From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield.

I am no longer actively pursuing the presidency.

And with that, the doctor was out.

Howard Dean's announcement, after his dismal third place showing in the Wisconsin primary, surprised few.

But since then, we've seen campaign obituary

after campaign obituary, each doing its best to explain what on earth happened to the candidate

who a little over a month ago was the undisputed favorite for the Democratic nomination.

Some blame Dean for not keeping his cool, and some blame his staffers for squandering the

campaign's nest egg. Many blame the media, but one of the most compelling explanations we found

suggests that Dean's lead never actually existed to begin with. Clay Shirky, an expert on the

sociology of the internet, wrote in his weblog many to many that,

quote, Dean's campaign didn't just fail. It dissolved on contact with reality. And he offered

a useful metaphor for understanding the collective delusion, the corporate letterhead. In the old days,

if you got something on corporate letterhead, it meant there was a solvent

company behind it because they had the money to get someone to design the letterhead.

They had the money to have it printed and stored somewhere and so forth and so on.

And along comes the desktop publishing revolution.

And so suddenly, you know, as an individual with no incorporation, no lawyer, no clients, I can create corporate letterhead and send it off.

And anybody who looks at that letterhead, at least in the early days of the desktop publishing revolution, said, oh, my goodness, you know, this person must represent a really big company.

And over time, we've come to realize that sophisticated graphic presentation is no

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