To Sir With Love - A Wesley Clark Blog

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.