

tank

—

lash

|M

.1

My

sons Ted

(left)

I

me aboard the Summer Tour, August 2003.

and Jim with Governor Dean and

Grassroots Express during the Sleepless

t^oo.

The for

first

stop of the Sleepless

America movement

—was

JOHN PETTITT/CLOUDVIEW.COM

Summer Tour

Falls

—the highlight of the Dean

Church, Virginia. Four thousand people!

tlTi if

r

l/l 'S

''*..

if#,ioi

',

* rt

" :

We

gathered around the laptop buffet table at Bryant Park,

as the million-dollar deadline

From

New York,

Me, Mike Zephyr Teachout, Jim Brayton, and approached.

McGeary, Mat Gross (seated), Nicco Mele, August 2003. garrett

left

to right:

graff

*

$1,003,620.0 *

MILLION

"A INST

BUSH

1* The

giant screen in Bryant Park

the bat,

more than

V

showed the web page and us breaking

$1 million raised during the Sleepless

AugUSt 2003. DEAN FOR AMERICA

vfc*

Summer Tour,

'%$;