David Brooks in the NY Times applies hammer to nail with regard to virtual candidate Dean:
Other candidates run on their biographies or their records. They keep policy staff from their former lives, and they try to keep their policy positions reasonably consistent...I catch a whiff of this "exhilarating rootlessness" among some non-denominational Christians. Their relationship with Jesus is one-on-one, so what is Luther or Calvin to them? A co-worker of my wife interpreted the Book of Revelation and concluded that the end of the world would be in 2001. She's arrived with a new end date, her own history discarded. (Her own interpretations were largely borrowed, but we fool ourselves into thinking our independent thinking is independent thinking.) To go deep into history is to become Catholic, said John Henry Newman. But history is for losers; it can tie you down.
He is, in short, a man unrooted. This gives him an amazing freshness and an exhilarating freedom.
Everybody talks about how the Internet has been key to his fund-raising and organization. Nobody talks about how it has shaped his persona. On the Internet, the long term doesn't matter, as long as you are blunt and forceful at that moment. On the Internet, a new persona is just a click away. On the Internet, everyone is loosely tethered, careless and free. Dean is the Internet man, a string of exhilarating moments and daring accusations.
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