fades, persona follows. This ill-conceived venture turned out to be the final maneuver of his campaign, as Dukakis plunged into electoral lethargy and an eventual landslide -- for George H.W. Bush. Dukakis: socially minded, executively experienced, compassionately calibrated? -- check. Tank-driving tough-guy? -- check mate . For Howard Dean, style was equally important. Governor Dean had experience and a reasonable record but that wasn't what excited his sophomoric supporters, it was his status as an irreverent party crasher. A straight-talking spoiler -- he was the doctor who made unwelcome house calls to the mainstream of the Democrat party. But on January 22, 2004, Dean's fist-pumping shriek of honest exuberance was demonstrably uncool and unacceptably unhinged. Suddenly, the dean of dissent had a fondness for the very same mainstream that he was sent to unsettle. Suddenly, Dean was generically goofy. Suddenly, Howard Dean had jumped the shark. For President Obama, style is everything -- was everything. And spurning style has proven an irreversible pas of the tres faux variety. If only there had been something material to those loose-fitting jeans. If there had been more, his self-deprecating admission would have been endearing. If he had ridden in on something other than a wave of words and artful execution, he might have had something to fall back on. But Obama has nothing to fall back on; his persona won't allow it. His coronation was a celebration of savoir-faire . He was the advocate of articulation, the sultan of suave, the patrician of