To Sir With Love - A Wesley Clark Blog

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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.