CNN Presents

[first lines]

Joe Trippi:
I know that this year a bunch of guys got a phone call, and the call was, "Hey. I want you to run my presidential campaign."

Host:
In politics, most of the media coverage focuses on the candidates, of course. But a big part of the political battle takes place behind the scenes. Welcome again to CNN PRESENTS. I'm Aaron Brown. It is a battle fought by political operatives and strategists and hundreds, thousands of volunteers, all locked in a mad dash to sway the hearts and minds of voters across the country. Capturing the drama of that behind-the-scenes battle is what we had in mind when we sent producer Kate Albright-Hanna and her camera into the presidential fray. Little did we know that she would witness one of the most remarkable presidential runs of modern times - the campaign of former Vermont Governor Howard Dean. Kate and her camera followed campaign manager Joe Trippi and his unlikely band of warriors, as they helped Dean surge to the brink of the nomination, only to watch it collapse in Iowa, and then in New Hampshire. From footnote to front-runner to flame-out, CNN PRESENTS "True Believers: Life Inside the Dean Campaign."

Howard Dean:
I will never send our sons and daughters to die in a foreign country without telling the American people the truth about why they're going. When are the Democrats going to stand up and be Democrats again? I'll tell you when. You see this flag? This flag doesn't belong to John Ashcroft and the right wing of the Republican Party. This flag belongs to the people of the United States of America. And we're going to take it back. That's what we're going to do. We're going to take it back.

E.J. Dionne Jr.:
Dean understood earlier than any of the other Democrats that there was this wave of anger inside the party. And it wasn't just a wave of anger at President Bush.

E.J. Dionne Jr.:
But there was also a sense among Democrats that after the 2002 election, the party just wasn't fighting back hard enough.

Joe Trippi:
We were out there waking up the party, you know, when everybody else was standing at the podium going, like, "Huh?" You know. "Oh, man. Don't say that. Oh, you can never win saying that."

Ronald Brownstein:
[about Trippi] He is not your highly polished, classic Washington political consultant.

Candy Crowley:
Joe Trippi was the character of the Dean campaign.

Joe Trippi:
It would really bother the Governor to be doing that.

Candy Crowley:
But you get the sense that Howard Dean was quite aware of that.

Howard Dean:
Haven't I done a great job managing Trippi's campaign for president? Aren't I...

[laughter]

Candy Crowley:
You perhaps had a couple alpha males that circled each other.

Joe Trippi:
You want to jump in? Go ahead.

Howard Dean:
I don't want to interrupt anything. You're the guy who ought to be on the cover of "Time."

E.J. Dionne Jr.:
People were impressed. And they said, "Is this a little hubris? Is he jumping ahead of himself?"

John Colapinto:
It was reminding me of following a rock band. You know, you're always struck with how they don't go to bed.

E.J. Dionne Jr.:
Lots of people have spun all sorts of theories about the Internet, none of which usually panned out. And here suddenly, you had a candidate who would use this new tool. You know, there's no other way to put it. He used it brilliantly.

Joe Trippi:
We broke President Clinton's record for raising the most money. And we didn't do it with $2,000 contributions.

David Gringer:
I represent the guy who is going to send George Bush back to Crawford, Texas. When we beat George Bush in November 2004, the way we're going to do it is by getting millions of new people to vote for the first time. If I do my job well, people will realize how much power they have to make a difference in this election. You know, if you're 21 and you're not idealistic, there's something really wrong with you.

Lauren Popper:
Ann Coulter basically summarizes everything I said, and then says, "With quotes like that, it's not going to be easy to tone down the Republicans' overconfidence in the coming presidential campaign."

Joe Trippi:
Realize that it's going to get worse, in terms of the attacks, in terms of what we're standing up to. They're not trying to stop Howard Dean. They're trying to stop you and 450,000 Americans.

E.J. Dionne Jr.:
The fact that he had been able to almost fly under the radar meant that an awful lot of people felt, both among his opponents and in the press, that they'd better catch up and start giving some critical scrutiny to this guy who, at that moment - people were saying, "My God. He's going to sweep to the nomination."

Joe Trippi:
The most telling quote in the past couple of weeks was in "Time" magazine, when one of those cowards had a blind quote. And that's exactly what they were. Frickin' chickensh*t. Because one of them said, "It's like the Mafia. Everybody wants one of the other families to hit him."

Joseph Lieberman:
Let me say to Governor Dean. He has said he wouldn't take sides. But then he has said, Israel ought to get out of the West Bank, and an enormous number of their settlements ought to be broken down. That's up to the parties and their negotiations, not for us to tell them.

Joe Trippi:
Are you guys looking at this? This is, like, such [expletive deleted] . It's - really, this is the most disgusting thing anybody has done in this race so far. This is more disgusting than anything Kerry's ever done. I mean, with all the crap you can hit us with above the belt, which would be legitimate, and let's have a debate, you're going to go below the belt?

Al Gore:
And so I'm asking all of you to join in this grassroots movement to elect Howard Dean President of the United States. Thank you.

Wolf Blitzer:
Look at this, 17 percent of the vote officially tabulated right now. Based on those numbers as well as CNN exit poll numbers, CNN is now ready to project a winner in this race. John Kerry.

Howard Dean:
I was the supposed front-runner according to "Time" and "Newsweek" for a long time. But guess what? The voters get to decide who the front-runner is. I'm glad I am still in the race.

Garrett Graff:
I was thinking about it, and I was like, I love this man. I would follow him off a cliff. And yet I have never had a positive interaction with him. He's never said a nice word to me. And yet, I would do anything for him. The message that he created won those elections.

Host:
Of course Governor Dean struggled on for another few weeks after New Hampshire. But the campaign never recovered. Joe Trippi returned to his farm on Maryland's eastern shore, vowing never again to run a presidential campaign. We'll see. He's launched a political blog of his own. Changeforamerica.com. It reached out to Dean Campaign supporters. And as Trippi himself pointed out, politics is a strangely addictive business.