To Sir With Love - A Wesley Clark Blog

Formerly skeptical political scientist elucidates Clark's complexities

UCLA professor of political philosophy, Andrew Sabl, blogging at Open Source Politics, acknowledges:

My support for Clark has not come naturally. I'm a partisan and liberal Democrat, no great lover of old Clinton staffers and smug New Democrats. . . When I heard that Clark had . . . spoken at a Lincoln Day dinner. . . , I judged him an amoral opportunist and borderline con artist. . . .

But I figured I owed the largely unknown candidate a chance. Being a professor, I decided to read his book, Winning Modern Wars. After finishing it, I figured out what Clark is about, and why his candidacy is both baffling and compelling.

Sabl's analysis of Clark's strengths is nuanced enough to please Gen. Shades of Gray himself.

1. Clark is an intensely patriotic internationalist. . . .

It's a vision that Clark has clearly thought about constantly for decades and cares about deeply. And it's a perfect riposte to both Dean (whose foreign policy mixes ignorance, isolationism, and a smug moralism approaching Bush's) and the unilateralist thugs of our current administration. . . .

2. Clark is essentially a pre-Sixties Democrat

Clark's main position on the culture wars is to find them (a) baffling and pointless and (b) a right-wing conspiracy to distract middle-class white guys from their declining living standards and an economic policy that gives everything to the wealthy. . . .

I don't actually hear Clark making this point on the stump as clearly or as often as perhaps he should, but the position Sabl is taking for him is exactly what Dean supporters, who felt he took a bad rap on his confederate flag gaffe, have suggested the doctor meant. It's also become another arrow in John Edwards' populist quiver.

Clark's argument, however, to poor southern whites whose health and job concerns aren't being met by their current party of choice, goes further than Dean's in that it conflates his belief in Democratic party ideals with his vision of America's place in the world. "'. . . Dunderheaded jingoism,'" Sabl writes, "'will just guarantee exactly the bad jobs and eroded national pride you fear most. Be smart: Make a few sacrifices now to build peace and national pride in the future.' The message is pitch-perfect: like something Clinton would say, except sincere."

3. Clark believes in fighting the war on terrorism

. . . Clark points out that we need homeland security -- but Bush policies have meant laying off cops and firefighters. We need to pursue terrorist networks through international institutions and alliances -- but administration arrogance has guaranteed that we lack influence in any country that we're not actually invading. We need peacekeepers and spies and development experts -- but the Rumsfeld policy in Iraq and elsewhere is to load all burdens on the Army, which can't take them.

Clark accuses the administration of going after states because those are the nails it sees -- given that armies that invade states in pitched battles are the only hammers it knows how to use. Clark doesn't criticize this primarily because it's immoral (though he thinks it hurts immeasurably our image abroad) but because it will get a lot of us killed, while poisoning the good will that should be the country's strongest weapon in the war against terrorist violence and the transnational networks that practice it.

On all these points, Clark seems clearly right. Just as important, this is a message that will sell where pacifism, conspiracy-mongering, or pretending al-Qaeda doesn't exist will not.

A homeland security-specific address is apparently on the horizon. Let's hope it blows this "We're fighting terrorism there so we don't have to fight it here" nonsense out of the water.

4. Clark clearly casts himself as the person making policy, not one of the people debating it.

When it comes to foreign policy, Clark is confident -- to the point, as universally noted, of arrogance. I say better this than Dubya or Dean, neither of whom combines his own arrogance with a tendency to know what he's talking about.

After reading the depth and intensity with which Clark has thought about foreign strategy, I realize why his position on the Iraq resolution looks like a waffle but isn't. For the last decade or more, he's clearly been thinking, "Where and how would I fight if I were in charge?" not "Which position would I take if someone asked my opinion?" So he doesn't care what resolution Congress should have passed (and, if he could be more honest than he can be, would probably point out that Congressional resolutions have never prevented a modern president from starting a war). He probably thinks that Congress should give presidents lots of discretion and that presidents should know how the hell to use it. And given that discretion, he wouldn't have fought in Iraq because there was no immediate threat.

This would be a dangerous outlook in a senator -- but is not a bad one in a president. And it explains all the waffles. I'm still waiting for Kerry to explain his.

Apart from its clemency for the resolution "bobble," Sabl's observation implies that while Clark may seem insufferably presumptuous to make his first run for public office as a presidential candidate (and I think that's at the heart of why so many generals, most of them older and more "experienced" than Clark, have ganged up on him), his political style is far more suited to a world stage than it is the relatively narrower concerns of a congressional constituency.

5. Clark doesn't think the personal is political.

. . . His summary of "American virtues" is "tolerance, freedom, and fairness" -- about as good a slogan for the Democratic Party as I can think of. His book exudes a welcome politics of "live and let live" rather than "endorse my pain." This is the kind of liberalism that could actually be popular.

Dubya is planning to make gay marriage a wedge issue in the campaign. If Clark is the candidate, "bring it on." I can already imagine what Clark would say about gays in the military: "What soldiers do in their personal lives is not my concern. And we should stop the disgraceful practice of persecuting people to unearth their private relationships. If a soldier impedes combat readiness by trying to pick up a man in his unit in a war zone, I'll sign his dishonorable discharge myself -- and smile as I do it."

And Sabl is particularly astute about my favorite Clark theme: why the US Army is at the leading edge of social policy.

6. Remember that the Army is Biosphere II: a piece of Sweden stuck inside a country that's becoming Brazil.

If Clark seems to lack opinions on domestic policy, it's because he's spent his life in a place that's seceded from domestic policy.. . . The Army has people with low incomes, but ensures basic living standards and adequate opportunities for all. Clark's book convincingly articulates a case for making the rest of the country like that. . . .

It's been said that Clark wants America to be strong at home so it can be strong abroad, not the other way around. It's true, and a bit jarring. But given Clark's clear conviction that Republican policies are undermining our economic security and the culture of opportunity that makes us so attractive abroad, this actually works better than I initially thought it could. (Look for Clark to do very well among Latinos, and immigrants generally -- or kids of immigrants, like me. He understands the American Dream, and how Republicans are running it off the rails.)

Prof. Sabl concludes:

Bottom line: Clark is a throwback, a Rip Van Winkle, a pluralistic, optimistic, Greatest Generation-style politician lost, like Howard the Duck, in a world he never made. He's further outside the mainstream political culture than can possibly be imagined. This is what makes him so striking, so hard to parse, and so clearly the best candidate.

Note to Chris Lehane: a candidate whose written words can convert a professionally trained skeptic doesn't need to point out that he was on a stretcher when Howard Dean was skiing. Are you trying to be Rove lite? Better Gen. Clark should engage the doctor on his true and current feelings about gun control while bravely opposing, as he has recently, abuses of freedom, such as the right to carry concealed weapons.

Officials seek to distance Bush policy from RNC "terror" ad

Today's New York Times carries a "Washington Memo" by David E. Sanger exploring the schizophrenia at the heart of the current administration. Headlined "When Foreign Policy Aims and Campaign Needs Clash," the articles reports, "Mr. Bush's foreign policy team was stunned by the Republican National Committee's new advertising campaign. The spot hailed the president as a man who pre-empts first and asks questions later. "

"What was that all about?" one of Mr. Bush's senior aides asked after returning from Britain, where the president took his appeal for collaborative action against common enemies to new heights. Saying the advertisement ignored Mr. Bush's recent series of speeches, the official complained, "Don't these guys read the papers?"

That's a rhetorical question, right?

Another official exclaimed, "Karl Rove ought to learn that any ad he broadcasts in Iowa gets rebroadcast in Italy." Hey wait, didn't the Italians watch Dubya wipe an emotional tear from his eyes in Baghdad on Thanksgiving, before going on to say to the troops to whom he was serving some mighty tasty looking yams, "You are defeating the terrorists here in Iraq, so that we don't have to face them in our own country." How could they still feel insecure and doubtful about America's global "quality of life" doctrine? Haven't they benefited from Bush's concern for the environment, the AID's epidemic and the war on drugs?

Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie knows a good thing when he sees it; the meme that an Iraq full of terrorists means there aren't enough to go around in Los Angeles is a win, win position, if completely illogical. Gillespie, a master of up-is-down, asserts, "If we do not fight the war against terror in places like Baghdad and Kabul, we are more likely to have it fought in places like Boston and Kansas." Or New York when the reckless Republicans once again expose the battered and short-changed business center to turmoil and tension during their convention. Shouldn't this have been Fargo's year to welcome the trustees of world freedom?

So, if we aren't attacked, it's because we're paying the price in Iraq? And if we are, only a cowardly Democrat would suggest that George Bush was in any way responsible for not working homeland security. In a national race likely to be close, it's encouraging to see Karl Rove working just as hard to alienate Republican moderates as he does to smear Democrats. And in the meantime, the list of Republican crimes against democracy mount up in virtual obscurity: Enron, Valerie Plame, Guantanamo, Jessica Lynch, etc.

Not to mention this immediately to be forgotten bit of extortion surrounding the rebellion of moderate-to-conservative Republicans against the Medicare bill. Robert Novak, human resources consultant for the CIA, notes in a column that sounds like a Sopranos episode, "GOP pulled no punches in struggle for Medicare bill."

During 14 years in the Michigan Legislature and 11 years in Congress, Rep. Nick Smith had never experienced anything like it. House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, in the wee hours last Saturday morning, pressed him to vote for the Medicare bill. But Smith refused. Then things got personal.

Smith, self term-limited, is leaving Congress. His lawyer son Brad is one of five Republicans seeking to replace him from a GOP district in Michigan's southern tier. On the House floor, Nick Smith was told business interests would give his son $100,000 in return for his father's vote. When he still declined, fellow Republican House members told him they would make sure Brad Smith never came to Congress. After Nick Smith voted no and the bill passed, Duke Cunningham of California and other Republicans taunted him that his son was dead meat.

Building a better democracy, one happy Republican at a time.

