The making of an angry candidate.

There was a remarkable sea change in the presidential election campaign last week. The biggest news, little noted in the newspapers, was the unofficial coronation of Howard Dean as the Democratic nominee by none other than George Bush himself.

In a fundraising e-mail sent out to would-be supporters, Bush for the first time made what appeared to be a specific characterization of his eventual opponent.

"Whoever wins the nomination will have done so by energizing their party's left wing with angry attacks," Bush "expressed" in the e-mail.

It was clear that Bush was referring to Dean in this statement, because for quite some time now, "angry" has been the unofficial code word for Dean in the mass media. The evolution of the use of this word has been, to me, the biggest story of the election so far. It was a kind of shadow nomination process, in which the winning caricature was elected in convention.

When you watch a presidential election campaign up close, as I have for the last five months, you start to realize that the actual people running in the race are irrelevant to the results. Instead, the race is an exercise in corporate storytelling, in which the mass media?in a committee-like process that evolves over time through trial and error?settles on a storyline and then drags the rest of the country along for the ride, all the way through to November.

I had a front-row seat for this process. Though there were rumblings on the "angry" front before?most notably in a June piece by Matt Bai in the New York Times magazine that concluded by wondering aloud if Dean's "angry message" might not be his downfall?the real launch of the "angry" theme came in the dual cover stories in Time and Newsweek that appeared simultaneously in early August.

Both Newsweek's Jonathan Alter and Time's Karen Tumulty?using language suspiciously similar to that of earlier Democratic Leadership Council memos about the burgeoning Dean disaster?focused heavily on the "anger" theme, openly concluding that the chief "problem" of Dean's candidacy would be convincing voters to get past his "anger," "testiness" and "pugnacity."

Alter, who along with fellow Newsweek butt-buddy Howard Fineman is among the worst swine in the business, went so far as to say that voters simply don't like people like Dean: "Dean's pugnacity might not wear well with voters, who usually favor buoyant, warm personalities."

Alter went on to hold a formal knighthood ceremony for the second great Howard Dean myth, that he is unpopular with journalists: "In truth, Dean is no favorite of working reporters [as opposed to non-working reporters?] who tend to like their candidates funny and solicitous. So do voters."

Tumulty echoed Alter's theme, noting that "Washington insiders" thought that Dean's candidacy early on had "all the resonance of a temper tantrum." Like Alter, Tumulty described Dean as "testy" and "angry." Neither piece, incidentally, did anything more than briefly touch upon Dean's actual positions on the issues; both were frankly and excessively focused on the electability/horse-race aspect of the story.

The Time-Newsweek covers came at a key moment in the Dean candidacy, just before Dean's "Sleepless Summer Tour." This was Dean's media coming-out party, in which he brought some three dozen or more prominent journalists around the country with him on a chartered plane and gave them all intimate access for four consecutive days.

I was on that plane, and I can report that the "angry" issue (as well as the "journalists hate Dean" issue) was something that was much discussed among the journalists. Mostly we thought it didn't make too much sense. With us reporters on the plane, Dean was never anything but congenial and accommodating. And in his speeches and public appearances, he presented the full gamut of emotions. I think I speak for a lot of the reporters in saying that had I not just read the Fineman and Tumulty pieces, I would'nt have been aware that he was any angrier than any other candidate running for office. Christ, Dick Gephardt by comparison is a raving lunatic: waving his finger all the time and screeching, "Bush is a miserable failure!" with that creepy mask-like face of his. The only difference is, Gephardt's speaking in front of 10 people.

Nonetheless, because of the Time-Newsweek stories, a large percentage of the reporters on the Dean plane felt that they had to at least address the "angry" issue. And so a great many of us talked about Dean having the reputation for an angry public style, and this focus frequently came at the expense of actually explaining to readers what Dean's positions were.

In some cases this trade-off was explicit. Craig Gilbert of the Milwaukee Sentinel-Journal admitted openly in his final "Sleepless Summer" wrap-up piece that he wasn't interested in Dean's actual politics:

"Dean likes to tell crowds that he is about more than Bush-bashing. His speeches have their wonk-ish stretches, where he details his policy ideas."

Gilbert went on to ignore those "wonk-ish" policy ideas. He did not, however, ignore the more important Alter-Tumulty thesis:

"The Dean phenomenon has sparked an evolving discussion among Democrats, Republicans and pundits about how far 'people-powered Howard' can ride the political wave he is on and whether his persona is too angry, his tone too harsh and his politics too far to the left to win the nomination or the presidency."

This kind of thing was typical; virtually every journalist who came near Dean during this period addressed the "angry" issue. David Jackson of the Dallas Morning News: "Analysts? wonder how voters will react to Dean's aggressive demeanor, sometimes described as downright angry." Rebeca Rodriguez of the San Antonio Express-News quoted RNC spokeswoman Christine Iverson: "Iverson said Dean's campaign has appealed to the 'angry, anti-war base of the Democratic Party,' but that's not a message that is likely to appeal to more mainstream voters." USA Today's Jill Lawrence talked about Dean's "angry style" and wondered if Dean might become "less strident" now that he was the frontrunner.

The effect of all of this is like a chamber of mirrors. Once the "Dean is angry" issue gets mentioned in enough places, it replicates endlessly and after a period of time becomes a fact in itself, existing more or less independently of the candidate. Four months ago, "angry" was merely a description of Howard Dean. Now, in many places, it practically substitutes for his name. Just ask the New York Post, which the other day asked in its house editorial:

"But who is Howard Dean? That's not clear?apart, that is, from being the angriest opponent of the president's post 9/11 foreign policy."

Three years ago, in an awesome, for-the-hell-of-it demonstration of media power, the journalism establishment succeeded in convincing half the domestic population, including the landlocked portion, that it was about to be eaten by a shark. Two years ago, despite a statistical drop in such incidents, the bogeyman was child abductors: There was one around every corner. We all know who and what it was last year: Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction. This coming year, the media is going to sell us another bullshit story. It's going to be a WWF match, entitled Shrill and Angry versus Calm and Cocksure. Dean has yet to formally secure the nomination?that part of it will probably be over in a few weeks?but his label is already through to the general election. We're kidding ourselves if we don't admit that the labels are the real candidates.