On paper, there is a good reason to believe this strategy could work. For all his red-meat, liberal rhetoric, Dean hasn't committed himself to many policy positions that can be portrayed as far left--unlike, say, Richard Gephardt, with his massive $230 billion health care plan. After the primaries are over, Dean will be able to emphasize his commitment to fiscal discipline, his opposition to gun control, and even the hawkish streak in his foreign policy prior to 2002. (Dean was a rare Democratic supporter of the first Gulf war.) The problem is that, no matter how much he talks about these authentically centrist impulses, Dean will still have a hard time selling himself as a moderate. It's not just his opposition to the war--though that may pose more of a problem now that Saddam Hussein has been captured. No, the real reason Dean will not be able to escape a liberal caricature has little to do with policy and everything to do with a warning flag that will mark him as culturally alien to much of the country: Howard Dean is one of the most secular candidates to run for president in modern history.

Dean himself is frank on this point, perhaps too frank. "[I] don't go to church very often," the Episcopalian-turned-Congregationalist remarked in a debate last month. "My religion doesn't inform my public policy." When Dean talks about organized religion, it is often in a negative context. "I don't want to listen to the fundamentalist preachers anymore," he shouted at the California Democratic Convention in March. And, when he discusses spirituality, it is generally divorced from any mention of God or church. "We are not cogs in a corporate machine," he preached last month in Iowa. "We are human, spiritual beings who deserve better consideration as human beings than we're getting from this administration."