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Analysis: Presidential hopeful Dean makes it officialDemocrat to announce the obvious, aims to seize moment
By John Mercurio
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- You've got to hand it to Howard Dean. The man has benefited from good timing. As he launched his presidential campaign amid rock-bottom expectations, the former Vermont governor hitched his wagon to the antiwar movement and watched his fortunes rise. When the war he opposed ended in six weeks, with relatively few American casualties, Dean shrugged it off and picked a fight with a Democratic rival, U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts. Kerry obliged, handing Dean days of head-to-head combat with a front-runner and a headliner spat from a Democratic debate in South Carolina. It remains to be seen Monday whether Dean's timing will pay off again. Following a weekend focused on his son's legal troubles and questions of whether his shoot-from-the-hip style is causing him some foot-in-mouth headaches, Dean is summoning the political world to Burlington, Vermont, where most major TV networks and newspapers plan to cover his formal, hometown announcement and allow him, if only briefly, to deliver his campaign themes, unabridged. (For their troubles, reporters found a bottle of Vermont wine and a box of Lake Champlain Chocolates in their hotel rooms when they arrived Sunday, courtesy of the Dean campaign). Dean is scheduled to speak at 1 p.m. EDT. A statement released Saturday said Dean will "call for a great American restoration -- a restoration of America's values, principles, sense of community and the people's faith and participation in government." Also scheduled to speak on Dean's behalf are Vermont Sens. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat and key ally for primary voters following the Senate battle over Bush judicial nominees, and independent Jim Jeffords, a potential siren for swing voters. In a conference call with reporters Thursday, Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi said the candidate wants to yank control of the campaign's message back from critics "who have been trying paint us into one corner as either just an antiwar candidate or you name the flavor. .... This candidacy is much broader than that, and we will be outlining it" Monday. "It is time to tell the whole story of who Howard Dean is and what he believes and what he has learned from people across the country that he has visited in the past year and what his vision is for the country," Trippi added. In doing so, Dean will address, and then put to rest, questions about the "little scrap" that son Paul Dean got into last week. The Democrat's 17-year-old son was cited early Friday morning for allegedly trying to steal beer from the Burlington Country Club. Police say an officer came upon Paul Dean sitting in the driver's seat of a car near the country club around 1:30 a.m. The officer questioned the teenager, who apparently told him that a burglary was in progress, according to the campaign. He is being charged with four friends with being an accessory to burglary. During an interview Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," Dean said his son, "who's gotten [into] a little scrap over the weekend," would not attend the announcement Monday. "But he wasn't planning on that in the first place," Dean said during one of the interview's least confrontational moments. "My son is very guarded about his privacy and so forth. And so he's chosen not to come, and I said that's fine." Trippi said more than 600 events have been planned around the country for supporters to watch Dean's announcement. Most events were organized by supporters themselves, not the campaign, he said. Some 9,000 people have signed up to attend these events, he said, but as many as 20,000 could show up. Still, not everything can go as planned, even in the best campaigns. Last week, Dean's campaign touted a new ice cream sundae that Ben & Jerry's planned to sell in their Vermont stores in honor of Dean. "Maple Powered Howard" is a combination of vanilla ice cream, maple-flavored whipped cream, maple syrup and walnuts. It sounds delicious -- except that Ben Cohen, who with Jerry Greenfield founded the ice cream company in Burlington, made a point Friday of announcing that he's backing Dennis Kucinich in the 2004 Democratic primary, not his fellow Vermonter. CNN Senior Political Producer Mike Roselli contributed to this analysis from Burlington, Vermont.
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