An Unlikely Candidate for a Political Bestseller

The debate between Democratic presidential hopefuls was about to begin and the reporter from England was scrambling. As he pulled his laptop and tape recorder from a carrying case, out tumbled a dog-eared, coffee-stained paperback.

It was a book on Howard Dean, written by nine current and former Vermont journalists. Many of them covered their former governor for years, “would bump into him at the dump,” one recalled, and could call him at home at 10 o’clock at night for a quick quote.

It’s fast becoming the bible for national and foreign reporters who had scarcely heard of Dean before being dispatched to cover his unlikely presidential campaign, fodder for rival strategists and a must-read for political wonks around the country.

If Dean were at the back of the Democratic pack rather than the front, few would be buying it. And if he fails to win the Democratic nomination, “Howard Dean: A Citizen’s Guide to the Man Who Would Be President” could vanish into publishing history.

“The sole reason for buying this book rises and falls with Dean,” said Chip Fleischer of Steerforth Press in South Royalton, Vt., the book’s publisher.

The book, which was written and edited in two furious months in the summer, is in its second printing, with a third planned by the first of the year.

It has sold more than 30,000 copies.

If Dean’s best days are ahead, so may be the book’s.

At a tiny neighborhood bookstore in Portland, Ore., one recent day, Hamilton Davis, who wrote two of the book’s chapters, intended to speak for 10 minutes and maybe sign a few copies.

“They kept me there for an hour, and I signed 15 or 20 books,” he said.

Unlike the vast majority of campaign-season books -- most of them self-promotions penned by the candidates with the help of ghostwriters -- “Howard Dean” is a detailed, sometimes critical look at the physician-turned-politician.

Want to know why Dean attended St. George’s prep school in Newport, R.I., rather than follow his father to rival Pomfret in Connecticut? Turn to Page 36.

When the Dean family was touring Pomfret in 1961, “We went to Sunday chapel,” Dean’s mother, Andree, recalls, “and the students were so rude, they talked all through the service, and they didn’t stand up to sing or anything.”

No Pomfret for young Howard.

Curious about Dean’s record on the environment? Read a chapter called “Green and Not Green,” in which author Davis accuses Dean of “hollowing out” Vermont’s key environmental protection law.

In the course of 240 pages, the book explores Dean’s early life growing up in a wealthy New York family, his decision to become a doctor, his sudden rise to power as Vermont’s top executive, and how, after 11 years in the statehouse, Dean launched a longshot bid for the Democratic nomination for president.

“We tried to strike a balance. We wanted people to see what kind of governor Howard Dean was without boring them to tears with detail,” said Davis, a former newspaper reporter who also worked in Vermont state government.

By and large, the book’s contributors, publisher and many readers believe, “Howard Dean” somehow succeeds -- despite that the authors did not see what their colleagues had written until after it went to press.

The book occasionally bogs down, several who have read it agree, but at least the bogging occurs in the details, rather than in repetitive, glowing quotes from friends, as in many candidate autobiographies.

The idea for “Howard Dean” did not stem from some altruistic effort to contribute to the greater political knowledge.

Rather, two small, financially strapped newspapers in Vermont wanted to make more money.

“In May, there was a brainstorming session -- how can we make money in this tough economy besides publishing newspapers?” said Dirk Van Susteren, the Sunday magazine editor at the Rutland Herald and its sister newspaper, the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus, as well as the book’s editor.

Earlier this year, Dean had begun to surprise many with rising poll numbers, so Susteren and others from the newspapers gathered a group of veteran journalists who had covered Dean to see whether they would consider working together on a book.

On Aug. 1, the writers went to work, each assigned a specific time of Dean’s life or his handling of a key issue, such as civil unions.

Manuscripts were due in 30 days.

Said Davis: “I ran a marathon once. I climbed Mt. Rainier once. Other than that, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And I won’t do it twice.”

The book details Dean’s sometimes cold nature; a highly respected environmental lawyer recalls coming out of a meeting with Dean feeling that he was the doctor and she was the nurse, there to carry out his orders.

It dispels the now-fading belief that the governor was a Democrat of the far-left; instead, it portrays him as being so fiscally conservative that he infuriated many in his own party.

It reports on how Dean would change his mind on issues, not because he was wishy-washy, the authors suggested, but because he was willing to acknowledge when he was wrong.

He would drop even his most beloved pieces of legislation when he believed they were doomed.

In the end, the Dean that comes through in the book is cool but kind, bullheaded but often right, smart, interesting and very complex. If some would see that as soft journalism, Fleischer points out that nine different writers weighed in.

The book has not yet become the small-run publishing world’s equivalent of “Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil & Fundamentalism in Central Asia.” In 2000, Yale University Press published just 300 copies of that book.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, it became a No. 1 bestseller and has since sold 300,000 copies.

The specter of such success has raised a journalistic quandary for the authors of “Howard Dean,” some of whom support the former governor, some of whom don’t.

“We’re journalists and we want to remain independent,” Van Susteren said.

“But the longer he stays in the race, the more books we sell.”