New video - Iowa Debate 11/24/03

Video link: complete Clark segments
Transcript

First ad tells us "Wes Clark is a big stud and a smart guy" - New Republic

In a quick survey of the Democratic candidates' current TV spots, Ryan Lizza suggests:

The newest ad in the race is also the most powerful. Watching the Clark campaign stumble throughout the autumn, it has been easy to forget that the whole rationale for his candidacy is his biography. His first ad attempts to correct this. . . . We learn that Clark "stopped a campaign of terror" (in Kosovo), "liberated a people" (ditto), and "speaks four languages." It's probably the first ad to elevate multilingualism to a campaign issue. But it does a better job explaining why Clark is in the race than his nine weeks of uninspired campaigning. Wes Clark is a big stud and a smart guy, the ad tells us. And, for now, that's all you need to know.

Hey, don't knock multi-lingualism. It's not so long ago the irrepressible Don Rumsfeld snapped at a German reporter, "I've made myself clear. Don't you understand English?" While WKC's Russian may be more useful for reading great novels than conducting diplomacy these days, his command of Spanish and French has to add a worldly luster to his conversations with potential allies. It beats inventing "Freedom Fries" and thinking oneself the smartest kid in second grade.

"Bush a man of fierce anger," says former aide

Yet David Frum, former Bush speechwriter, is convinced Dubya is the "The Right Man," as his apologia for the president by the same name would have it. The man who wrote the "axis of evil" speech is quoted in a fascinating psychological study of George Bush, written by Oliver James for Britain's Guardian under the title, "So George, how do you feel about your mom and dad?" While James' conclusions about the Bushs' family dynamics are entertainingly over the top, the piece combines some interesting background information with psychobabble of a relatively high order.

The article's opening anecdote is deliciously outre:

As the alcoholic George Bush approached his 40th birthday in 1986, he had achieved nothing he could call his own. He was all too aware that none of his educational and professional accomplishments would have occurred without his father. He felt so low that he did not care if he lived or died. Taking a friend out for a flight in a Cessna aeroplane, it only became apparent he had not flown one before when they nearly crashed on take-off. Narrowly avoiding stalling a few times, they crash-landed and the friend breathed a sigh of relief - only for Bush to rev up the engine and take off again.

Not long afterwards, staring at his vomit-spattered face in the mirror, this dangerously self-destructive man fell to his knees and implored God to help him and became a teetotalling, fundamentalist Christian. David Frum, his speechwriter, described the change: "Sigmund Freud imported the Latin pronoun id to describe the impulsive, carnal, unruly elements of the human personality. [In his youth] Bush's id seems to have been every bit as powerful and destructive as Clinton's id. But sometime in Bush's middle years, his id was captured, shackled and manacled, and locked away."

Though Bush is more reckless and arrogant than ever, it's reassuring to know that he conquered his drinking problem with the help of a fundamentalist faith that all problems come in just two colors, black and white.

Apparently, the younger George Bush was a constant source of innocent merriment to both his friends and family:

Contemporaries at Yale say he was like the John Belushi character in the film Animal House, a drink-fuelled funseeker.

He was aggressively anti-intellectual and hostile to east-coast preppy types like his father, sometimes cruelly so. On one occasion he walked up to a matronly woman at a smart cocktail party and asked, "So, what's sex like after 50, anyway?"

A direct and loutish challenge to his father's posh sensibility came aged 25, after he had drunkenly crashed a car. "I hear you're looking for me," he sneered at his father, "do you want to go mano a mano, right here?"

As he grew older, the fury towards his father was increasingly directed against himself in depressive drinking. But it was not all his father's fault. There was also his insensitive and domineering mother.

See, money can't buy happiness, but surprise, happiness isn't what Bush is about:

The outcome of this childhood was what psychologists call an authoritarian personality. Authoritarianism was identified shortly after the second world war as part of research to discover the causes of fascism. As the name suggests, authoritarians impose the strictest possible discipline on themselves and others - the sort of regime found in today's White House, where prayers precede daily business, appointments are scheduled in five-minute blocks, women's skirts must be below the knee and Bush rises at 5.45am, invariably fitting in a 21-minute, three-mile jog before lunch.

That little confusion about whether Muslims and Christians worship the same god doesn't trouble the president.

. . . It is certain that however much Bush may sometimes seem like a buffoon, he is also powered by massive, suppressed anger towards anyone who challenges the extreme, fanatical beliefs shared by him and a significant slice of his citizens - in surveys, half of them also agree with the statement "the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word".

Bush's deep hatred, as well as love, for both his parents explains how he became a reckless rebel with a death wish. He hated his father for putting his whole life in the shade and for emotionally blackmailing him. He hated his mother for physically and mentally badgering him to fulfil her wishes. But the hatred also explains his radical transformation into an authoritarian fundamentalist. By totally identifying with an extreme version of their strict, religion-fuelled beliefs, he jailed his rebellious self. From now on, his unconscious hatred for them was channelled into a fanatical moral crusade to rid the world of evil.

As Frum put it: "Id-control is the basis of Bush's presidency but Bush is a man of fierce anger." That anger now rules the world.

Now, almost unnoticed thus far by the press, Wesley Clark has been hinting at this inherent instability in Bush's character, first on "Face the Nation" last week and recently in the Iowa debate.

Someone, probably Chris Lehane, thinks that Clark can emphasize his "objectivity" by paying George Bush snarky, left-handed compliments, but I think he's only serving to show that there's entirely too much anger and testosterone flying around both sides of the aisle. As Clark told Bob Schieffer,

There's a lot of anger in this country about George Bush and the Republican Party. President Bush ran as a compassionate conservative. He proved instead to be reckless in getting us into Iraq, radical in terms of his social policies in the United States, and--and people are outraged by that as well as by the 2000 election, and--and Governor Dean has been very effective at--at exploiting the anger that's out there residually.

But I'm not running to bash George Bush. A lot of Americans really love him. They love what he represents, a man who's overcome adversity in his life from alcoholism and pulled his marriage back together and--and moved forward. But I'm running because I think this country must have better leadership in moving forward.

More subtly but perhaps not advisedly, Gen. Clark told Tom Brokaw during the Iowa debate:

" . . The Republican Party does not have the monopoly on faith in this country, and there are just as many Democrats who believe in religion, they go to church, they read the Bible, they say their prayers, they believe in God as there are Republicans. And I think that you’ll see that in this next election.

I think what you had in 2000 may have been unique. And I think maybe the president, President Bush, had a compelling personal story about that. . . .

The coming campaign is going to be unbelievably ugly, and anger may be what fuels the eventual Democratic nominee as well as the weekend warrior occupying the White House, John Edwards pleas for optimism not withstanding. Bringing Bush's unfortunate past to the fore will not sway a single voter convinced George Bush is living proof the lord works in mysterious ways, and in fact, intervened on Bush's behalf in 2000 to save America.

I'm undecided on whether the new displays of anger Clark is showing are only attempts to grill some red meat, Dean style, or whether he's really getting po'd now that he's constantly put on the defensive. I'm not so sure that I want to see Howard Dean and Wesley Clark get in each other's face, nor do I believe George's Bush's psyche is a valid issue. His record speaks for itself.

New video - Face the Nation 11/23/03

Video link for Wesley Clark on "Face the Nation," CBS 11/23/03

Somebody please do a Nexis search for this man so he stops being blindsided; in the time between his retirement in May of 2000 and at least until the build up to the war in mid-2002, he was pretty obviously looking for a job. While I'm sure he appreciated the opportunity to dabble in venture capitalism, Wes Clark was apparently determined to get back into public service. How else to explain the gratuitously flattering remarks he made not only at partisan fundraisers, where kind words for the cabinet would be good manners, but now we find, in an interview with Matt Lauer where his praise of Don Rumsfeld seems more spontaneous? Frankly, Gen. Clark hasn't found it any easier to change careers than a factory worker forced to take a job ringing a register. It adds poignancy to his quest for those of us who feel a kinship with the man but these candid camera glimpses of Clark in interview mode are just as pathetic as any eager job seeker's given he didn't get the job after all.

Clark's response to Bob Schieffer this morning re-opened a door he's been making progress at closing: at least they don't ask him if he's a Democrat anymore; they just ask him why he's so crazy about certain Republicans.

SCHIEFFER: You have been very critical of the Pentagon leadership, of the White House leadership, from the beginning of this war, anyway. But it caused me to look back at some of the things you've said in the past, General, and I want to read you one of them. In December of 2000, you told Matt Lauer, on the "Today" show, what you thought of the president's election of Don Rumsfeld to be secretary of Defense and here's what you said. `I think it's an inspired choice. He's got great experience. He's got great international stature. He knows the issues. He's coming into familiar territory.' Then last week Dan Rather asked you if you would fire Rumsfeld and here's what you said last week. (Excerpt from "60 Minutes II")

I think that the response that can't be said here, is that three weeks after Dubya was elected, Wes Clark had so little confidence in his capacity to serve as commander-in-chief, he was sincerely glad to see Bush surround himself with grown-ups. But why Wesley Clark would have assumed good intentions of Donald Rumsfeld when he and Dick Cheney went out of their way to put the young Major and White House Fellow in his place over 25 years ago is anybody's guess. But as Gen. Clark goes on to tell us, his interview with Mr. Rumsfeld made it clear there was no place for Wes Clark in the administration's new world order.

Gen. CLARK: . . I went to see Secretary Rumsfeld right after 9/11. And as he explained to me, he read my book on Kosovo, and he said, `You know, we've learned our lessons. We're never letting anyone tell us what we can or can't bomb again.' Had we had that discussion before I would have considered him to be secretary of Defense, I couldn't have appointed him because the principal lesson of Kosovo is that if you work with allies and if you work within international law, you can achieve strategically decisive results without using necessary decisive force. That's what we did in Kosovo. That's what Don Rumsfeld failed to do, and George Bush, in Iraq.

I suffer enough when I think about the Republican Convention bringing turmoil and possible calamity to New York, my home town, without seeing my candidate Willie Horton'd. If Shelton's speaking out of school about issues of "character and integrity" while WKC's stating Donald Rumsfeld was eminently qualified to become SecDef proves, as opposed to depicts, Gen. Clark as inherently slippery, hence untrustworthy, then I suppose there's a legitimate news angle there. But the way the analytical press, with the notable exception of Chris Matthews, is treating Clark reminds one of attempts to keep Democratic-leaning minorities away from the polls: the general's message and valid insights, along with the skills he has to back them up, are marginalized.

