NYTimes:The Ex-extemporaneous Howard Dean

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REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK
The Ex-extemporaneous Howard Dean
By JODI WILGOREN


DES MOINES, Sept. 14 — The pins have already started to penetrate.

Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, laughed off criticism by his competitors for the Democratic presidential nomination this week by saying that he felt like a pincushion. Then he quietly began making tiny alterations to his standard stump speech, measuring facts and assertions twice before speaking.
President Bush's tax cuts, denounced by Dr. Dean for months as "$3 trillion" or, sometimes, "$3 trillion, including interest," became a $2.4 trillion cut, plus $600 billion in interest, during a rally on Friday in Plymouth, N.H. The 91 percent of new mothers in Vermont who used to get home visits within two or three weeks now get visits "mostly in their homes, some in doctors' offices," within three or four. And when Dr. Dean told supporters at the Bektash Temple in Concord, N.H., on Friday that his campaign had 150,000 donors and the next-best number was 20,000, he slipped in a "that I know of," just in case.

The changes, perceptible perhaps only to the aides and reporters who trail him, show a subtle but significant shift for a candidate who sells himself as unscripted. After a week of accusations that he chooses terms carelessly or says different things at different times, Dr. Dean is now balancing his shoot-from-the-hip instinct with his place in a national spotlight where enemies and observers, armed with Internet research tools and digital video recorders, parse every word.

"If I can use precise language," he explained Friday, "I now do if I can."

Ouch, Another Pinprick . . .

Or, if he remembers to.

One of the sharpest pins yet came on Friday from Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, who compared Dr. Dean to Newt Gingrich, the architect of the Republican revolution in 1994, for assailing Medicare and Social Security in the 1990's. At a news briefing at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire, Dr. Dean called the comparison "a sad end" for Mr. Gephardt.

End of what? His campaign? His career?

But a statement issued at the same time from Dr. Dean's headquarters in Burlington, Vt., used the phrase "sad day" instead. An aide explained, "That's what he was supposed to say."

Supposed to? Turns out he had been prepped in a five-minute huddle with aides. He managed to hit the "politics of the past" line but muffed the "sad day" bit.

"I didn't know I said `end,' "Dr. Dean said. "From a Freudian point of view, you could have a lot of fun."
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Dr. Dean retorted: "Where do you get that idea that I'm a strong supporter of Nafta? I didn't do anything about it. I didn't vote on it. I didn't march down the street supporting it. I wrote a letter supporting it."

At lunch on Saturday, he quibbled with another reporter, saying he was just a "supporter" of the trade bill, no adjectives necessary. But Dr. Dean was one of several governors scheduled to attend a White House signing ceremony on the trade bill in 1993 (he said he cannot remember if he made it), and in 1995, on the very same ABC News program, Dr. Dean said, "I was a very strong supporter of Nafta," according to a transcript.

http://nytimes.com/2003/09/15/politics/campaigns/15DEAN.html?pagewanted=2