Book provides inside look at Dean's quixotic run

DAVE GRAM, Associated Press
Published 11:51 a.m., Saturday, November 26, 2011

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — The front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination stood on a sidewalk in Burbank, Calif., playing his guitar, its case open on the ground, next to two signs: "Will Strum for the Presidency" and "Your Change for Real Change."

That was one among hundreds of sights and sounds from Howard Dean's quixotic run for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, recorded in a new memoir by a woman who was Dean's closest aide during his more than 11 years as Vermont's governor and his two-year campaign for the White House.

Kate O'Connor's "Do the Impossible: My Crash Course on Presidential Politics Inside the Howard Dean Campaign," a day-by-day diary written by someone who was at Dean's side from the moment in November 2000 — just weeks after winning his fifth two-year term as Vermont's governor — when he asked her, "What do you think about me running for president?" to the day he gave up his bid in February 2004.

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But overall, the memoir provides a wealth of insight about the state of political coverage by the U.S. media in the early 21st century, a sense of the frenetic and exhausting pace of commuting daily from Vermont to far-flung cities around the country, the fact that presidential campaigns aren't friendly to someone trying to keep a healthy diet, and, in the case of the infamous "Dean scream" in Iowa, how things often appear different on TV than they did at the scene.

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