Further proof that the tide is turning

Via Hoffmania, a nice article on HoDee in the Sunday WaPo. Excerpts:

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

Why would he want such a job? The short answer is that he was looking for work. And he's got the guts to try it. "I looked at the DNC chairmanship, and it ain't the presidency," he says, "but it was the best I could do, in order to contribute to making sure that this country got back on a path I think will lead to its greatness for another century, and not another 10 minutes."

And here this mainstream media outlet actually dares to debunk the "Dean is an extreme leftist" meme they've been parroting for the last two years:

Dean's motto could be the Gadsden flag's "Don't Tread on Me." He refuses to submit to the opinion of others, and he insists on leading by his own lights. He is an old-fashioned Yankee fiscal conservative with moderate social values, the strictly reared son of one of New York's first families, whose anti-Republican rhetoric comes from a genuine loathing of deficits and resentment of governmental intrusions. "They're undermining American values," he snaps. At times, he resembles the kind of Democrat that existed pre-Great Society, in the mode of Truman. Dean so identifies with Truman that he used to read from David McCullough's biography to his children, Anne and Paul, at bedtime. "He stood for common sense, common decency. He spoke the common tongue."

Then again, sometimes he doesn't resemble a Democrat at all. Sometimes he sounds like a Rockefeller Republican, who preaches individual rights "but also responsibilities." It's a Deanian irony that the only people he angers more than conservatives are liberals. In fact, Dean resists simple ideology or box politics. What to do with a pro-choice, civil-unions, fiscal-conservative, antiwar, NRA-endorsed law-and-order-pro-death-penalty Democrat who won't keep quiet? He's a maverick.

"Maverick just implies someone who doesn't toe the party line, and I don't," he says. "And I don't toe the expected line."

I really recommend reading the whole thing. It's not a flattery-filled puff piece, nor is it the kind of "Dean is insane" hatchet job we've come to expect from the MSM. What it does do is paint a portrait of the guy many of would still follow anywhere.