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.