The following is an excerpt from a complete article about Howard Dean. I find it to be right on target....here's the link to the whole thing:
http://www.techcentralstation.com/012204C.html
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...........Life is full of those peculiar situations in which a chance event happens to illuminate for us the deep structure of another man's character in a flash. One man sees a child drowning and unhesitatingly jumps in to save the child's life, without a thought for his own, whereas another man, by offering a miserable excuse for his failure to follow suit, forever brands himself as a coward.
Such a chance event happened this week in Iowa: Howard Dean
came in a poor third only a week after the conventional wisdom had all but declared him the Nominee-Elect of the Democratic Party for 2004.
Anyone can win, just as anyone can be defeated, and still not give us a clue to their true mettle. But for a man to be badly defeated when he expected to win handily, that is certain to be a moment for the revelation of character, and in Governor Dean's case, it offered him a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to let the American voters know whether or not he possesses those otherwise hard-to-detect long term virtues so necessary to lead our nation in a time of crisis -- virtues such steadiness and magnanimity, endurance and wisdom.
This last week, unfortunately for his electoral prospects, Howard Dean revealed the stuff that he was made of, and did so in a matter of minutes; and -- fairly or unfairly -- many of those who watched his performance found themselves convinced that they now knew what Governor Dean would act like in a moment of genuine national crisis, and were not assured by the insight that had been inadvertently given them.
We should keep this in mind whenever we reflect on the seemingly irrational method by which we as a people select the man to fill the most important office in the world. For the real purpose behind the superficially bizarre rituals of an American election -- caucuses, primaries, televised debates, concession speeches -- is not to provide an exercise in democracy; it is to test the inner resources and character of the candidates, and to do this by exposing them to a grueling series of artificially induced crises that simulate those that he will ultimately have to face as president. The American electoral process is, in a way, like the simulated testing done by the manufacturers of automobile tires -- we want to know which ones are reliable before we put them on our cars, rather than afterwards, and that is why the American people tend to respond so harshly to those candidates who fail to make the grade during this our national period of candidate testing.
Iowa was Dean's first crisis -- and he blew it; and in doing so he lost far more than the Iowa caucus: he lost the reputation as a man who could be trusted to act calmly and rationally in the midst of adversity. And that is a lesson that the American people will not quickly forget. We do not live in a world where we can afford to.