Dean told Trippi that he needed a large media contingent for appearances in Manhattan and Iowa but would not say why. The guerrilla-warfare operation was on display when Dean was secretly discussing an endorsement with Al Gore. "You literally cannot handle the incoming." "There are days when I want to be under the desk," Enright says.
And that doesn't even count the waves of foreign journalists the campaign has basically had to ignore. The senior advisers are so overwhelmed that Trippi has to keep changing his cell-phone number to limit press calls, and Enright and her tiny staff admit they cannot keep up with the hundreds of daily inquiries. The cramped headquarters, with its coterie of dressed-down young staffers, feels like the sort of Internet start-up that Trippi once worked for in Silicon Valley. "The guy is more of a doctor than he is a pol." "It's not about liking reporters," Trippi insists. But maybe not, since journalists who enjoy the give-and-take are more likely to convey the campaign's point of view.Īs for Dean, Enright says: "He likes people. "Maybe we're dumb that we're so open about it," says Enright. They have forged a joking, bantering, let's-go-out-for-drinks relationship with journalists, pulling back the political curtain in the manner of John McCain's bus-caravan campaign. With crowds, Dean shakes hands and fields questions but, like the general practitioner he was trained to be, he is cordial and patient without throwing his arm around anyone.īut Enright, 37, and Trippi, 47, are let-it-all-hang-out types who constantly chatter about their frustrations and anxieties. Reporters who have spent hours with Dean express surprise that he never asks a single question about them. The no-nonsense former Vermont governor is not a schmoozer and makes little effort to charm the reporters who swarm around him in growing numbers. The 21/2-hour ride amid days-old Burger King wrappers - with Enright alternately demanding directions and erupting with volcanic laughter, Trippi holding forth while guzzling Diet Coke - is like a scene from a wacky buddy movie, except that this odd couple is plotting media strategy for the Democratic presidential front-runner. Why's anyone gonna vote for him if they think he can be vice president?" "Let him raise it but just knock it down while being respectful. "Clark's crazy to raise this," Trippi declares. The talk turns to Wesley Clark's recent comment that Dean had once offered to make the retired general his running mate. "There's no way he's going to convince people. "I would just say, 'Look, if it hasn't been clear in the last year, I'll make it clear again today: I'm the only major candidate to have opposed the war,' " Trippi, the campaign manager, tells his candidate. Enright, the campaign's communications director, hands the phone to her rumpled seatmate, the always-talkative Joe Trippi. Driving a snow-splattered Chevy Blazer toward Vermont's Green Mountains, Tricia Enright is chatting with Howard Dean on a cell phone.Īn Associated Press reporter wants a response to John Kerry's latest accusation, that Dean had fudged his position on the Iraq war.
0 kommentar(er)
