Yeaaaaa arrrrgg ghhhh!!!

Cartoonists from across the political spectrum greeted the new Democratic Party chairman as if he were Dr. Kevorkian, not Dr. Dean. They showed the former Vermont governor assisting Democrats in jumping off bridges and buildings, driving off cliffs, committing hara-kiri — and digging their own graves. He was even depicted serving his own head on a platter, a trick Dr. Death never mastered. What a difference a political year makes. Last spring Howard Dean was embraced for energizing the Party of Clinton, feted for his fundraising, extolled for expanding the party base. How did he go from Don Quixote (tilting at windbags) to Donkey-Killer (dying by the sword)? Maybe he was fatally sound-bitten, instantly demoted from primary-time-player to just plain primal.

The Republican knock on Dean was always that he was too wild, too left, with Vermont’s gay-friendly laws serving to trump his sober-sided budget-balancing centrism. Have cartoonists, often derided as the most out-there of the Liberal Media, adopted the GOP spin doctors’ caricature? Now that’s a perverse marriage.