Marshall rightly puts the responsibility for a tight ship on its captain, Wesley Clark. "The big picture here is that there's a vacuum of authority in the campaign operation. Because of that, all the various currents in the Dem party -- out-of-power Clinton-Gore types, new-fangled Internet types, etc. -- are trying to fill that vacuum. Bottom line: Clark has to assert himself over his campaign back office."
True enough; it seems as if the general is making too many assumptions about the efficiency of his team, as he might be justified in doing if he were still commanding an army. But as I asserted in my previous post a nit-picking, second-guessing boss is not what anyone needs, particularly when this candidate is particularly dependent on them to fill in the blanks of his own political inexperience.
I think everyone needs to get together over coffee and donuts with Gert and maybe some of the family's old friends from Little Rock. Mrs. Clark knows better than anybody what brings out the best in her man, and I'd bet more white-glove inspections from the general himself are not what she'd be recommending.
"Small Loss" is the headline of Foer's objective assessment of the campaign team shake-up. While I have no way to evaluate Fowler's professionalism, Foer points out, "he's hardly run a perfect ship. He didn't get Clark's party registration papers down to the country registrar. His press operation has been anarchic." Not to mention possible conflicts of interest from paid speaking engagements (and this is really disappointing, because had Clark announced from day one he was going to fulfill outstanding commitments but forego payment, he would have seemed like a stand-up guy instead of a campaign tyro, let alone a potential sleaze.)
". . . Donnie Fowler's decision to quit the Clark campaign might not be the disaster that newspapers have portrayed," Foer writes. ". . . Apparently, [Fowler] regards the operation as too Washington-centric and unwilling to tap the Draft Clark grassroots movement. This argument is ridiculous. Clark has only a few months to whip out a winning campaign. He can't afford to run his operation as an exercise in radical decentralization and deliberative democracy. Nor he can he afford to fumble by handing important tasks to inexperienced underlings."
The last thing the campaign needs is for Gen. Clark to start micro-managing it. He needs to apply his talent for detail to studying the issues, communicating a wealth of specific, accurate data about them, and, well, appearing "in command." At the meet-and-greet following WKC's Tom Harkin Town Hall in IA, he seemed to have only one handler and that one was seemingly more concerned about security than about taking notes on to whom the general was speaking for possible follow-up.
Wes is used to having a large and completely professional staff at his disposal, culled from the brightest and best-trained officers in the corps. His own lack of experience in electoral politics should not be exacerbated by amateurism within his fledgling campaign team.
Ever the optimist, Foer closes with, "One last point. Yes, there are lots of Gore people around Clark. But why is that such a bad thing? They haven't been trying to force the template of the Gore campaign on the man. And they haven't sent their candidate to dwell on K Street begging for donations. In fact, I think they've done a pretty good job, as magazine covers, endorsements, and $3.5 million in donations show."