I'm impressed by Dean Campaign's new Net Advisory Net, which is nothing less than a modular, virtual, board of policy advisors which has as its first effort attracted some serious people with serious ideas. (And—very smart—the 'NAN' is set up with campaign deniability built-in in case the advisors go nuts on some issue.)
You have to had it to the Dean for President campaign. They are not only smart but they have good taste .
I almost turned myself into a Dean volunteer long before he was famous as the 'anti-war' candidate — I liked his health care plan which centered on insuring children. It was simple, straightforward, and politcally practicable and would have a big bang for the buck.
There were two things that held me back. First, even early on Dean seemed gaffe prone, and in this era of 'gotcha' media, the danger of a spectacular crash-and-burn seemed too high. I'm still not sure about that one. The second reason was that I have a rebuttable presumption against supporting governors from small states. A Jimmy Carter type comes to Washington with too few friends capable of running the country. The President ends up either with too few trusted advisors, or finds himself relying on folks who aren't up to it. The presumption is rebuttable (cf. Clinton; while he had a lot of faults, lack of high-powered friends was not one of them).
If this “Net Advisory Net” is more than PR, Howard Dean has just removed one of the two worries I had about him.
