'Insane' scream a bit of fun: Dean
By Rodney Dalton, New York correspondent
January 22, 2004

THE morning after acting like a man requiring urgent medical attention, Howard Dean yesterday diagnosed his post-caucus fit in Iowa as a case of needing to have "a little fun in this business".

But gobsmacked commentators compared Dr Dean's performance - which included emitting a long scream that most newspapers translated as "Yaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" - to a scene from The Exorcist.

And while Dr Dean might have found his primal scream therapeutic, Democrats were left wondering whether he was stable enough to take on George W. Bush in November.

After placing a distant third to John Kerry in the Iowa caucus on Monday night, the one-time frontrunner entered a room filled with supporters, rolled up his sleeves and went into streetfighter mode.

"We will not give up," he said, his voice rising. "We will not quit, now or ever. We have just begun to fight."

After rattling off the states in which he was prepared to fight, Dr Dean let out the scream that stunned. British newspaper The Times said it sounded like "a child imitating a Tyrannosaurus Rex".

Others were even less kind. "Dean goes nuts," declared online commentator Matt Drudge. Washington-based commentator Stuart Rothenberg said: "It was almost like a scene from The Exorcist, when Linda Blair's head spins around. Howard Dean sounded possessed -- and not possessed by sanity."

The New York Times decided that "Dr Dean looked more like Howard Beale, the angry anchor in Network, than Marcus Welby, MD".

As the Democratic dogfight moved to New Hampshire ahead of next week's primary, Dr Dean spent much of his morning explaining his cringe-inducing behaviour against accusations that it was less than presidential.

Asked to explain by one TV interviewer, the former Vermont governor replied: "Well, you've got to have a little fun in this business.

"There were 3500 young people that came to Iowa to work for me, and they worked hard. We didn't get as many votes as I would have liked to ... I thought they deserved everything I could give them."

Dr Dean's fire and brimstone might have inspired his youth army but it raised questions about him.

Waring Howe Jr, a Democratic National Committee member from South Carolina, said: "He's heading to New Hampshire and those people are serious-minded. They're going to be thinking, 'Who's that cat?"'

It was a toned-down Dr Dean who arrived in New Hampshire, where general Wesley Clark and senator Joe Lieberman, who sat out Iowa, were waiting to join the hostilities.

"Those of you who came here intending to be lifted to your feet by a lot of red-meat rhetoric will be a little disappointed," he told supporters.