Howard Dean, CEO

It's been a while since we've had a post with Howard in the title.

This AP story appeared on the Boston Globe website on Sunday but it's still worth highlighting:

Dean borrows from Bush, his own White House race to rebuild party

Howard Dean is no longer screaming. He's scheming.

The failed presidential candidate whose howling adieu to the Iowa caucuses helped seal his fate as a presidential candidate is plotting to overhaul the Democratic Party.

Borrowing ideas from President Bush's re-election campaign, Madison Avenue and his own Internet-driven White House bid, the Democratic National Committee chairman hopes to drag the party into the 21st century.

"What I'm trying to do is impose a system and run this place like a business," Dean said during an expansive interview in his office overlooking the Capitol.

That vision would be welcome news to party strategists who have complained that the DNC and its chairman of nine months lag behind Republicans in the political arts of messaging, targeting and organizing.

Some Democrats look back at Dean's rise-and-fall presidential campaign and wonder whether he has the management skills to carry out his plans or the ability to raise the money needed to pay for them. (NB: I'll confess to wondering about this as well.)

What's Howard's Plan?

Making Democrats the party of values, community and reform. Armed with extensive DNC polling, Dean is consulting with party leaders in Congress, mayors and governors to recast the public's image of Democrats with a unified message.

Improving the party's "micro-targeting," the tactic of merging political information about voters with their consumer habits to figure out how to appeal to them.

Building a 50-state grass-roots organization, using the same Internet and community-building tools that took Dean's presidential bid from obscurity to the front of the pack before Iowa.

A look at Dean's approach:

MESSAGE - The DNC is getting outside help from private-sector consultants who specialize in creating and strengthening corporate images -- or "brands." According to Howard, the last time the party was branded was when LBJ was president. While the party is unified in accusing Republicans of creating a "culture of corruption," Democrats still need to give voters a compelling alternative to GOP rule. Democrats must recast the values-and-morals debate, Howard says.

A Sept. 26 memo by Belcher found that people are placing a greater emphasis on community and sacrifice for the greater good. Dean tries to appeal to this sense of higher purpose when he says, "We can do better."

MICRO-TARGETING - Bush's campaign revolutionized the use of micro-targeting to find potential GOP voters and tailor messages to their tastes. Can the DNC catch up to Republicans by next year's elections? Or even the 2008 presidential race? Howard says no, but the Democrats can close the gap, again with help from the private sector. The Bush campaign worked with consumer data.m.ining companies to place every battleground state voter into one of 20 to 30 "clusters" of like-minded people. The DNC's current system has eight to 16 clusters and the goal is to have 40 clusters in time for the next presidential race.

ORGANIZING - Dean is putting four or five DNC staff members in every state with orders to organize every precinct. One of the organizers' first mandates is to conduct four major events a year, one or two of which are mainly social.

Dean learned from his own campaign that it is critical to form relationships that turn into small communities and build into networks of people who feel part of a bottom-up operation with a purpose larger than themselves.

It's a long-term investment that runs counter to the political culture in Washington that, in the last years of the 20th century, has valued multimillion-dollar TV buys over grass-roots organizing.

"You've got to recruit people. You've got to ask them to do something," Dean said. "You have to treat them like a community."

I bet that last part would generate an interesting conversation.

Bonus Feature: Kos has a summary of the Democrats' Contract with America from the subscription-only Roll Call.