Writing for the Center for Media Literacy, Kathleen Jamieson noted the media's collaboration with the Republican advertising campaign of 1988 designed to stigmatize Michael Dukakis as "soft on crime."

The most analyzed and talked about image of the campaign completely sidestepped the question of what either major candidate would do if elected president. Known as the "furlough ad," it depended on innuendo and visual images to link Michael Dukakis with the supposed dangers of a prison furlough program and therefore with a dangerous breed of liberalism.

The result was not positive for democracy:

I realized that what these typical voters were learning from the news and political advertising they saw was everything they needed to know not to be voters, but to be campaign consultants.

TV viewers understood, for example, that George Bush's ad about prison furloughs was designed to make Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis look "soft on crime."

But they didn't know what either candidate planned to do about crime, homelessness, economic policy, the environment or other major issues of the day. A major crisis such as the savings and loan bailout--one of the most expensive giveaways in U.S. history--was ongoing at the time but never seriously debated.

Curious about the context of Gen. Clark's comments to Lauer, and lacking Nexis, I googled on "Clark Rumsfeld Lauer." The second hit took me to "RNC Research." There I learned:

CLARK DOES ABOUT FACE In "60 Minutes II" Interview, Clark Turns On Sec. Rumsfeld And Claims He Didn't See Iraq Question Coming

I never found another citation for the Lauer interview that expanded on the sound bite, but I am realizing that this is indeed an important issue for Clark to work through on a deeply personal level. His habit of making affirmative statements that over time contradict each other will only hurt him fatally if he continues to insist, Kerry-like, on perfect "consistency." When he truly understands for himself why it is his answers seem to vary widely depending on the context, he will be able to disarm his enemies. But this will only happen when his responses to accusations of slipperiness are informed with the kind of gut conviction he's newly displayed when he justifies humanitarian intervention. Humanitarian intervention might well be the kind of issue that could lose one an election but talking about it sure beats reminiscing about Don and Matt.

A poster to a Clark Yahoo group put it this way:

The joke is this is all they have. Clark didn't take drugs, didn't drink and drive, and didn't cheat on his wife. He is guilty of being too nice in his praise for people when they are about to start a new job. But it looks bad when you criticize someone after praising them so highly.

Clark is giving away his power in a misguided effort to be "regular." No one can undertake a run for the presidency, be it ultimately successful or not, and not undergo a kind of "human revolution" of one's spirit. I believe that Wes Clark will have a kind of "St. Paul" moment, as Tim Russert rather snarkily put it last week, and it will be about his place in the world. For him to become the kind of leader we need him to be, he will have to stop giving away his power, and act as our surrogate in the wars to come, just as when Gen. Clark poked Milosevic in the chest and said "We will bomb you." Milosevic didn't have to call Sec. Cohen for confirmation.

New video - David Letterman 11/20/03 Complete

Wesley Clark on David Letterman Part 1
Wesley Clark on David Letterman Part 2
Wesley Clark on David Letterman Part 3

Clark TV spot rates rave from Slate

Well, not totally. In their recurring column "Damned spot: Political ads dissected and explained," Slate's William Saletan and Jacob Weisberg agree on the spot's aesthetic effectiveness and disagree on its political correctness.

Saletan leads with, "How do I love this ad? Let me count the ways."

I love it because it's a story. It doesn't simply characterize the candidate or organize his merits in the form of an argument. . . Sometimes the best way to catch people's ears is to whisper. And sometimes the best way to catch their eyes is to show them something still, simple, and powerful, a reprieve from the chaos of the medium.

. . . The risk most people associate with electing a general to the presidency is authoritarianism. The ad does a nice job of dissolving that concern, too. As the narrator says, "Now, when we need a leader," the screen shows Clark smiling with his hand on the shoulder of a soldier, looking more collegial than bossy. Later, as the narrator says Clark "liberated a people," the screen shows Clark swept up in a joyous crowd of what appear to be Kosovar Albanians. He isn't standing before them or above them. He's one of them. As the setting shifts from battlefields to classrooms and town halls, the pictures continue to show the friendly general on a level with, or even slightly below, those whom he seeks to lead. The message is: Real leadership doesn't need trappings.

As an ancient Chinese proverb has it, "If you want to lead the people march behind them."

Jacob Weisberg in reply detects hypocrisy:

". . . What really bothers me about this ad is the conflict it points to in Clark's views about military intervention. . . . Why did his determination to fight on humanitarian grounds in Kosovo not extend to Iraq? In the scale of his despotism, Saddam Hussein was Stalin to Milosevic's Mussolini. Saddam's efforts at ethnic cleansing and repression were bigger and more vicious than anything Milosevic was capable of. Clark objects to the way Bush went about making war on Iraq, and so do I. But everything Clark says now is calculated to leave the impression, true or not, that he wouldn't have used the military to end the humanitarian and human rights catastrophe in Iraq.

What distinguishes these two instances of humanitarian intervention isn't principle, but politics. Kosovo was Clark's war. Iraq is Bush's. The general's self-serving use of one war to flay his enemy for the other is hardly shocking. Yet I resent this ad for trying to wash the contradiction away with swelling violins.

True, the ad leverages the "Saving Pvt. Ryan" emotionalism of Clark's military service rather than the geo-political implications of his Kosovo mission. But WKC's pragmatic approach to "elective" wars need not be written off as merely expedient or arbitrary. In response to Weisberg's objections, I'm sure he would contend that the US's commitment to stability in the Balkans, as well as the imminent threat of ethnic cleansing, distinguishes the Kosovo campaign from the invasion of Iraq.

Certainly Clark's background gives him great credibility when he states as he did to Dan Rather, "[The plan for Iraq] didn’t work through to the political considerations that were what the war was all about." Clark is consistently clear in his position that winning a war is far different from winning the peace.

So what distinctions might he draw between Kosovo and Iraq? Firstly, he did believe (incorrectly) that the threat of both heavy bombing and a land invasion would force Milosevic to back off his oppression of the Kosovars and return to the negotiating table. There was never the serious intention to commit up to 200,000 infantry to the mission; Clark knew as well as anybody, we simply didn't have that many forces available, then or now. Agree with him or not, his determination to use a fully committed ground invasion plan as a threat to Milosevic is consistent with his ideal resolution on the Iraq war: show the UN and Hussein that we were deadly serious but continue to build consensus for our plan of last resort both at home and abroad.

Secondly, from a practical standpoint, the wrong kind of war on Iraq would clearly destabilize a region already prone to an epidemic of internal civil conflicts. Iraq is many times the size of Kosovo and would necessarily require a commitment of resources that would not only distract from the effort to eliminate al Qaeda but jeopardize our military commitments in regions as yet unrelated to the war on terror. Clark's insistence on the option of ground forces in Kosovo, his reluctance to commit them in Iraq, and his belief that military intervention is "always, always" a last resort are not in the least inconsistent with each other. The common thread is that America's irresistible military might provides the most security when it is used as leverage for strengthening an ever-evolving panoply of coalitions and as a measured, stabilizing response to ad hoc threats such as 9/11. Humanitarian ideals must always be balanced against a realistic assessment of our odds for success, militarily, politically, culturally, and internationally.

New Video - 60 Minutes II, 11/19/03

Video link: Wesley Clark speaks with Dan Rather for CBS 60 Minutes II, 11/19/2003

Dan Rather's respectful attitude and 60 Minutes' high production values mark WKC's debut on a mainstream TV magazine as something of a milestone. By now Gen. Clark's deep emotion in describing the justification for the Kosovo intervention has been widely noted, but the show was also significant for showing how comfortable he is in his body. His physical charisma was powerfully on display as well as his ironic sense of humour and his sometimes blunt candor.

CBSnews.com is offering both the transcript of the segment as broadcast and the complete interview with Rather (first of three parts starts here.)

The segment broadcast has Clark condemning the wrongheadedness of the Bush administration in terms as stark but more eloquent than Gephardt's epithet, "miserable failure." To my mind, Clark has managed the difficult feat of advocating better treatment of the military ranks without politicizing them in an obviously self-serving manner. Speaking of how he and his reluctant wife Gert came to their decision to run, he told Rather, ". . . Finally, it came down to the anger inside at the way men and women in the armed forces were being abused and used by the administration."

Addressing yet again Gen. Shelton's mean-spirited smear, Clark framed their dispute in terms of his duty to his mission rather than as a pissing contest between macho guys: "It just turned out that we had differing views about the importance of preventing another round of genocide, and how to do it," says Clark. "And I thought, you know, when you're a senior officer, you have an obligation not just to answer the mail, but to speak up and to speak out until you're told not to any longer, until you're told, 'We're just not going to do it.'"

Ánd this seems consistent with the only evidence to emerge that supports Shelton's suggestion that his rift with Clark was a matter of honor, not policy. A lengthy and well-researched profile of WKC in the Boston Globe reports:

. . . Clark became convinced that he needed a backup plan for ground forces despite opposition from the Pentagon and the statement by Clinton. Ivo Daalder, a former aide in Clinton's National Security Council who also was briefed by the White House during the war, said Clark developed a "secret cell" of a half-dozen officers from Fort Leavenworth in Kansas to develop a ground-war plan.

"On his own nickel, without anybody's approval, he got a ground war plan," said Daalder, co-author of a book about Kosovo, "Winning Ugly." Clark "didn't ask Shelton for it because he knew the answer. He got the secret cell, a planning cell, that was going to do planning on a ground invasion that was not authorized by anybody, but he argued, rightly in my mind, that he needed to figure out what the options were going to be."

Clark, asked about the plan in an interview, said, "I went through Shelton and the Army to get the ground war planning started. Shelton OK'd it." Shelton declined requests for an interview, but the matter raises questions about whether this is one of the reasons that the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has questioned Clark's "integrity and character."

Clearly, under the circumstances, Shelton felt betrayed and undermined and firing a junior seen to be insubordinate would not be unjustifiable. But to drag Clark's integrity in as an excuse is to equate behavior consistent with WKC's training and deeply held principles with an ethical or moral lapse on a par with lying, cheating, or stealing. Frankly, a Wesley Clark capable of such selfish deception could hardly have survived West Point's zero-tolerance honor code, let alone graduate first in his class.

