I am surprised I haven’t read more this week about how much Barack Obama owes his victory in the presidential race to Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Sure, Obama has charisma, eloquence and a message of hope on his side. But Dean had the vision of how to manage a national campaign involving thousands of ego-driven politicians and prickly volunteers that prepared much of the ground for Obama to walk.

Many Americans remember the former Vermont governor only for the “Iowa scream” that seemed to single-handedly derail his 2004 bid for president (Not true, but that’s how a lot of people recall it). But in that campaign, Dean pioneered a lot of the Internet fund-raising techniques that Obama mastered this year to break all money records for a presidential election.

After Dean took charge of DNC in February 2005, he made two promises: Democrats would take control of Congress in the 2006 elections and the White House in 2008. He said that would be possible only by challenging Republicans directly in traditionally “red” states on issues such as health care, high-paying jobs and alternative energy. He rebuilt the DNC’s spending machine to direct more resources into every state and to specifically target the “Intermountain West” (from Montana to Nevada) because changing demographics meant new voters would be more likely to support Democrats. 

In 2006, Dean guided the national party to identify six issues of concern to the entire country and did a remarkable job of convincing individual Democrat candidates to use those issues as the themes of their campaigns. Of course, this strategy was the same concept as Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Contract with America that propelled Republicans into control of Congress for 12 years. The only difference was Dean didn’t try to force every Democrat candidate in every race to commit to the national party’s position on all six issues.

And Dean’s version worked just as effectively. While Democratic gains were expected in 2006 given the unpopularity of the Iraq war, few observers took seriously Dean’s goal of regaining both houses of Congress at once.

As of today, everything has worked out pretty much as Dean said it would, much to the chagrin of Republicans. Dean’s loss to John Kerry in the 2004 primaries might have been the best thing to happen for the Democratic Party since Bill Clinton.