Slate's Chris Suellentrop has spent the past several days touring Iowa with Dean, and has posted (at least) two really thoughtful reports on Slate.

They're mostly favorable, sometimes not so, but they seem fair. And best of all for the reader, they're written in an engaging style, and they're not same old political-writer BS. I felt like I got a taste of the trail in Iowa, and also a better grasp of the candidate's personality. That's a lot to ask for in two short pieces.

They are:

See Howie Run (posted last Friday)

OTTUMWA, Iowa—"Running for President?" asks an ad at the Des Moines airport. "Health care better be your priority." As far as I can tell, this ad is targeted at nine people. Unfortunately for whoever bought it, one of them is Howard Dean, and he landed Thursday in Cedar Rapids, missing the ad. But it's OK. Dean has a health-care plan, and he's about to get an individualized pitch from Iowan after Iowan about what he needs to do as president. . . .

Howard Dean's Low-Rent Allure (posted today)

HIGHWAY 34, SOUTHERN IOWA—"Did you see what happened?" Howard Dean asks. He's excited, engaging in a bit of self-swooning after a campaign stop in Chariton, Iowa. The former Vermont governor is munching on a chocolate chip cookie, his legs propped on the seat across from him. "I was actually surprised at how many people came up and said they were going to support us." At a barn in Chariton, Dean spoke to about 40 people, the kind who wear trucker hats and American-flag belt buckles unironically. One supporter gave Dean a $5 check. "That is not the educated, cultural elite" that the national media say comprises the bulk of his supporters, Dean emphasizes. . . .

I especially liked the second one. I met Dean once in the spring, and felt like he came across very authentically (unlike, say a Gephardt, who's all wind--no telling who's actually inside), but just a few quick pieces from Chris and I had a better handle. That's an achievement.

I definitely get the impression Dean is still learning, for one thing. That's a good thing, usually. It's the dufuses who don't learn--or decide they're done and stop learning--that scare me.

And while I'm at it, I've been meaning to link to Salon's highly favorable cover story on him last week:

Life of the party?
The conservative wing of the Democratic Party calls him another McGovern -- but Howard Dean might be more in touch with today's electorate than his critics.

The fun part about this piece is that it opens with McGovern responding to the DLC mantra that Doc Dean is McGovern. Here's a taste:

But the most important thing McGovern can see about the upcoming presidential contest of 2004 is that it is not taking place in 1972, and that he is not running in it. Certainly, McGovern can see some resemblance between himself and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean. They're both from sparsely populated, rural states. They both entered their respective races early, and became heavily reliant on volunteers and grass-roots mobilizing. That aside, though, "I think it's difficult to draw a close comparison," says McGovern.

"There's no transcendent issue now that he's identified with," says McGovern, who met Dean and some of the other Democratic presidential aspirants at a May conference on rural issues in Lake Placid, N.Y. "There's no Vietnam War, no Great Depression ... I don't see any single issue that has mobilized especially the young people and women like 1972 did. There was something about the Vietnam involvement that did create a divide in the Democratic Party probably surpassed only by the period of the Civil War, which had a shattering impact on the Democratic coalition. I don't think there's anything quite as divisive culturally or politically today.

"Another difference," continues McGovern somewhat wistfully, "is that he has a large sum of money in the race more than a year ahead of the election and I was never but one step ahead of the bill collectors ... I never had the millions that he has."

I also enjoyed his take on some of the other candidacies:

The first is that the campaign of Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, is "not going anywhere." The second is that Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., is unlikely to "excite many of the kind of people who attend caucuses or vote in primaries." The third is that Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., "seemed to be promising early" but has since faded off the scene.

And I might as well throw in Sunday's big Washington Post feature on Dean's campaign manager. Interesting stuff, and he's a good writer, too:

Dean's Manager Weds New Tech and Old Tactics

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 27, 2003; Page A05

BURLINGTON, Vt. -- When Joe Trippi was a boy, all he wanted to do was design airplanes. Now he has to find a way to keep airborne a political campaign that has been defying gravity.

OK, that's enough. Get to work. You've got a lot of reading to do.

Columnist Mark Shields--I love him--just posted a very interesting piece on CNN:

A Dean secret weapon in Iowa

Excerpts first, then my reaction below:

In this reporter's judgment, Ross Wilburn -- a 38-year-old Iowa City Council member and African-American, who is executive director of the Johnson County (Iowa City) crisis center that provides personal counseling, food and emergency assistance to those in trouble -- could very well be a major kingmaker in the 2004 selection of the next Democratic presidential nominee.

It's not because Ross Wilburn backs former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, the consensus "Rookie of the Year 2003," which he does. But because what Ross Wilburn and the Dean campaign volunteers are now doing could be a secret weapon in increasing dramatically the voter turnout in the Iowa caucuses, which ordinarily draw about 10 percent of the number who vote in the state's general elections.

In the last three years, the crisis center has been working overtime. Since 2000, the number of those needing emergency food assistance has gone up by 65 percent. This year's budget to buy food was entirely spent by April, three months before the end of the fiscal year. The staff has scrambled.

…
Nothing new here, you could say: Politician proves he's caring and compassionate by spending 10 minutes helping out in front of cameras and microphones at orphanage or soup kitchen before leaving for very private, no-press-allowed fund-raiser with distinguished citizens who seek only a minor change in the tax code that would exclude "those corporations founded in Delaware before January 31, 1975," or something similar.

What potentially makes this scene quite different is that the campaign volunteers, dubbed the Dean Corps, encouraged and inspired by Ross Wilburn, have made a commitment to return each and every week to the food bank.

Dean legitimately boasted that his local volunteers had brought 320 pounds of groceries, this week alone, to the food bank. The governor gives credit for the Dean Corps idea to "the young people." He sees it as a way to show that "campaigns are not just about votes, but, more importantly, are about people."

The Dean Corps has already been involved in environmental cleanups, which given the popular image of the Vermonter's following, is not surprising. But if a presidential campaign actually does perform valuable human and social service and helps to restore a fraying sense of community, that could potentially change the entire dynamic of the caucus turnout next January 19.

Imagine the profound contrast between the Dean campaign volunteers feeding the hungry and comforting the lonely with the Bush pioneer/rangers corralling their $200 million swag for a primary in which the president is unopposed.

I think Mark might be getting a little too optimistic about dramatically increasing voter turnout. But I think it could easily give Dean a significant boost. What I'm seeing over and over again from this campaign--whether it be this, the blog, Move-on, Meetup, web-fundraising, Adopt-an-Iowan, Dean Defense Forces, or a dozen other tactics I've seen--is that this campaign is exploding with innovations. I can't recall anything like this barrage of new tactics. And good ones!  

Every election cycle, it's the same old crap, same old idiotic way of choosing a nominee, with only the most glacial changes working their way into the process over a decade or more. Dean's group is just sprouting new ideas by the week, and a lot of them are having a big impact. And it's not all Dean, or even his itty bitty campaign staff; most of these ideas are coming from the volunteers and implemented by the volunteers. It's really kind of extraordinary to watch.

And love Dean or hate him personally, I think what his campaign is doing to the process is already a minor miracle. It hasn't quite re-invented the nature of our presidential nomination process yet, but at this rate, it's well on its way.

The Dean campaign is doing another one-day web-fundraising push today (Monday), with hourly updates on the blog. Here's the gimmick this time: They've got a TOP SECRET logo beside many of the posts, with this teaser:

And wait til you see what we plan on doing with the additional money you help raise today. It's top secret, but we can tell you this-- it will surprise everyone.

Hmmmm. I do enjoy surprises. Hopefully it will be a good one.