But Gen. Clark's most sincere and possibly controversial statements were made in support of military intervention on behalf of human rights. Showing Mr. Rather graphic photographs of the violence in Kosovo, Clark spoke softly with a powerful intensity:

"This is the casualness, the pornography of violence against civilians.

"This is not real war. This is war against unarmed people, and I just couldn't bear the thought that the United States would stand by and allow this to happen.. . . You know, there are people in this case who said, 'We don't have any interest here. If there was oil here, we'd stop this.' So we'd rather fight for oil than to save lives? I don't think so. . . I don't think that's what this country really believes or what we stand for. So I, I do get emotional about this. Because when you can do good, you should."

Stormin' Norman would have pulled young Wes off the debate team for his own good

Dislike and distrust of Wesley Clark run deep and long among the army's elite upper echelon. Their ambiguous dis-endorsements of Clark hint at ambitiousness that borders on opportunism and a character informed by narcissistic amorality (or am I confusing WKC with Gov. Schwarzenegger?) When a figure as well known as Norman Schwarzkopf, the hero of Desert Storm, weighs in with a remark like:

Hugh Shelton said he was fired because of matters of character and integrity. That is a very, very damning statement which says, if that’s the case, he’s not the right man for president, as far as I’m concerned.

the natural tendency would be to think that where there's smoke, there's fire. A "real muddy-boots grunt," in the words of Col. David Hackworth (Ret.), Gen. Schwarzkopf and Gen. Clark go back almost forty years to when Clark was an underclassman and Schwarzkopf an instructor at West Point. To my knowledge, the two never served together after Clark was commissioned so what do we make of Schwarzkopf's resentment of the younger man's failure to take his sage advice at the beginning of his career?

In a piece that pulls together most of what is known about Gen. Clark's personal background, the Boston Globe tells us:

"Clark made a crucial decision midway through his West Point education. He quit the swim team to join the debate team, which offered him not only an intellectual avenue he craved but also a way to get off campus on many weekends. His debate coach, William Taylor, vividly recalls receiving a complaint one day from Captain Norman Schwarzkopf, then a West Point instructor who would go on to command the first Gulf War.

"I don't like what you are doing with cadet Wes Clark," Schwarzkopf said, according to Taylor. "He is not competing with varsity athletics. He is not socializing with the rest of his classmates. He is off doing debate tournaments. You are undermining the professionalism of this young man."

"I don't know who you are," Taylor told Schwarzkopf, and after defending the virtues of debate, hung up the phone. Schwarzkopf could not be reached for comment, but Taylor said the incident illustrates the tensions that would follow Clark throughout his career." (ed: As an aside, it's interesting to note that Schwarzkopf himself was not the happiest of campers at the time, since "I had graduated from West Point to be an infantryman, not an instructor, and I felt that's where I belonged.")

Can we just spit out this mouthful of sour grapes now and move on? The whole media-nourished meme that "the generals hate Wes Clark" comes down to Shelton, Schwarzkopf, Franks, et al. wondering who the hell Clark thinks he is to run for president when they were bigger, bolder, and better generals than he ever was. Unless you're a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, what kind of person of "character and integrity" impugns the character and integrity of a former subordinate, against whom he never made any charge whatsoever of the kind at the time when such charges would have truly involved national security, and then refuses to either apologize or justify the slur? And what kind of man's man repeats the canard without knowing what Shelton meant any more than we do?

Gentlemen, your time is past. Thank you for your years of loyal and brave service, but the kind of gossip you're retailing in your golden years is better left to Paris Hilton and Shannen Doherty. Write another book, play some golf, but get the hell out of Wesley Clark's way. He's got work to do.

Well, now that's straightened out, anyway

On the thinnest of evidence, the right has from the very beginning of Gen. Clark's campaign sought to portray him as flaky, impulsive, inconsistent, tongue-tied and bumbling, when he wasn't looking in the mirror and admiring his reflection as Leader of the Free World. Given conservatives' preference for Middle East military intelligence experts who consider Islam to be the devil's work, it is strange that they consider Wesley Clark to be the only general to ever rise to four star rank with the common sense and mental stability of a special needs child.

Nowhere was that more apparent than in the delight with which those who would diminish Clark greeted his alleged belief in "time travel," subject to subsequent analysis by such highly regarded pundits as Dave Letterman. Comments on the execrable Newsmax.com were typical. In an opinion piece titled "Cuckoo Clark," former New York congressman Dan Frisa, coming from a compassionate, conservative, fair and balanced perspective, noted:

Former four-star general and newly minted Democrat presidential candidate Wesley Clark’s comments and behavior raise serious doubts about his mental and emotional stability and his very fitness to hold the highest office in the land.

Campaigning in New Hampshire last month, Clark discussed his fervent belief in time travel: "I happen to believe that mankind can do it. I've argued with physicists about it, I've argued with best friends about it. I just have to believe it. It's my only faith-based initiative."

What was he thinking?

Well, surprise, surprise, what Gen. Clark was "thinking" was not what was originally reported and then gleefully disseminated by those who feel he is far less qualified to lead than someone who has managed a baseball team.

Brian McWilliams, the Wired reporter who started it all, has been good enough to come forward with a more accurate version of what Clark said.

On September 30, I published an article at Wired News entitled "Clark Campaigns at Light Speed."

The article reported on remarks made by Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark during a campaign event Sept. 27 in New Castle, New Hampshire. At the event, Clark stated his belief that humans will someday be able to travel faster than the speed of light.

Due to a faulty understanding of physics on my part, I originally reported that Clark had professed a belief in the possibility of time travel. While some experts have previously said that travelling faster than light implies time travel, Clark in fact did not specifically profess an interest in time travel. . . .

Unfortunately, my reporting error is travelling at light speed and has been duplicated in media outlets around the world. Newspapers including the Washington Post and New York Times as well as late-night TV show hosts Jay Leno and Dave Letterman have borrowed the time travel idea from my story.

Given the current impossibility of rewinding time, my efforts now to undo this mistake may be futile. But I hope to prevent this mis-reporting of Clark's remarks from spreading further. To that end, I have made an audio recording of the relevant section of Clark's Sept. 27 campaign speech available here: http://www.pc-radio.com/clark-nasa.mp3

. . .

Sincerely,
Brian S. McWilliams
PC-radio.com

Kind of reminds you of Clark's contention that the opposition likes to find evidence that supports their positions instead of vice versa.

Presidential Candidate Selector at selectsmart.com

Multiple choice quiz at selectsmart.com matches your preferred positions in 17 different categories with a wide variety of candidates beyond the ten getting national attention.

The candidates' positions have been determined first by the candidate's actions, then their public votes, followed by their public statements, and whenever possible, special interest group rankings of the candidate have been factored in.

There are also links to the bios and positions of each of the candidates that get listed in your results, which seem pretty accurate for Wesley Clark, the candidate with whom I'm most familiar.

My own results were:
1. Your ideal theoretical candidate. (100%)
2. Dean, Gov. Howard, VT - Democrat (84%)
3. Kucinich, Rep. Dennis, OH - Democrat (81%)
4. Clark, Retired General Wesley K., AR - Democrat (74%)
5. Edwards, Senator John, NC - Democrat (72%)
6. Gephardt, Rep. Dick, MO - Democrat (65%)
7. Kerry, Senator John, MA - Democrat (62%)
8. Sharpton, Reverend Al - Democrat (61%)
9. Lieberman, Senator Joe, CT - Democrat (47%)
10. LaRouche, Lyndon H. Jr. - Democrat (47%)
11. Libertarian Candidate (34%)
12. Moseley-Braun, Former Senator Carol, IL - Democrat (25%)
13. Bush, President George W. - Republican (12%)
14. Phillips, Howard - Constitution (3%)

As a prototypical New York Upper West Side knee-jerk liberal, it doesn't suprise me to find Dean and Kucinich scoring higher than Gen. Clark (Kucinich reminds me of a really good high school teacher, the uplifter, and Dean of the Dean of Boys, the disciplinarian. Neither of them strikes me as a president.)

Of course, the quiz deliberately leaves out questions of "electability," which is made all the more apparent by their results to date:

39% Kucinich, Cong. Dennis, OH - Democrat
13% Bush, George W. - US President
11% Dean, Gov. Howard, VT - Democrat
7% Green Party Candidate
6% Your ideal theoretical candidate.
6% Kerry, Senator John, MA - Democrat
6% Libertarian Candidate
3% Moseley-Braun, Former Senator Carol IL - Democrat
2% Gephardt, Cong. Dick, MO - Democrat
2% Edwards, Senator John, NC - Democrat
2% Lieberman Senator Joe CT - Democrat
1% Your ideal theoretical candidate.

What makes this all that more odd is that there have been over 140,000 responses.

New Video - Meet the Press, 11/16/03, Complete in two parts

Video link for Part 1
Video link for Part 2
Transcript

Wesley Clark: I think there was a window of opportunity at the end of the military operation to be able to bring the Iraqi people on board.

They could have seen a really smooth effective, impressive U.S. Occupation.

American soldiers could have been in every village, they could have known the names of the people there.

They could have provided food and water right away.

But we didn't do that.

There was no plan for that.

And, as the weeks went by and this insurgency began, the target of the insurgency is the will of the Iraqi people to resist the American presence.

And every helicopter shot down strengthens those in Iraq who would use the Americans to gain their own power inside Iraq.

And they would strike the Americans; they would show their power vis-a-vis the Americans.

It's those cheering crowds in fallujah that all this is directed toward.

I don't know if it's too late but I know that window's closing very quickly.

In order to take advantage of this time, we must move right now to give authority back to the Iraqis.

I know June is too late.

Video links for Clarkbot

Rick Keller of the exceptionally helpful Clark scrape Clarkbot recently informed us that his bot is limited to posts that contain "Wesley Clark." While he has been one of the best drivers towards TSWL, I realized that he never picks up on my video pickups; I wasn't thinking RSS and left out "Wesley Clark" in the post text.

