David Corn, the Washington editor of The Nation magazine,
writes that a Dean campaign insider told him:
The party chairman has to be organized and know how to manage a large organization, he explained, and that is not Dean. He noted that Dean did a poor job of running his own campaign. (This person had been supportive of Dean.) "If you can't manage a presidential campaign, that's a good indication you are not ready to be president," he said.
Having made hiring decisions and thought about management issues, I think it's best to hire someone with successful management experience relevant to the job position. So, here's my assessment of Dean's management skills (based on various reports from insiders and outsiders) and what might be ideal management skills for the DNC Chair position.
Managing the State of Vermont as Governor was really different from managing a dramatically -growing insurgent Presidential campaign. Vermont had a stable budget, and Dean managed it incredibly well taking it from a deficit into a surplus and balancing the budget annually. His staff also thought well of him, and the people in the state reelected him for five or six terms. In the case of the Presidential campaign, the budget went from $100K to $50M in about six months, and he didn't fire and re-hire staff at a quick enough rate to match that. That's a really different kind of management skill. And, there are few people in the country who could do that well.
So, which is the DNC more like? I imagine it has a fairly stable staff and a budget that's somewhat closer to the size of Vermont's than $50M. On the other hand, the budget probably grew dramatically during the general presidential campaign (August-November 2004), but this growth period was pretty predictable years in advance. So, the question is whether Dean could manage the DNC well. I think he would inherit an existing staff, and need to decide whether to make personnel changes, and of course whether to make some fundamental changes in the organization's functions. That seems much more similar to his Vermont experience. Another similarity is that he became Governor of Vermont after some years as a State legislator and probably knew folks from all over the state. At this point, he could become DNC Chair knowing Dems all over the country and having spent the past few years listening to their concerns.
Dean also took over the Governorship in Vermont quite suddenly when the existing Governor passed away, and both sides of the aisle thought he did this very skillfully in terms of his sense of what was expected of him and his management of the budget and the staff. While Terry MacAuliffe is certainly healthy, the Party isn't. And, Dean would be taking over the DNC at a time when it needs these same skills.
Corn concludes his commentary on the DNC Chair search with:
They [the Democrats] need to develop a national infrastructure that rests upon strong and vital local components. The next DNC chairperson will have to figure out how to mount such a long-term project in a damn-quick manner.
If the DNC Chair needs to put together a deep and local grassroots effort across the country in a hurry (and I certainly agree with that), Dean's already got the beginnings of that national infrastructure through Democracy for America. No one else running for the DNC Chair position is even close to understanding what that means no less already having some significant components in place.