Much Ado About Nothing
OK, so Howard Dean gave an enthusiastic speech to his supporters after his third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses. According to AP, this is what he said. This is what Howard Dean said. (Heh heh.)

Not only are we going to New Hampshire ..., we're going to South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico, and we're going to California and Texas and New York, And we're going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan. And then we're going to Washington, D.C. To take back the White House. YEAHHHH!!!.

OK, so he was trying to fire up a crowd, and the crowd ended up firing HIM up. So?

Whoops, sorry, I didn't realize this was the end of the world. Again from AP:

"I think it crystallized a lot of the concerns voters in Iowa had as well as voters in New Hampshire had about Dean's potential temperament as a president," added Andrew Smith, a political scientist and pollster at the University of New Hampshire. "My sense is that this will go down with Edmund Muskie supposedly crying in front of the (Manchester) Union Leader (in 1972) and Bob Dole telling George Bush to `stop lying about my record.' (in 1988)."

Charles Jones, a presidential scholar, said Dean's speech contributes to the notion that he's not quite ready for prime time. "Some have compared it with the overenthusiastic reaction of (Dan) Quayle" when he was picked as George H.W. Bush's running mate, Jones said.

Enough already. All this episode tells me is that Howard Dean would have a LOT of fun putting on some headphones and singing along with "Binky the Doormat." Too bad Al Gore is presumably incapable of doing the same.