So in the interest of completeness here's the story thus far:

CSPAN video search

Chris Matthews on Iraq, Hardball MSNBC 11/13/03

Buchanan & Press, MSNBC 11/10/03

Planned Parenthood debate, NH, 11/5/03

Laura Knoy interview, NH Public Radio, 11/5/03

Rock the Vote, Boston MA, 11/4/03 - Complete Clark

Rock the Vote 30 second spot, Boston MA, 11/4/03

NH HQ opening, 11/2/03

E. Drew rebuts military critics, Inside Politics 10/31/03

Lou Dobbs' interview, CNN 10/27/03

Chris Matthews' interview, Hardball 10/24/03

Critics Debate Clark's Military Record, NPR 10/16/03

Civilian Reserve speech, Hunter College, NYC 10/14/03

IA Town Meeting 10/6/03

DNC Fall Meeting 10/3/03

Town Hall Meeting NH 9/26/03

DNC Candidates Dinner 9/25/03

Indianapolis 9/23/03

Announcement Speech 9/17/03

"Sound Off With Sasha" 6/27/03

New Democrat Network 6/17/03

Hearing on U.S. Policy in Iraq 9/23/02

Nat'l Security for a New Era 11/14/01

New Video - Chris Matthews interview on Exit Strategy, Hardball 11/13/03

Video link

Perhaps it helps to be interviewed by someone whose approach is not deliberately provocative, but Gen. Clark and the irascible Chris Matthews seem to go together like peanut butter and jelly. WKC is back on form and concise in this rather detailed analysis of the situation on the ground in Iraq. And how's this for drawing a line in the sand? "There’s no innate strategic value in Iraq." Complete transcript here.

CLARK: I think it’s an emerging struggle. I think that what’s happening is that when you first come into a country like this, if you come in with enough force, with well-prepared plans, you intimidate those who might oppose you. The majority of the people are favorably impressed. They’re on your side. They want to see a positive change.

That was the promise that we gave them. But we didn’t come in with adequate forces. We did not come in with well-prepared plans on how to deal with the aftermath of war. And we showed certain vulnerabilities.

We gave these people who disliked us and wanted to fight against us a chance to get a foothold. And we demonstrated vulnerability sufficient to attract al Qaeda or other outside terrorists to come in and take their pot shots at Americans. And as they did, with each successive week of increasing violence, the Iraqi people themselves began to draw back.

And so what you’ve got is a mounting insurgency campaign. It’s a pickup campaign. I doubt that Saddam Hussein is very much in charge of it, if at all. But someone, some groups are. They’re forming together. They’re exchanging ideas. They’re working strategies. It will eventually coalesce into various regional fights. It may not ever be an organized national fight.

But these are people who obviously, strongly hold beliefs that they want us out of the country or they want to kill and injure Americans. And so, you know, it is as Rick Sanchez and others have said, it’s a war. It’s an insurgency and we have to deal with it as such.

But don’t give Saddam Hussein credit for this. This wasn’t his plan.

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you, General, you’re running for president on the Democratic side. If you win the nomination, you win the election, how would things be different in the occupation in Iraq?

CLARK: Well, we proposed last week, Chris, a success strategy. It involves three principle elements.

First, we’d form an international organization, an umbrella organization. The U.N. can’t do this, but the United States cannot either maintain exclusive control of the political and economic authorities in Iraq. So we need an international organization like we used in Bosnia.

Call it the Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Agency. Give all the countries who want to help a seat at the table. Put a non-American in charge, and let them assist in the political and check development of Iraq.

Secondly, give as much of the country back to the Iraqis as rapidly as possible. The Iraqi council is not working, but what is working is local democracy. Have each of the 50 local councils select two representatives to come to a central government. Indirect election of a central government, if you will. Let them start to have authority. Build staff, create policies and increasingly, take on more and more of the responsibilities of running Iraq.

And then as far as the military is concerned, I would bring NATO in. I’d put John Abizaid in Central Command reporting to NATO. Give our NATO allies a voice and a policy in the activities.

And at the same time, I’d be working to transform the U.S. footprint, make it lighter, smaller, more agile, more lethal, go after the insurgents directly and take away the kinds of soft logistics traffic that they like to hit.

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about the end game. How do you see that end game right now? I was just writing it up. And I want to know if it’s right or not.

We’d like to leave a moderate stable government in place. We’d like to leave the country in a couple of years and be basically cheered on the way out, like a good government would be. Is that the goal? A moderate stable government that we would leave behind and they like us as we leave?

CLARK: Chris, I think the most important element of this is that you can’t have a strategy, if you’re the administration and you don’t define what success is. This administration has not defined success.

And so your definition of it is OK. I’d define it a little bit differently. I’d say an Iraq strong enough to protect its own borders and maintain its integrity but not so strong that it threaten its neighbors. An Iraq that has enough internal security that it doesn’t have al Qaeda recruiting elements but not so much that it crushes democratic ideas. And an Iraq that has a government that is more or less representative of the people in some democratic form.

MATTHEWS: Suppose they elect a mullah style government like we have had in Iran at its worst all these years, since the hostage taking back in ’79. Suppose they elect a pretty violent or pretty zealous government of mullahs and shirah (ph), and they try to impose all that very conservative rule.
Shall we still leave and let them have it?

CLARK: Well, I don’t think you can occupy a country and fight against the will of the majority of the inhabitants. We’re fighting against a very small number of people in Iraq now. If the people of Iraq ever really turned against the United States there, then it’s time to leave.

There’s no innate strategic value in Iraq. We’re just trying to help them help themselves.

So what we have to think about is that what’s really going on over there is sort of three levels, Chris.

The top level is the warfare that we’re seeing, the insurgency, the counterinsurgency.

Below that are 24 million Iraqis struggling to survive and live their everyday lives and we’re trying to help them and doing a very good job of it, by every report I get. And the troops should be proud of what they’re trying to do to protect what they’ve done to promote the reconstruction of Iraq.

The third level is the Shia population. They’ve never had the freedom to organize. They are now organizing. Traditionally, they have not been as radical as those, as the Shia in Iran. But there are contending elements and factions in here, and if they ever organize and decide that this is their moment and they want to us leave, then we’ll be in real difficulty staying.

And when we leave, if the Shia are in charge, you can expect the Kurds then to make their bid for independence and the Sunnis will fight.

And so we’ve got to be very careful as we move this. There’s a very brief window to make this come out right. We’ve got to put the Iraqis in charge just as soon as possible.

Saudi commandos? Mark Kleiman gets Clark's point

While administration attempts to conflate the war in Iraq with the war on terrorism are losing traction in the polls, its too little, too late, too fast initiatives aimed at "Iraqification" have failed to convince those who view the world situation from outside the OK corral. Fareed Zakaria, in a recent Newsweek opinion piece, predicts ". . . the desperation to move faster and faster is going to have bad results. Accelerating the training schedule (which has already been accelerated twice before) will only produce an ineffective Iraqi Army and police force. Does anyone think that such a ragtag military could beat the insurgency where American troops are failing?"

Despite Bush's re-formulation of America's global mission as liberator of the oppressed (described by Michael Kinsley as "some of the finest eloquence that money can buy"), what the world needs now is not so much an Iraqification that gets us the hell out just before next year's election, but an Arabification of the war on terror that finally acknowledges that sooner or later US foreign policy must value peace more highly than oil.

Speaking from his considerable experience as a commander of military and intelligence resources, Gen. Clark recently outlined just such a policy: "I would press Saudi Arabia to join US forces in creating a US-Saudi commando force to work the Afghan-Pakistani border where bin Laden is thought to be hiding." Why WKC's efforts to innovate foreign policy are so easily dismissed by many in the chattering class while Howard Dean's arrogant stereotyping is hailed as just what the doctor ordered is puzzling. The New Republic's reliably downbeat assessment is all too typical:

So Clark's "plan" for getting Al Qaeda revolves in part on getting increased cooperation from the Saudis. That's like creating an organization devoted to women's rights and asking Arnold Schwarzenegger to be the first president. Hasn't Clark learned from the past? No matter what happens--thousands of Americans killed in 9/11, bombs all over the Saudi Kingdom--the Saudi royal family still won't face up to the role its organizations and charities have played, and still play, in fomenting violence and extremism. The United States needs to rely less, not more, on Saudi Arabia, in all respects of our relationship.

Which respected blogger Mark Kleiman appreciates was not the point of Clark's proposal to involve Saudi commandos in our efforts to extradite Osama Bin Laden from the no man's land between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Clark's suggestion is skewed more to giving our Saudi "friends" the opportunity to do what's right than toward an alternative military solution.

Kleiman writes: Diplomatically, the idea strikes me as rather brilliant. It's a no-lose proposition. Either the Saudis come with us, thus committing themselves against al-Qaeda, or they don't, thus making the hollowness of their asserted cooperation against terrorism clear.

. . . In domestic political terms, there is obvious value in reminding the country that the president's promise to bring in bin Laden "dead or alive" has been conspicuously unmet, and is no longer being seriously pursued. . . What do we have to lose? If we tried Clark's idea, and the Saudis leaked, we wouldn't catch Osama bin Laden. Just how does that leave us worse off than we would be not taking up Clark's idea, in which case we certainly won't catch Osama bin Laden.

Kleiman concludes: "Clark hasn't been getting much ink of late, and much of the ink he has been getting hasn't been good. But his ability to get press coverage for an actual policy proposal rather than a political maneuver makes him stand out from the field.

With Bob Graham out, of all the candidates still in the race for president Clark alone is capable of discussing national security issues at a professionally respectable level. That's worth considering, whether you like his individual ideas or not."

Amen.

WKC poised and pragmatic in Business Week interview

Despite his experience as a CNN commentator, talking head appearances from remote locations are proving to be the general's least effective media opportunities. While he is best interacting with voters in town hall settings, where the media are observers rather than participants, Gen. Clark is also extremely effective in print interview settings, where he often answers questions with a poised economy preferable to the defensive sound bites with which he sometimes rebuts criticism on pundit TV. Joining a Rolling Stone interview from 9/11/2003, where Clark was more perceptive than polemical about the current administration, is a recent conversation with Business Week. In it, we see a new poise in deflecting several of the media's favorite questions.

Q: After much early hoopla, your campaign seems to have lost altitude. When will your Presidential bid take off?

A: . . . Unlike the [Howard] Dean campaign, this is not a campaign of protest. This effort is built around hope and promise. We have yet to spend our first penny on advertising. When you've never done this before, there's no magic. It just takes a lot of hard work.

