With Rivals Squirming, He's Surging

[Rose Siding]

BURLINGTON, Vt. - On the third floor of what passes for a high-rise in this quiet college town on the banks of Lake Champlain, Howard Dean reflects on how fortune and high-tech political ingenuity have projected him into the front ranks of candidates for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.
Clad in a green open-necked sports shirt and tan slacks, he is only slightly distinguishable from the young and eager recruits in his national campaign headquarters, who are implementing the first effectively Internet-based pursuit of the White House.

As he discusses the astonishing progress of his heretofore long-shot campaign, the orchestrators of his membership and fund-raising surge busily man their computer screens, communicating with the mushrooming Dean constituency via his popular Web site.

Mr. Dean himself, while crediting the significant impact of his Internet operation, acknowledges as well that the aftermath of the war in Iraq, and suspicions that President Bush used hyped intelligence to sell the war to Congress and the American people, have been key catalysts in his success so far.

"The premise on which the country went to war turned out not to have been true," he says. "Saddam Hussein was never a danger to the United States. We're in more danger now than we were before the president went into Iraq."

Referring to fellow Democratic candidates............more

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