NOT THAT JOHN Kerry’s worried about any of this. He won’t even comment on Dean’s potential to cause him trouble in the 2004 primary. (Which isn’t a surprise — why acknowledge a lowly small-state governor as a threat?) The most anyone associated with the Kerry camp will say about Dean is this, from a self-described "Kerry fan" who didn’t want to give her name: "Howard Dean’s record as governor defending Vermont against Maine notwithstanding, I think John Kerry would be pleased to put his national-security and foreign-policy credentials up against Howard Dean any day."

National security and foreign policy are clear areas of weakness for the Vermont governor. When asked if he thought a candidate with solid Vietnam credentials, such as Kerry, who earned a Silver Star in that war, might be best suited for post–September 11 leadership, Dean, who didn’t serve in Vietnam due to a chronic back condition, was quick to answer: "John Glenn was a war hero." Former US senator Glenn was a highly decorated pilot in the Korean War and an astronaut who ran a disastrously short presidential campaign in 1984. "He certainly did not have a particularly good outing running for president. I think it’s always good to have military service, but I don’t think it makes or breaks your candidacy."

The former doctor also notes that he visited 51 countries as governor, and recently got back from a fact-finding mission in the Middle East. Dean is adamant that these were not junkets. "We tripled our trade to Taiwan after I went there," he says. "I don’t believe in traveling just for fun." And how could he? Dean’s brother was executed as a "spy" while traveling in Laos in 1975. While we don’t discuss his brother, whose death, in part, may have prompted Dean’s decision to go to medical school, his campaign literature notes that in 2001 the governor "helicoptered to the rice paddy where his brother is believed buried."

Meanwhile, Dean bristles slightly at the suggestion that September 11 may have marked the end of presidential candidacies successfully launched from governorships. "Name one significant piece of legislation or social change in the last 10 years that came from the Congress — there isn’t one," says Dean, implying that change still comes from state-led initiatives.

While relatively new to foreign policy — especially in comparison to Kerry — Dean sounds relatively sensible on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He faults Bush for failing to "engage" in the Middle East — usually code language for the need to push Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians, but not when Dean says it — and he criticizes the president for not being tough enough on countries that finance Palestinian suicide bombers. "I’d really go after the Saudis, the Iranians, and the Syrians to get them to stop funneling money for terrorism purposes," says Dean, particularly laying into President Bush for turning a blind eye to the Saudi role in promoting terror both in Israel and elsewhere in the world. "We’re so dependent on Saudi oil. [Bush] can’t stop terrorism if he’s concerned about other political and economic forces." Here Dean echoes Kerry’s call for energy independence. On the war with Iraq, Dean says he would have voted against the recent resolution to authorize force to remove Saddam Hussein. He asserts that Bush failed to provide enough evidence to the American people that Hussein poses an immediate threat. Dean believes voters will appreciate his being one of only two Democratic presidential hopefuls — the other is the Reverend Al Sharpton — to oppose war with Iraq.

FOR HOWARD DEAN’S presidential campaign to go anywhere at all, much less the White House, it has to be viable. No matter how quixotic, romantic, and heroic the story line behind Dean’s push for the presidency seems — courageous, big-thinking governor from a small state challenges the political establishment with iconoclastic candidacy — it has to have legs. Dean comes from the second-smallest state in the union. With 608,827 residents, it’s home to about as many people as Boston. That’s the city, not the metropolitan area. You have to go back to Calvin Coolidge, a native of Plymouth, Vermont, to find a 20th-century president who came from a state as small as Vermont — though Coolidge had to move to Massachusetts to win.

It’s hard to see a candidacy doing much from that base. Not that it can’t be imagined. Just look at NBC’s The West Wing. The weekly drama features a president who was a prophetic, liberal-minded governor from New England who focuses on the "big picture" and is not weighed down by polling data. His wife, of course, is a doctor, just like Dean’s. More than a few commentators have noted the similarities between Dean and Josiah "Jed" Bartlet, played by Martin Sheen. Rather than say it could only happen on television, Dean seems to take some hope from the Bartlet administration. "I think it’s great," he says. "Who could be lucky enough to have their candidacy to be on television every Wednesday night?"

Dean, to be sure, has more than a few Bartlet-like qualities. Bartlet can fall back on Latin when the occasion arises; Dean can speak Hebrew — well, at least he can recite Hebrew prayers. During a discussion with E.J. Kessler of the Forward, the subject of Dean’s connection to Judaism came up. (His wife, Judith Steinberg, is Jewish; he met her at Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx.) Kessler reported that Dean said a Hebrew prayer during their interview. When I asked him about it on Thursday, he recited most of the first blessing for the Hanukkah lights.

All this is charming, of course, but does it mean he’s electable? For Dean to win the Democratic nomination, he must not only impress the Democratic base with his positions on civil unions, health care, and Iraq; he must also show that he could win in the general election against Bush. Which raises the question: is there anything to draw centrist and moderate voters to Dean? While this isn’t the deciding question in most primaries, it goes directly to the question of electability. And even the most die-hard Democrats factor electability into whom they will support in a primary. After 2000, nobody wants to throw away a single vote.

In that context, how can a candidate, who in effect owns the issue of gay civil unions, as Dean does, ever be taken seriously as a nationwide candidate? Here Dean offers up an interesting theory. Based on his campaign travels to date — more than 20 trips to New Hampshire, 15 to Iowa, and five to South Carolina — Dean has come to believe that his backing of civil unions is no obstacle to getting elected. Only reporters and gay audiences ever bring it up with him. And while political observers harp on the degree to which Clinton moved the Democratic Party rightward in 1992, Dean points out that Clinton was elected promising health care to all and advocating the public service of gays in the military that year. "I’d hardly call that a right-wing campaign," Dean says.

In addition, the Vermont governor has a trump card that none of the other Democratic contenders, including Kerry, can claim. He’s opposed to federal gun-control measures. "If Al Gore had taken the position that I take, he’d be sitting in the White House right now," Dean says. "One could argue that I’m the most electable of all the Democrats because I’m the only one who hasn’t taken on the position that we ought to have lots of gun control in this country."

That will play well in the Western part of the country, Dean says. Unlike the socially conservative South, he notes, the West holds more libertarian views on guns (and sexuality, for that matter). To buttress his claim, Dean points to the defeat of an anti-gay statewide referendum in Colorado and the victory of a Democratic woman over a religious conservative in Arizona’s recent gubernatorial race. "There’s much more of an ethos that everybody ought to do what they want to do in the West," says Dean. "That’s why they’re against gun control in the West but civil unions is not likely to be a big problem in the West."

Dean can put his theory into play if he gets past the first three major electoral contests in New Hampshire, Iowa, and South Carolina. He is certainly an intriguing candidate, the exact kind of politician you want in the race, especially in the early stages. But right now, he is mostly positioned to play the spoiler. And it’s a role he seems more than willing to take on.

Seth Gitell can be reached at sgitell[a]phx.com