Q: You've spent much time on the defensive, explaining your changing views on Iraq and your earlier praise of the President. Are these issues behind you?

A: Those aren't issues. They don't resonate. The American people don't care whether I praised [George W.] Bush or not or when I became a Democrat. They care about things like, "What are we going to do now about Iraq?"

Q: The economy grew at 7.2% in the last quarter and is generating new jobs. Do you really think you can do better?

A: . . . First, [we need] direct government action to help address urgent needs with infrastructure, homeland security, tuition assistance, and the like. Secondly, [we must] work on science and technology with a real national goals program that invests real money. Third, we need a program of education that assures that every boy and girl is developed to their full potential. Vouchers won't do it; charter schools won't do it. It's public education.

. . .

Q: Are you a real outsider in the Presidential race if you've spent years rubbing shoulders with the business and academic elites?

A: I'm not an outsider, and I'm not an insider. I'm not making tactical decisions. I'm just trying to be myself. The difference is that I'm not a politician.

. . .

Q: What has surprised you since you entered the race?

A: [Hoarsely] Losing my voice! I just keep talking too much.

College newspaper report captures Clark as soldier, comrade, clued-in dude

It's a great time to be a college student in New England, if you have the least bit of interest in politics, the media, or the fate of the western world. Retail primary campaigning allows all manner of observers, both professional and merely interested, access to the candidates' personalities that contrasts starkly with the red, white, and blue bubble inhabited by our sitting president. Two Bowdoin College students attended Wesley Clark's visit to a Veteran's Day get-together in New Hampshire and their account, published in the Bowdoin Orient, trumps the media-nourished spitefulness with which the military brass have so gratuitously smeared the general.

Evan Kohn, the youngest person in the room by 15 years, was on a mission to confirm a particular aspect of Gen. Clark's authenticity: ". . . Does General Wesley Clark really listen to OutKast's rap tunes? I was committed to finding out the truth."

As Clark went to greet the next veteran, I held my arm out in front of him and said, "It's great to see an OutKast fan running for President." I had no idea how he would respond. This Veterans Day event couldn't have been more removed from anything remotely linked to MTV or the rap world. But, the General immediately lightened up and grabbed my hand while laughing. Suddenly Clark and I were completely surrounded by reporters and he whispered into my ear, "You gotta shake it like a Polaroid picture," quoting lyrics from OutKast's recent hit song, "Hey Ya!" My question had been answered.

Not until hours later did it occur to me that a top Presidential Candidate, West Point Valedictorian, Oxford Rhodes Scholar, NATO Supreme Commander, Kosovo Operation Allied Force leader, and United States General had actually whispered rap lyrics into my ear.

. . .

After returning to the VFW, Clark bought a promised round of Sam Adams for the entire honor guard while mingling with the Franklin mayor and other vets. Clark made several trips, personally delivering beers to the men. He carried up to four beers in a hand once, and ignored the press photographing his every move.

. . .

It is evident many would love to see Clark establish clear stances on central Democratic Party issues. As long as he spends as much time writing a clear domestic political agenda as he studies OutKast lyrics, Wesley Clark should be a solid candidate.

At the Hampton Falls town green gathering, some people had probably never seen Edwards's face before. At the Weirs Beach firehouse, Kerry assertively attempted to sway an elderly crowd of mostly "healthcare voters" on why his experience deserves their vote. At the Keene house party, Dean sought to energize the tightly-packed group of supporters, independents, and even fishermen, behind his cause.

But here, Clark was amongst what people seemed to be his brothers. I knew very little about the VFW world before the event, but I liked what I saw. There, men don't have to recount their unforgettable stories, but instead can connect by single handshakes. They share a common understanding of what it means to serve your country. As Clark marched down the street with the post commander, the two chatted as though they had grown up together. If only elected officials shared the same camaraderie.

New Video - Buchanan and Press interview, MSNBC 11/10/03

Video Link

After huggy feely forums in Boston and NH last week, it was back on the defensive for Gen. Clark when he spoke to Bill Press and Pat Buchanan from Phoenix on MSNBC, 11/10. Without a congressional staff to back him up and with a campaign staff "borrowed" from previous Clinton and Gore runs, WKC must be the loneliest candidate. He's still defending himself against attacks from his retired Army peers, his decision not to contest Iowa, and his relatively low polls in NH. Still the clarity of his opposition to ideologically driven foreign policy and his empathy for the troops shines through in what must have been an uncomfortable interview.

Some highlights (complete transcript here):

PRESS: I want to start asking you, General, about some of your former colleagues. In the last couple of weeks, three of our most distinguished and decorated generals, General Hugh Shelton first, then General Tommy Franks, and just Friday evening on CNBC, General Norman Schwarzkopf have said they could not support you for president of the United States. General Clark, if your fellow generals don’t trust you, why should the American people?

CLARK: Well, the American people should look at the record of what I’ve done. I had a very clear record in the United States armed forces for speaking up strongly to do what was right and as NATO commander I led a force that saved a million and a half Albanians from being ethnically cleansed. I did it against the resistance of the Serbs, the concerns of many in Europe and the resistance of a lot of the Pentagon brass. I think that’s leadership.

PRESS: But do you think-why would these generals be speaking out like this, General? They certainly know you. They’ve worked with you. Do you think they’re just jealous?

CLARK: Oh I don’t know why they have motives like that. I-Tommy Franks has never worked with me. I’ve never worked with him. We’ve shaken hands a couple of times. Norman Schwarzkopf is 10 years older than me. He hasn’t seen me in 12 years and he has no business passing on things he doesn’t know anything about. As for Hugh Shelton, I think he let a policy disagreement become personal. If he’s got something he wants to say, he should say it directly. But when you make general charges like he’s made, I don’t think that has any relevance.

. . . PRESS: To this date, General Clark, President Bush has not attended the funeral of one American killed in Iraq. As a former commanding general yourself, do you think that’s a mistake?

CLARK: Well, I don’t know whether you call it a mistake or not. He’s never been in battle. He’s never stood at the gravesides with people who have mourned their families and maybe he just doesn’t understand. I ... have seen that and I’ll tell you that when you lead and people sacrifice, you owe a lot more than just some words in a canned speech and this country owes a lot to its veterans and it owes them respect, honor, full support, and I think they in turn want a commander-in-chief who really understands them, not who uses them as some kind of pawn on a chess board.

BUCHANAN: General, you sound like the commander-in-chief, George W. Bush, has been derelict in his duty to honor the war dead as they should be. Is that correct?

CLARK: Well, I don’t use terms like that necessarily. I’ll just tell you, Pat, that as I look around and look at the homes and talk to some of the people who have lost over there, I’ve been through Walter Reed. I’ve talked with families who have lost loved ones over there. There’s a tremendous sense on their part that this country is not leading the way it should, that the sacrifices weren’t necessary and this commander-in-chief doesn’t really understand them, doesn’t really care about them, and is the captive of some hardliners who use troops as chess pieces in some geo-strategic game of check mate in the Middle East and it’s not that way. . . We really owe a deep gratitude to those families and our commander-in-chief and the other leadership need to see them face-to-face and show that.

BUCHANAN: General, when you talk about individuals who are geo-strategists using troops as pawns in a chess board in the Middle East, are you talking about the neoconservatives like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and Mr..

CLARK: Certainly.

BUCHANAN: . and some of the others, Mr. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) who have been talked of as basically the architects of this war?

CLARK: Certainly I’m talking about them. And there are probably others besides.

New Video - Rock the Vote, Boston, 11/4 Complete

Links -

Rock the Vote Debate, complete Clark appearances

Rock the Vote, Clark 30 second spot

Planned Parenthood Forum on Women's Issues

Also:

Laura Knoy of NH Public Radio interviews Gen. Clark on his background (Ms. Knoy's astute coverage of the NH primary includes ongoing interviews with all the candidates)

C-Span coverage of the opening of Clark's NH HQ

Following on to last week's deadly serious foreign policy address at the New American Strategies for Security and Peace conference, Gen. Clark appeared in the two most comfortable and perhaps revealing "debates" of the season: CNN's Rock the Vote in Boston on election day 2003 and Planned Parenthood's Presidential Candidates Forum on Women's Issues in Manchester, NH.

WKC didn't get to speak until over 20 minutes into the Rock the Vote forum, while Kerry waxed presidential and Dean was hit repeatedly about the head and shoulders by Rev. Sharpton's purse while John Edwards kicked his shins. The overall effect was as if Kotter's Sweat-hogs made a reunion special re-cast as political activists. Lieberman was seldom spotted behind one of the speaking candidates without a smirk on his face. Kerry's gravitas approximated that of a beloved boarding school headmaster. Dean seemed to be cast, as, well, the Dean of Boys, the guy you got sent to if you fucked up. All the while, Wes sat back with his attentive half-smile, hands on his knees, probably wishing he was doing some real work. In his black silk mock turtleneck, grey flannels and black cashmere sports jacket, contrasting with his silver hair and salt and pepper eyebrows, it was as if the middle-aged Kirk Douglas had been cast in the role of a powerful character in an old James Bond film. Wes Clark, international man of mystery.

He spoke at length about his "comfort level" with homosexuality, and brought it back to his core belief in constitutional freedoms, and his mistrust of "old mythologies" which have wrongly taken on more weight than the spirit of the Constitution itself. A broken unfair system has prevented people from serving. He might have said, as he often does, "We'll fix it." But he deferred the matter to the military, frustrating Paula Zahn's post-debate inquiry into what alternative he's offering to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." We hear occasionally that one of Clark's liabilities is his inexperience in dealing with legislative politics and advancing his agenda in concert with representatives elected on the state level. It seemed to me that by kicking the ball of human rights back to the organization most affected, he was challenging them to take his agenda as their own, as if to say, "any improvement you present that keeps more citizens productive in the military, regardless of their sexual preference, I will hail as a job well done." It was a minor bully pulpit moment.

For my thoughts on Clark's Cuban embargo position see an earlier blog post. All in all, I think Gen. Clark did himself a lot of good at Rock the Vote, but I missed Dick Gephardt, whose presence I find reassuring even though I disagree with so many of his proposals for health care and international trade. Gephardt seems to come from a Bob Dole kind of place which I don't think will take us where we need to be, but I hope Dick Gephardt holds high office in the next Democratic administration.

