Dean faces task of reinventing party

Can Dean do it?

That's the question Democrats are pondering following Howard Dean's weekend installation as chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Can Dean — whose primeval scream, fairly or not, became for many the trademark of his presidential campaign — shed his angry leftist image and guide his demoralized party to revitalized and winning national strength against the Republicans? Clearly, many Democrats believe he can. Other Democrats are hopeful but wary.

Republicans, buoyed by their election victory and President Bush's improved stature in the polls, are chortling that in political terms Dean's selection is all that they could hope for. They reason that he reaffirms the image of a party that is negative about Republican policies and principles that found public support in the recent elections, a party that is leftist by conviction and thus cannot capture the centrist vote necessary to govern.

But Republicans should be careful in their cheerful assessment. Howard Dean is articulate and fast on his feet. Until he imploded, he was enormously persuasive in capturing grass-roots support. He was incredibly successful in raising millions of dollars for the Democrats, and money is critical in electioneering.

He is striving to erase his old image of negativism, declaring in his National Committee acceptance speech: Democrats "cannot win if all we are is against the current president and his administration." But the old Dean keeps rearing his head. The New York Times quotes Dean as telling party members earlier at the weekend meeting, "I think of Republicans, with all their moral values, as the Pharisees and the Sadducees," and at a meeting of the party's African-American caucus: "When you think of the New Testament they (the Republicans) get about two of the values, and we get about 27."

Anxious to restrain the immoderate Dean and foster the moderate one, Democratic Party leaders like Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid say they have made it clear to Dean that elected officials like them determine party policy and his job is to carry it out.

But the party seems to remain riven between those who relish the old slash-and-burn tactics of Howard Dean and those who think it must forsake the politics of the far-left if it is to capture the centrist votes that might permit it to govern.