DEAN FOR PRESIDENT

If Howard Dean were George McGovern, Hubert Humphrey would have endorsed him already. Dean was not my first choice, nor even my second. I doubt that he was Gore's first choice either. But Gore learned from history and did the right thing last week.

The McGovern loss was not brought about by McGovern. It was brought about by moderates and conservatives every bit as hell-bent upon destruction as last election's Naderites.

Many of those 1972 Democrats, of course, were Democrats with one foot and three toes of the other already out the door. Paul Wolfiwitz, for example, was a Scoop Jackson Democrat that year. Like Zell Miller this year, there is little to be done with Democrats who have made up their minds to do wrong.

But most of the foolhardy Anybody But McGovern wing were good Democrats, like Humphrey, unwilling to relax their grip on "their" party. Humphrey, an insurgent young mayor in 1948 willing to fight to the finish on civil rights, had become a a tired old war-horse, used by George Meany, Richard Daley and the others willing to destroy what they couldn't control.

The greatest disaster of the McGovern Campaign--the midnight scramble for a vice-president that produced Eagleton--was a direct result of the doomed HHH challenge that didn't have the slightest idea of when to quit (like, say, after the April Wisconsin Primary).

The McGovern Campaign was good for the Democratic Party. Despite coat-tail fears, the party did better than expected in down-ballot races in part because of the grass-roots intensity that brought Democrats to the polls. The unnamed southern Dem who fears that "Dean will take us down like the Titanic" needs to look around the U.S. Congress--you're already sucking salt-water, Dude.

The Mondale-Ferraro Campaign, every bit as electorally disastrous as McGovern-Shriver, is rarely cited as the model for disaster because so many party regulars, led by all of organized labor, were in charge. But the ingredients for failure were similar, characterized by a goofy vice-presidential decision that rested on the failure of Gary Hart to get on the ticket and campaign like hell for it.

Personally, I'm ready to win with Dean if we can, lose with him if we must. Any Democrat worthy of the name should be preparing to help him keep the fire turned up high under George Bush's bony and undeserving ass.

I hope other aging McGovernites like me will give credit where it's due to Dean's kids and help toss a few logs on the fire. Dean is likely to win as anyone, which unfortunately is not very. But it's past time we let these GOP sonsabitches know when they've been in a fight. The Doc has fire in his belly and cash in his pocket.

What the hell's not to like about that?