The Body and Soul weblog sums up the Dean fiasco:

It's pretty clear he's responding to the excitement in the crowd, and while it might not be a good idea to respond quite that vociferously when you're running for president, sports wouldn't be very popular if a whole lot of perfectly sane people didn't tend to get a little hyper in crowds. If it had been Bush, we'd be hearing about how much he has in common with football and hockey fans. Isn't he great? Just one of the guys. (emphasis added)