There’s an excellent overview of Howard Dean in today’s Washington Post. It’s been getting linked to on quite a few sites, with quite a few different pull quotes used, but here’s part that made me laugh:
On a hot Sunday afternoon at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel in Los Angeles, the California Teachers Association was nearing the end of a two-day conference. More than 800 delegates sat in a ballroom with the stuffy, bottled-up feel of an airplane. They were ready to go home. But first, Dean was going to speak.
That in itself was unusual. The 333,000-member union, the largest in the state, is stingy with invitations to politicians. But Dean, the only current presidential candidate invited to speak to the association so far, had generated a buzz. Some union officials had heard Dean speak in April at the state Democratic convention in Sacramento, and they wanted to hear him again. Others, who hadn’t heard him, wanted to know what the fuss was about.
Dean came on like Beethoven, capturing the crowd with his first four notes.
“I taught eighth-grade social studies for three months,” he said, “so I can personally say that I am the only person running for the presidency of the United States that knows what it’s like to stand up without being able to go to the bathroom for five hours.”
Bingo.
After 15 minutes, Dean told the audience he was going to wrap it up.
“Awwww” pulsed through the ballroom.
“That’s the first time I’ve seen that ,” said Wayne Johnson, who was the union’s president until the end of June. “No one in all the years I’ve been with this organization, no speaker, has ever had that kind of reaction.”
(via newsguyatl)