The American Prospect’s Garance Franke-Ruta passes along an astute observation on Tapped:

One of the smartest centrists I know recently noted that Dean will be operating, in Washington, under “Hillary Rules.” This is certainly true; anything Dean says will be subjected to tremendous scrutiny, and he will be operating with no room for error. And so perhaps the best choice for Dean would to be follow Hillary Clinton’s lead by putting his head to the grindstone, staying off television, and quietly going to work. Already, there is some indication that he recognizes this may be his best course of action.

That’s pretty sanguine. Reporters are going to have keyboard shortcuts that output stories like “Temperamental DNC chairman Howard Dean today said ‘[stupid, off-the-cuff remark]’, offending [various blue state voters]. [Crazed left-wing blogger] defended the remark, alleging a media conspiracy driven by Fox News.” It’s like Mad Libs.

The problem Dean has is that the media narrative has been written, and once established they are almost impossible to break (see: Al Gore is a liar, George Bush is stupid, etc.). And because Democrats have so few compelling personalities in the spotlight, the press will go over everything Dean says with a fine-tooth comb. Plus, if he couldn’t restrain his rhetoric during a campaign to be president of the United States, why would anyone think he could do it now?

The Democrats will soon regret the way they ran their selection process, which was shockingly incompetent and venal. Allowing your party chairmanship to be determined by open pandering to 447 DNC members is not “democratic,” as Noam Scheiber points out; it’s just bad politics.