Don’t laugh at me yet. I’m emphatically not saying that Dean is going to win the nomination, let alone the presidency. What I am saying is this: Sharpton aside, he is the most left-leaning of the candidates. He is energetic and fearless, with a nothing-to-lose style and lots of time on his hands. In other words, he’s perfect for Iowa, where the first votes in the nomination race are cast and where a dogged, populist message always resonates. If he gets traction there, it’s on to New Hampshire, near his home turf of Vermont. It’s not nearly as congenial a place (it was the only New England state to go for George W. Bush in 2000), but who knows? (A Dean boom might actually help Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, allowing him, by comparison, to shed the “liberal” label.) As for a general-election race–an even more wildly hypothetical matter–Dean, on paper, would seem to be an opponent so weak that Karl Rove couldn’t make him up. But who knows?

Unless you’re a C-Span junkie or a Vermonter, you probably haven’t heard of Howard Dean. You will. Think of a cross between the docs on “ER,” the late Sen. Paul Wellstone and author/provocateur Michael Moore. A fireplug of a fellow, a wrestling star in prep school, Howard Dean is a physician by trade, the Yale-educated son of Long Island money who rejected his father’s world–Wall Street–to practice medicine in the Vermont countryside. Somehow (vaulting ambition, I think), he ended up being governor for 11 years. His wife is a physician, too, and just as smart; she’s decided to continue treating her patients in Burlington rather than schlep around Iowa in a campaign van.

But it’s not the bio or the brains that made Dean stand out at the dinner. It was his edge, his anger and his sense of impatience with President Bush and with politics as usual–including the kind practiced by establishment Democrats in Washington. It’s a mood that matches that of most of the Democratic primary voters I’ve talked to in recent weeks. Democrats patriotically gave the president the benefit of the doubt after 9-11. They no longer do. Now they are upset with leaders who aren’t confronting him at every turn, on every topic. And that is a strategy that Dean–an outsider in a field dominated by members of Congress–is more than eager and ready to pursue.

Some examples: He would have voted against the Senate resolution authorizing a military strike on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. He was against the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and against the new round on the table now. He is for a national health-care program of the Hillary Clinton kind. He is against any new restrictions on abortion. He supports (because, he says, he had no choice given court rulings in his state) “civil unions” between gays or lesbians. In other words, and in most respects, he is that increasingly rare thing: a full-throated, dovish liberal. On the other hand, Dean defies stereotypes. He’s a stickler for balanced budgets and worked hard to reach them during his tenure in Montpelier. He proudly notes that he never supported or signed gun-control legislation of any kind, and wants to leave the matter to the states.

More important than his stands is his attitude, which is that of a wrestler looking for a pin. At NARAL, he was in the equivalent of a home match–a doctor-politician with a lengthy track record of supporting abortions (although neither he nor his wife has ever performed one) and of opposing any new restrictions on the rules enunciated by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade. But rather take his audience’s backing for granted, Dean pressed his advantage with cutting, caustic remarks aimed at the president and, by extension, at one of his rivals on the stage, Rep. Dick Gephardt (though he didn’t mention him by name). Bush and Gephardt support the banning of a procedure known to its critics as partial-birth abortion. Pro-choice activists are fighting the ban because they see it as the first step toward more restrictive measures. In reality, Dean said, such procedures are exceedingly rare. “We don’t harken to the term ‘partial-birth abortion’ in my state,” Dean declared. “These are core words for fear and divisiveness. This is an issue about … nothing–except extremism.” The crowd erupted in cheers.

Dean touted his record on another element on abortion specifics, parental notification. About half the states have some form of requirement that parents or guardians or the courts be asked to give permission if a minor seeks an abortion. Vermont is not one of those states, Dean said proudly. “We don’t want the government telling us how to practice medicine!” he said. “The practice of medicine is none of the government’s business!” More cheers.

In search of a takedown, Dean can overdo it. At one point he indirectly compared the Bush administration with the old Islamist regime in Afghanistan. “I’m running because I don’t like extremism,” he said. The Bush crowd is attacking abortion, he said, and now Title IX (which requires that women be treated equally in intercollegiate sports). Pretty soon, he joked, the administration will try to keep American girls out of school. The audience laughed, but Dean took heat for the remark. “Comparing the administration to the Taliban was going a little over the line,” he said with a rueful chuckle. “I’m going to have to learn how to act ‘presidential’.” In the meantime he’s going to have fun–and score some takedowns in the wrestling matches ahead.