 
Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean moments before he delivers the barbaric yawp that was heard around the world. (Associated Press and Reuters photos)
Out with a barbaric yawp
If Howard Dean goes down in flames -- and I think that he is going down in flames as I write this sentence -- it can be said that he went out not with a bang, but with a barbaric yawp.
Yup.
It's stunning to think that after months of hard work, after months of collecting millions of dollars, after all of the blood, sweat and tears that thousands of volunteers and staffers have put into a political campaign, it can all come crashing down because of one short, impassioned address.
It's stunning to think that, but it's probably not entirely accurate.
I think that historians, when they point to the one thing that sunk Howard Dean's campaign -- and history likes to oversimplify like this -- will point to his concession address (you can't really call it a speech) in Iowa. (For a video of his concession address -- a rather poor video, but a video -- click here.)
I don't think his Iowa concession address is the one thing that destroyed Dean's campaign, but rather is the straw that broke the camel's back. You just don't recover from having looked like a raving madman with millions of people listening and watching. That's something that even Karl Rove couldn't spin.
For months now Team Dean has said that The Anger Thing is a bunch of bullshit, an invention of The Media and of Dean's Enemies. I think that primary voters in New Hampshire were willing to give Dean the benefit of the doubt.
Until the barbaric yawp that escaped from his mouth at the end of his concession address Monday night in Iowa.
I can get over everything he said (words, I mean) in his concession address. He'd just come in a distant third in Iowa, a state that he was long expected to win. I don't blame him for being emotional. Not only was he let down, but thousands of his volunteers standing before him were let down. I was OK with his concession address, to which I listened live on National Public Radio. I was OK with him ticking off the names of the states he would win. (Typical political rhetoric meant to fire up the troops.) I was OK with it all until --
-- until he made that barbaric yawp.
Did I really just fucking hear him make a noise like a charging animal? I asked myself in disbelief. The NPR reporter was taken aback, too, but she let it pass.
Initially I thought that the barbaric yawp thing, surreal as it was, would pass, as the NPR reporter had let it pass.
But the barbaric yawp hasn't passed. It's the new buzz.
There's even a Howard Dean barbaric yawp dance mix. (I think there are at least two or three different mixes floating around out there, and it isn't just an Internet thing -- I even heard part of one mix on NPR.)
Salon ran a blurb about the barbaric yawp titled "Mad How." The writer notes that "Dean's speech last night -- specifically one moment of hoarse yelling -- may haunt him forever."
According to the writer of the Salon blurb, Katie Couric asked Dean on The Today Show, "Do you think things got a little out of control and you got a little over the top? Can you explain that?" (I can see passive-aggressive, former cheerleader and former sorority chick Couric wrinkle her nose as she asks that question in her juvenile tone. She likes to ask such questions while pretending to be so damned sweet. Anyway, the Salon writer doesn't say what Dean's response was.)
The barbaric yawp story isn't going away. Even The Associated Press ran a story on it titled "Dean's Raucous Iowa Speech Lives On."
The AP reports:
WASHINGTON -- Howard Dean is trying to get past the impassioned speech he delivered after the Iowa caucuses, but the image lingers on the Internet, late-night talk shows and in what could be a serious problem for the campaign -- among New Hampshire voters.
Political analysts and pollsters are watching to see if Monday night's enthusiastic, fist-pumping speech becomes one of those famous presidential campaign moments etched indelibly in the public's mind. Dean's own advisers privately acknowledge the speech was a major blunder that has hurt his standing in polls.
In the three days leading up to the Iowa caucuses, Dean's favorable rating among New Hampshire voters dropped from 59 percent to 39 percent in a sample of 302 voters Tuesday night, according to Dick Bennett of the American Research Group of Manchester, N.H. The size of a one-night sample is small enough that such results have to be viewed with caution, however.
In several tracking polls out Wednesday, Dean and John Kerry were locked in a statistical tie, with Kerry surging and Wesley Clark close behind both of them. Dean was once far ahead in the state. A tracking poll is an ongoing poll with totals from the last two or three nights combined to produce a nightly result.
Bennett said his phone operators heard from voters who said they were surprised by Dean's speech. "That thing has legs," he said.
"I think it crystallized a lot of the concerns voters in Iowa had as well as voters in New Hampshire had about Dean's potential temperament as a president," added Andrew Smith, a political scientist and pollster at the University of New Hampshire....
Gerry Chervinsky, who is polling New Hampshire for The Boston Globe and WBZ-TV, said Dean's favorable rating had dropped 11 points, from 67 percent to 56 percent, in the last week. He said the drop wouldn't all be attributable to Monday night's remarks, but added: "That speech could not have helped him in any way."
...Dean explained the enthusiastic speech Wednesday, saying: "I was rallying a group of 3,500 kids who'd come to Iowa to work for me and were waving American flags. It was a pretty emotional, pretty terrific scene.
"They worked their hearts out for three weeks. I thought I owed them everything I had, and I gave it everything I had," Dean said.
Democratic consultant James Carville, who was in New Hampshire attending campaign events, said of Dean's Iowa speech, "It hurt him."
Pat Buchanan, a former Republican presidential candidate, said: "Dean's Iowa defeat was a real setback to him, but his post-game commentary was a disaster. That tape will be on every national talk show; I don't think it's survivable."
Late-night comedy shows provide campaign news to growing numbers of people, according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. One-fifth of young adults said they regularly learn about the campaign from such programs.
When David Letterman rolled the video Tuesday, Dean's head appeared to explode at the end of the speech. "Did you see Howard Dean ranting and raving?" he asked the audience. "Here's a little tip, Howard: cut back on the Red Bull."
On his program, Jay Leno quipped: "I'm not an expert in politics, but I think it's a bad sign when your speech ends with your aides shooting you with a tranquilizer gun."
Jon Stewart introduced the clip on his show by saying, "That whole 'Dean anger thing,' it's a bum rap. The guy has his emotions under control."
Charles Jones, a presidential scholar, said Dean's speech contributes to the notion that he's not quite ready for prime time....
I don't think it's fair that one gaffe should be the end of a campaign, but the barbaric yawp hasn't been Dean's only gaffe, and as his gaffes go it was his piece de resistance.
The Dean campaign repeatedly assures us that Howard does not have a problem with self-control -- and then comes the yawp.
Dean went into Iowa already crippled after someone had dug up an appearance he'd made on Canadian television four years ago bashing Iowa's caucus system. (Hey, Team Dean can always blame Canada!) Dean then stumbled into New Hampshire after having sounded like a raging caveman to an audience of millions the night before in Iowa. He had shot himself in the foot -- again -- before he even set foot in New Hampshire. (With the way he sabotages himself, how did he ever become governor of even a teeny-tiny state?)
History, I suspect, will record that it was the barbaric yawp that sank Dean's bid for the presidency.
That's only part of the story. It wasn't just the barbaric yawp. It was a series of gaffes, and the barbaric yawp, I think, wasn't just a barbaric yawp, but was a moment of truth.
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