Posted by Ron Ross at 09:43 AM | Comments (1) | Email this entry

WKC op-ed outlines "A New Course Needed in Iraq"

Today's op-ed in the Boston Globe proposes an exit strategy that the general will likely detail further in today's national security address in South Carolina. Cogent, pragmatic and compassionate, it marks what should be a turning point in Wesley Clark's campaign. At last a Democratic candidate has moved beyond angry criticism of the war's present course to present a workable and constructive plan.

Clark first establishes a realistic baseline of what should constitute a successful outcome:

Success means that Iraq is strong enough to sustain itself without outside forces. Success means that representative government has taken root. Success means that Iraq's economy and civil society are healthy again.

He goes on to list a number of steps which clearly distinguish his proposed course of action from that of President Bush. Several of his more compelling positions:

End the American monopoly.

We must call a summit of the leaders we've alienated, the people whose advice we've scorned, the organizations whose assistance we've turned down. Out of this gathering, we can build a new organization to replace the Coalition Provisional Authority and internationalize the face of the occupation.

To guide the reconstruction of Iraq, we need a civilian from an allied country. That civilian official would report to an international council, composed of representatives from nations that support our efforts to build a democratic Iraq.

As we saw in the Balkans, when we share power, other countries share our burden. I would transform the military occupation into a NATO operation with US forces in charge. With US command, NATO authority, and UN endorsement, other NATO countries would send troops, and Arab countries would also step in.
. . .

More intelligence resources.

Success in Iraq depends on developing good information and a good rapport with civilians. Right now too many of our linguists and intelligence experts are working on the search for weapons of mass destruction. International inspectors should take over that search, which would free up enough experts to help us track down those who are killing our soldiers and creating chaos.

It is sadly ironic that valuable intelligence resources are being diverted from rooting out terrorists in order to sustain the administration's delusions about WMD. As a result we are operating almost in the dark about the nature of the clear and present danger to our troops and countless innocent Iraqis. A report in USA Today from 11/4 finds:

U.S. military, intelligence and law enforcement officials say that after six months of intensifying guerrilla warfare, Iraqi insurgents know more about the U.S. and allied forces - their style of operations, convoy routes and vulnerable targets - than the coalition forces know about them. Indeed, U.S. intelligence has had trouble simply identifying the enemy and figuring out how many are Iraqis and how many are foreign fighters.

Clark also comes out clearly for redeployment of the Iraqi Army as soon as possible, a promising step strongly proposed by Iyad Alawi of the Iraqi Governing Council in a persuasive NY Times op-ed last month, which I blogged about at the time:

The coalition's early decision to abolish the army and police was well intended, but it unfortunately resulted in a security vacuum that let criminals, die-hards of the former regime and international terrorists flourish. And the coalition's plan to build a 20,000-member lightly armed force mostly responsible for security and border control would make poor use of a valuable resource: the 300,000 Iraqi soldiers who simply went home with their weapons in the face of the American-led invasion.

Clark likewise argues:

We should recall the Iraqi Army to duty right now. If given good pay, good training, and solid background checks, Iraqi civilians can also help fill the intelligence and security gap.

Regarding the administration's tying a constitution to any turnover of authority to a representative body of Iraqis, Clark cites once again the United States' own post-revolutionary efforts to codify democracy.

Give the Iraqis a rising stake in our success.

It would be wrong to transfer authority to the Iraqis before they are ready to succeed, but we can give Iraqis more control over their destiny. The administration says the Iraqis can't have a sovereign government without a constitution. This is backwards. Iraqis, appointed by representatives from Iraq's 50 elected regional councils, should name an interim government even while a constitution emerges. That is what our Founding Fathers did.

If we give the interim government control over oil revenues and transfer authority on an ongoing basis, it will be easier for the Iraqi people to see that those blowing up pipelines are sabotaging their future. If we give civilians a stake in stemming the violence, they will help us solve this problem.

Ambitious? Certainly. A right-turn from the present course? It will be rejected in every particular by an administration so infatuated with its own reflection in the mirror of world affairs that everyone else has been crowded out.

But best of all, Wesley Clark, among the many experienced hands both at home and abroad who would seek to extricate us from this mess, is the best prepared to hit the ground running on all of this challenging plan's components: the military alliance to quash terrorism, the diplomatic piece which will certainly require making concessions that will break the American re-construction monopoly, and the education of the Iraqi people in the benefits and demands of democracy. The South Carolina speech today may prove to be the most important Wesley Clark has ever made.

Clark's call for end to Cuba embargo wins Carpetbagger endorsement

Lost in the pointless furor over Dean and his flag flub was one of the only new positions to emerge from the "Rock the Vote" debate: Wesley Clark came out firmly against the embargo of Cuba. "The best example of political courage I've seen in the campaign thus far," raves the Carpetbagger Report.

Clark seems to answer questions about his positions in one of three ways:

1) On the biggest issues, such as the Iraq resolution, he often fails to compress his appreciation of their complexity into a consistent sound bite and hence appears indecisive at best and disingenuous at worst. More a product of his military training which required him to prepare arguments for various opposing options than a reflection of opportunism, I expect him to grow out of it as he embraces more fully the realization that he's, for the time being at least, more of a politician than a strategist. Politics, of course, is frequently more about tactics than strategy, and Clark is much more the strategist than the tactician.

2) Clark also seems to waffle a bit on issues like gays in the military, where he has strongly held personal convictions, but where his policies have yet to be sharply defined. He was at his best last night when he said, simply and sincerely:

One of my Army friends came to me. He said, 'Sir, I've got a little bit of trouble with your position on gays in the military.' I said, 'Well, let me explain it to you this way. If you had a son or daughter who was gay, would you love them?' And he said, 'Well, yes.' I said, 'Would you want them to have the same rights and the same opportunities in life as everybody else?' And he looked at me and he said, 'Now I understand why you're saying what you're saying.'

We need to do a lot better job in communicating in this society and crossing barriers and setting aside a lot of old mythologies. And as president of the United States, I'm going to take the lead in doing that.

But this was his second pass at the topic. The first time around he appeared to be seeking a technically correct answer that probably wasn't required of the question:

COOPER: Are you saying 'Don't ask, don't tell' works?

CLARK: I don't think it works everywhere. I've seen it work in some units, but I get a lot of reports where it doesn't work. And I think it depends on the service, it depends on the unit. I think it depends, to some extent, on the commander.

And so, I think the policy, as I've said, the policy needs to be reviewed because there are so many indications that it's not working. I think you start a review with the presumption that it isn't. And let the armed forces leadership go back through it and give us a better policy so that every American who desires to serve can.

He would have done himself much more good if he had simply explained the difference between our policy of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and the British policy of "Don't Ask, Don't Misbehave." The issue as I'm sure Clark understands is that under one policy, once a gay is out, he's gone, while under the other, her sexual preferences are explicitly off-limits in any evaluation of her suitability for the job. Clark affirming that military, not civilian, leadership should be responsible to review a policy that doesn't work well for all to whom it applies may make sense, but it's a wonkish answer to an emotional question.

3) Then there are the questions that Clark answers so succinctly and affirmatively that if you blink, you miss them. You are far more likely to hear him give such answers in the context of a town hall meeting than the debates, but hopefully that is changing. When a woman in New Hampshire asked him if he would deprive someone who was critically ill access to medical marijuana, he replied, "No" immediately and without unnecessary elaboration on policy. It was the answer she wanted to hear, and it also seemed to spring from Clark's core beliefs. Similarly when asked if he would support an amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage, he quickly responded, "I would not." No sophistic distinctions between civil unions and marriage were required and none were given. Coming from a guy's guy who probably watched comrades who were stoned get shot to death in 'Nam, such quick, positive positions are impressive.

It was the third kind of answer that Clark gave on the Cuban embargo, thus winning the endorsement of highly regarded blogger, The Carpetbagger Report.:

CLARK: The way we won the Cold War was not by isolating Eastern Europe, but by engaging it. We won the Cold War not just because we had great armed forces, but because we had the AFL-CIO, we had Citibank, and we had a Polish pope. And we reached out to Eastern Europe, and we connected with humanity.

CLARK: That's why I'm against embargoes. They don't work.

(APPLAUSE)

When you isolate a country, you strengthen the dictators in it. If you want to change the dictators, you've got to open it up so ordinary people in those countries can see what they're missing in the rest of the world, and gain strength and ideas from everybody else. And they'll take control of their future.

We're not going to reward Fidel Castro, but we are going to make sure that Cubans have a democracy and they have the same rights as everybody else on this planet.

Carpetbagger tells us,

I've been prepared to support any candidate who had the courage to admit the embargo hasn't worked, but in my lifetime, no serious candidates have stepped up. . . So I've waited, wondering if I'll ever see a presidential candidate brave enough to acknowledge reality, risk the wrath of Cuban-Americans in South Florida, and announce support for ending the Cuba embargo.

. . . Last night, I'm pleased to report, I found a candidate with the courage to state the obvious. Wesley Clark announced that he opposes the U.S. embargo of Cuba. . . I genuinely couldn't believe my ears. I liked Clark before, but now I'm convinced. He's my guy.

Clark is not exactly new to Latin-American affairs. Before becoming Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, Clark was Commander in Chief of the United States Southern Command, Panama, where he was responsible for the direction of U.S. military activities in Latin America and the Caribbean. In other words, he knows of what he speaks.

Truth be told, Clark has opposed the embargo for a while. In July 2002, long before he was even thinking about running for president, Clark said, "The way to deal with Castro is to send Cuba American tourists, American goods and American farm products. There could be no better way to deal with this last vestigial form of Communism than to turn American business and American agriculture loose on them."

. . . The fact that he's standing by his previous statements and is willing to end a foreign policy that clearly does not work, represents the best example of political courage I've seen in the campaign thus far.

Wes likes four hanky flicks and hates cold water in the pool

It's been a slow couple of days for hard campaign news, so while we eagerly await the general's foreign policy address, to be delivered this Thursday in South Carolina, how about some heartwarming Clark trivia, courtesy of Nancy Benac of the Associate Press?

