Montpelier, Vt. ? The last time the bottom seemed to fall out of Howard Dean’s political future, he donned a flak jacket and fought back.

The battle was for re-election in 2000. Republicans, seizing on the civil unions law he approved, mounted a furious challenge that put the four-term, front-running Vermont governor on the defensive.

“It was tough,” said Peter Freyne, political columnist for the alternative weekly Seven Days. “But he went through it and took the hits.”

Dean captured a fifth term with just more than 50 percent of the vote, but only after delivering a withering attack on his GOP critics as “flat-tax, flat-earth people who say evolution can’t be taught in schools anymore.”

Now he’s facing another reversal of fortune, upended in Iowa and pledging to fight back in New Hampshire. As he arrived in the Granite State with his call to arms, there were new questions whether Dean — whose bombastic Iowa concession speech caused even some supporters to wince — has the stuff to bounce back and win his party’s nomination.

“He’s down, but he’s going to fight on,” said Vermont Statehouse veteran lobbyist Bob Sherman. “He’s not going to cave. He’s too ambitious, too smart.”

Because of the negative backlash to the Iowa speech, the Dean camp is ditching high-octane rallies for more dignified forums and emphasizing policy issues that advisers hope will cast him in a more presidential light.

In the place that knows him best, the stoic citizens of Vermont are bemused by the idea that Howard Dean is the angry man of American politics — a label his critics have hung on him like a scarlet A.

“People say he’s angry,” said Sherman, slowly shaking his head over a plate of Mexican food at an eatery in downtown Montpelier. “It’s just that Howard is a passionate guy. His politics are very, very passionate.”

Split personality

It’s an instinct that helped attract an early following, by tapping a host of resentments — liberal resentment at the centrists within the party and the party’s resentment over George W. Bush’s disputed victory in 2000.

Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean works the phones with his mother Andree, left, at a phone bank in Concord, N.H. The former Vermont governor worked Saturday to save his fledgling campaign, which was damaged by a third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses.

After a period of sky-high poll numbers, Dean has slipped significantly, setting up a free for all in New Hampshire’s Tuesday primary.

In Vermont, people say the best way to understand Howard Dean is to understand the two competing parts of his personality — politician and Yankee doctor.

One values compromise, the other certitude and a reluctance to admit error.

“He was a doctor for almost 16 years, a full-time physician before becoming governor,” said Eric Davis, a political scientist at Middlebury College. “A lot of his approach as governor was formed by the habits he took from physicians. His approach was to diagnose a situation, figure out what was wrong with public policy and then suggest a solution.

“And,” Davis said, “never admit a mistake.”

As a politician, Dean brought two other qualities to the governor’s office — a pragmatic instinct and a fierce competitive streak, friends and colleagues say.

“He’s the most competitive person I have ever seen up close,” lobbyist Kevin Ellis said.

When Democrats in the Vermont General Assembly fought him over a budget issue, the governor held firm, declaring that his foes were living in “La-La-Land.” Dean prevailed.

Ellis sees in Dean some of the same aspects of personality that animate President Bush — confidence and competitiveness.

“They have that same impulse of confidence in their own abilities,” he said. “That’s born of the same privileged background. That social confidence and cockiness, they’ve both got it.”

Just being blunt?

As governor, Dean developed a reputation as someone who sometimes would speak first and think later.

Freyne, the columnist, recalls asking him some years ago about his reluctance to boost funding for public defenders — to which the governor replied that most of the accused were guilty anyway. (Dean subsequently said he was joking.)

On another occasion, Freyne was host of a weekly show on Vermont Public Television when a single mother on welfare called in and complained about Dean administration welfare policies.

“And Howard goes, ‘What’s the matter? You got a problem with working?’ He was really nasty to her,” said Freyne. “It was another case of ‘Governor, don’t say that.'”

That prickly personality was well known in Vermont, where one person’s bluntness is another’s candor, said Patrick Parenteau, a law professor at the University of Vermont who served as state environmental commissioner.

“As long as you’re both paddling in the same direction, he’s fine. But you’d probably want him to pick the supper,” he said.