He walked like a warrior, greeting people who had come to meet him, flashing his handsome smile, appearing strong and happy despite the historic losses his party suffered in last week's midterm elections.
Vermont Governor Howard Dean, a democrat, gave a prognosis of the future of health care legislation in the new political order in which the republican tide washed away many of his colleagues.
But Dean is still standing as one of the most popular democrats, garnering more than 70 percent of the vote in Vermont's gubernatorial race.
Dean delivered his talk, titled "The Future of Health Care," last night in the Hinman Forum of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for the Social Sciences to an audience of about 80 people.
Dean, a licensed physician, diagnosed the problems that led to the democrats' losses, performed an autopsy on the death of health care reform and discussed the future of health care debate.
He began with an analysis of last week's election results and said people must not be quick to misinterpret the outcome as a repudiation of progressive social issues. Rather, he said it was a referendum on national politics.
Dean said the election of republicans was caused by "a notion that politics is not working." He said democrats must devote their efforts to regaining control of both houses of Congress.
He said in 1992 President Bill Clinton was elected partially due to the recession and the public's concern that people would lose health insurance along with their jobs.
But in 1994, some of the factors that led to the loss of support for health care reform were the intense lobbying by the Health Insurance Association of America, political partisanship and some democrats' refusal to reach out to moderate republicans.
The real reason that health care debate died, Dean said, was because the economy got better and the coalition fell apart. "The people who had health care were no longer fearful about losing their health care; they were now fearful of having to pay for the health care of the 15 percent who didn't have it," he said.
Currently 15 percent of Americans, or about 37 million people, do not have health insurance, according to Dean.
Dean pointed out that his efforts to push through health care legislation through the Vermont legislature were thwarted by an unlikely alliance between die-hard liberals, who felt the program did not go far enough, and the staunch conservatives, who wanted to block any reform.
Dean urged all legislatures to take a bipartisan approach to health care reform in which all parties are willing to compromise and change gradually because it is impossible to take on all the interest groups at once.
But he expressed hope that eventually the proper pace of reform would overcome all the political interests and "the right thing will be done."
Jim Brennan '96, the acting co-president of the Conservative Union at Dartmouth, asked Dean why he was able to remain so popular while other democrats lost their races around the country.
Dean replied that the "secret to his success" was using the state's small population to his advantage by personally interacting with the people on the grass-roots level and saying what he thinks in an honest manner.