The story that Wes swam two legs of a 4-man relay to win a championship race is pretty well known but did you know that if not for young Clark there wouldn't have even been a swim team:

Classmate Phillip McMath was on the Boys Club swim team with Clark when Clark decided they should have a high school team as well.

"I said, 'Wesley, we don't have a coach, we don't have a budget, we don't have a pool,'" McMath recalls. "He said, 'I'll organize it and I'll be the coach.'" He turned that team into the state champions.

Aiming high is nothing new for the ambitious career-changer.

"It only began to dawn on us as the four years developed that he was laden with terrific gifts," said [West Point] classmate Jack Wheeler. Wheeler recalls sitting with Clark in West Point's sunlit gardens on a spring day discussing Plato in their philosophy class.

"Wes sees himself as one of Plato's men of silver – a dedicated soldier," he said.

Retired Lt. Gen. Dale Vesser, who taught the class, said some students approached it as just another course on the way toward becoming a second lieutenant, but Clark genuinely wanted to educate himself and explore the idea that – as Vesser puts it – "one acquires obligations because one has talents that need to be employed for society."

And Benac reminds us that WKC's personal timeline has a sobering context.

As in high school, Clark the cadet was remembered as serious – but so were the times. In 1962, Clark's plebe year, the Cuban missile crisis unfolded. The next year brought the assassination of a president. When Clark graduated in 1966, the buildup of U.S. troops in Vietnam was approaching 300,000.

Thirty cadets from West Point's Class of '66 would die in Southeast Asia, more than in any other class.

Clark arrived in Vietnam in July 1969, after cutting short his three-year Rhodes scholarship at Oxford University in England by a year.

Does this mean he earned a graduate degree in two years, rather than the customary three?

And lest I forget, don't embarrass yourself in front of the Meet Up throng by mis-pronouncing WKC's middle name. It's "Kay'nee," Ms. Benac confirms.

Although she didn't unearth the general's favorite color, Benac does fill in these important personal details, so you won't have to waste Gert's time asking about them if you find yourselves together with a plate of fried chicken and potato salad on your laps someday.

Clark. . . says his movie tastes favor science fiction and "real heart-wrenchers. I am the perfect movie victim. I fall into every plot and character."

His pet peeves, he says, are "cold lunches, mushy snow and water in the pool that's below 79 degrees."

By all accounts, Clark's diet is awful – he lives off garbage, says his son – but he can get away with it because he still swims and runs with competitive zeal.

. . . Retired Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, a West Point classmate and lifelong friend, describes Clark as personable, loyal and the "cheapest man in the Western world."

Scales recalls Clark puttering around in a battered Volvo station wagon at home at the same time he was whipping around in a high-powered, armored Mercedes at work.

"That's sort of a metaphor for Wes," says Scales. "He comes across as this steely, high-powered guy, but really what he is is a kid from Arkansas."

We've got our work cut out for us

A British reporter went out on the streets of America asking citizens the answers to some pretty basic questions about current events. The results aren't pretty.

Q: "Kofi Annan? Is it a drink? True or false?"

A: "Kofi's a drink."

Q: "Who's Tony Blair?"

A: 1) "I don't even know." 2) "Tony Blair is an actor." 3) "Linda Blair's brother?"

Q: "Which countries are in the 'axis of evil'?"

A: "I know Germany's one of 'em. I'm not sure about the other ones."

Q: "How many world wars have there been?"

A: "Three."

Q: "What are Hiroshima and Nagasaki famous for?"

A: "Sumo wrestling? Whatever?"

Q: "How many Eifel towers are there in Paris?"

A: "I'd say about, ten."

Q: "What is Al Qaeda?"

A: "Al Qaeda is a suicide group in Israel. The president of it is Yasser Arafat. Everybody knows that."

Q: "What is the main religion of Israel?"

A: "Muslim."

Nice to know the president and the electorate are two minds who think as one-half. Twenty years ago I met 20-somethings in Paris discos who were hopeless drug addicts but knew more about the Federalist Papers than I did after 16 years of private education. "Mind the gap," as our British cousins often warn.

Ted Sorensen, "conscience of American foreign policy," endorses Clark

I was thrilled that Theodore Sorensen, special deputy to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, introduced Wesley Clark as keynote speaker at the New American Strategies for Security and Peace conference on October 28. Richard Leone of the Center for American Progress, a conference sponsor, described Mr. Sorensen as the "conscience" of American foreign policy," and many of JFK's most enduring speeches were crafted jointly by the president and his most trusted deputy. To this day, many believe Sorensen ghost-wrote Profiles in Courage, for which Kennedy won the Pulitzer Prize. An icon of the Democratic liberal establishment for almost half a century, Ted Sorensen's ringing endorsement of Wesley Clark raises his candidacy high above the carping of the Liebermans and Sheltons whose own self-serving agendas taint their attacks.

In fact, Mr. Leone made it a point to say that WKC had been asked to address the conference before announcing his candidacy and emphasized that the conference was non-partisan. As you can tell from Mr. Sorensen's remarks, he must not have heard that part of the introduction. He draws comparisons between JFK and WKC that no other figure in public life could make with such indisputable authority.

Thanks very much Dick Leone. You and your co-organizers of this conference on a different American foreign policy certainly know how to pick a date. Because it was forty-one years ago today that the President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, peacefully and successfully brought to a close what historians now call the thirteen most dangerous days in the history of mankind. He did it without firing a shot, without violating international law, without bypassing the United Nations, without antagonizing our closest allies, and without losing more than one man. . . .

Today, more than ever, at a time when the world is filled with terrorist threats and with bitter resentment at America's preponderance of wealth and military might, we need more than ever a president who has experienced the evils of war, the art of diplomacy, the importance of negotiations, the indispensability of allies, and international organizations and institutions. Unfortunately we have just the opposite. . . . Those who are out there looking for weapons of mass destruction should look in their own tent.

. . . But fortunately one of those who is seeking to become president in 2004 has exactly the opposite kind of record. He does not need to dress up as a fly boy to be called "commander in chief." Because he has already served as commander in chief of allied forces in Europe. He has already led diverse nations and interests in a grand and successful coalition. He has already proven the importance of diplomacy in world affairs and has worked closely with the UN in successful close conflict situations. Yes, his detractors have taken quotations out of context to make it appear that he has a whole menu of positions on the war in Iraq, but he has never excluded from that menu, patience, peace, and pre-emptive negotiations. And that makes all the difference. I give you now a man who can make all the difference, General Wesley Clark.

Streaming video of Mr. Sorensen and General Clark's remarks may be found here.

NY Review of Books fair and balanced on WKC's military reputation

Elizabeth Drew, whose appearance on Inside Politics in defense of Clark's military reputation attracted wide attention, expands on her research into the general's credibility in a new article in the New York Review of Books.

Before exploring the contrast between opinions of Clark held by his fellow officers and those of the civilians with whom he worked, Drew draws not altogether flattering sketches of Howard Dean and John Kerry:

Howard Dean can be said to be leading a genuine movement; he has attracted a strong following through his opposition to the war in Iraq and his ability to express the anger that many Democrats feel toward Bush; he has strong organizations in Iowa and New Hampshire. But his irritability often spills over at inopportune times. On ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos he responded testily to a question about his having strongly supported NAFTA and denied that he had ever done so, even though he had signed a letter saying that he had. On the other hand, a speech I saw Dean deliver recently at a meeting of the Democratic National Committee was strong and assured. He was able to arouse the Democrats' anger, though to a degree that seemed to me almost disturbing.

John Kerry's is a perplexing campaign. He can be very effective or can seem wooden and perfunctory. I saw him addressing a women's lunch where he seemed steady and well-informed on a wide range of issues, including health care and the disastrous reconstruction of Iraq. He was also loose and funny. In his speech to the DNC he attacked Howard Dean and the other candidates-most of the others refrained from criticizing their competition-and spent considerable time calling attention to his own accomplishments, often using the first person singular. During his campaign, he has, I think, talked too much of his service in Vietnam and has displayed a certain degree of indecisiveness. He hurt himself badly (not for the only time) by his labored explanation of why he had voted in the Senate for the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq. (He often takes his motorcycle to campaign stops, as if trying to demonstrate that he is one of the guys.) His campaign has a superabundance of high-powered advisers.

Drew's snapshot captures one of the general's qualities that I think plays better in international settings than in state primary campaigns: he is polite to a fault, probably because of his southern upbringing, but also because the correct stance for an official who commands arsenals of deadly weapons is to walk softly and carry a big stick. When he praises "that great team we have in office" or exchanges gifts with Ratko Mladi, a partisan politician or human rights activist will justifiably cringe, but in those contexts Clark is playing a different part, at least on the surface: that of the gracious guest. Contemporary Americans' brusque informality combined with a no-nonsense, let's get down to business attitude is accurately reflected in the Dean persona, but it will come as no surprise that in the rest of the world, where ancient social mores are still a lingua franca that allow fierce political and economic rivals to start from a point of civility, American ignorance of local social forms can be a formidable obstacle to spreading the gospel of democracy as defined by the United States.

Drew notes that Clark is a talented mime: could it be that this is a quaity of personality that has served him well on the world stage? Admittedly this is a State Department skill, not much in demand in the context of military operations or partisan politics, but consider that when Clark acknowledges a Republican audience's high regard for the Bush administration or treats Mladi in public as a fellow soldier, and not simply an adversary, he is laying the diplomatic groundwork for his larger, more significant, agenda, which has consistently worked for diversity of opinion and exploration of common interests: in the case of the Republican fundraiser, national security, or in that of Mladi, the despot's desire to avoid being bombed into oblivion.

This isn't mere ass-kissing, brown-nosing or whatever epithet Clark's detractors might choose to diminish his diplomatic skills, but a sophisticated appraisal of the terrain of discourse that is above all pragmatic. When Wesley Clark became a four-star in today's army he was no longer simply a soldier, but his abilities in diplomacy and strategy were not necessarily appreciated or required by his military seniors. Clearly, in the context of NATO, Clark felt his mission extended beyond the deployment of weapons and troops, and his attempt to represent the United States in a more 3-dimensional fashion was rebuffed by both military and civilian officials who felt he was kibbutzing rather than leading.

As Drew puts it: [Clark] is a complex man, i