The Wesley Clark Thread

Predicting that Kerry will be the nominee would be as stupid as people predicting Howard Dean would be the nominee not more than three weeks ago. There is a long way to go, if Kerry were to sweep (not likely) he could clinch it, but nothing is certain yet, and I am sure the Kerry people know that.

Now on to Gen. Wes Clark. I like him too, he seems to have a good grasp of the issues and has good ideas, but I cant help but think he is more of an oppurtunist than anyone else. I still havnt heard a good explanation as to why he was at two different REPUBLICAN fundrasiers honoring Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, only to be bashing them less than a year later. That is a mighty big 180 in 12 months.

 

The best thing to do to look for substance on what he WANTS to do would be to go to his website : http://www.clark04.com/

 

Well, I really like him. He's brilliant, he's got incredible experience on the international relations canvas, and he's served his country and has remarkable incidents of bravery and personal sacrifice on record well into his senior status years. ( Check out his resume if you want to be impressed.)

From everything I've heard, the oportunist lable is something akin to the crazy label for Dean...more smoke and mirrors than substance. Maybe this appeals to me more because it reflects my own experience, but the fact that Clark wasn't a died in the wool Bush hater from Day One is to his credit, and leads me to believe that he opposes his actions based on merits more than political partisanship. Besides, his opposition of the war long precedes his candidacy, and came about after the information came to light.

Moreover, if you read back on his statements, and unlike Kerry and Edwards, Clark always qualified his support for the war on the grounds he currently criticizes Bush for not fullfilling; hard proof of threat, international and real coalition, and as a last resort only. When we were being told that all of these were in place or pursuant to action, he supported the administration. When it became clear that the administration was just using lip service, he balked. Sounds reasonable to me.

Another vague criticism of Clark, that he is not a 'true Democrat' rings a little hollow to me. Hardline partisanship is among the greatest of evils in modern politics, IMO, and Clark probably falls towards the middle but clearly leaning away from Republicans...his longtime relationship with the Clintons and his positions on most keystone issues proves this much. Some see the fact that he has not always been a hard-liner as evidence that he's not 'real' or 'an opportunist', I see it as being reasonable and open-minded, and lesss partisan.

And lastly, according to much that I have heard, Clark genuinely got involved in the race because he and many others were deeply concerned with what Bush was doing to the country, and felt that he could help. Unlike most politicians, Clark has a track record which demonstrates a willingness to serve his country, and as such, IMO, deserves the benefit of the doubt in this regard.

Ultimately, we live in an age where we often complain that the truly qualified don;t run for office anymore, because of all the superficiality and crap. I agree, and think that the last election demonstrated that to the Nth degree. Clark is the kind of guy we're always hoping will run, and when he does, many of us are complaining that he doesn't blink enough on camera, etc. Seems to me, as batman said, we'll get what we ask for. I've been hoping someone like CLark will run for ages, and am fully behind him.

I am somewhere between Batman and TM on the viability of his campaign at this point: I agree that it's too early to call Kerry the certain victor, but also think that Kerry's current position is more 'real' than Dean's was pre-primaries.

 

I think that he hasn't been as clear on some of his positions as career politicans are trained to be...but that's improved as he's gotten his feet under him. It was, IMO, more of a communication in sound bite form problem, and initially he got into the first debate ( IMO) too early, and when he didn;t have the soundbites ready, did an awkward two step. Then he went through a period where he was obviously reacting to political handlers, and was speaking in too many soundbites. From what I've heard, he has since found his stride in this area.

 

Clark has said many times what he stands for. His problem is his lack of political experience and his late start. Both have produced a candidate who has a hard time putting his message across, because he's not used to the nuances of political BS, as it were, and he's getting tons of advice from different sources on the one subject he knows the least about... politics.

I was an early supporter of his and have consistantly stood up for him during the numerous attacks that have come his way. but recently, now that the primaries have started, I've gotten discouraged by the steep learning curve he's faced with. That it may be too late for him to catch up. Kerry's success has taken away part of his potential "base" of Democrats looking for a candidate who can beat Bush on the military acumen and service issue and national security. Kerry is surrounding himself with veterans, playing up his service in Vietnam, and making people believe that, on that issue, he's a more polished and politically experienced version of Clark. When Clark attempted to explain the vast difference in their military experience it came off, fairly or not, like he was attacking Kerry's record of service. So much of this is superficial, isn't it?

I think Clark would make a good President. Far better than Bush. And I think he could trounce him in the election. I just don't know if he'll get that opportunity. The fact that people like you, Manny, are drawn to him is one of the reasons I want him to get the nod. Many conservatives and independents are eager for an alternative to Bush. More than eager.

edit:
Just read MacBeth's post above. I think we're saying much the same thing.

 

Troy: It's just silly to compare Kerry's frontrunner status to Dean's. Dean didn't have a single vote when he was the frontrunner. Kerry won Iowa and NH by sizeable margins and he's on track to either sweep all seven states on the 3rd or win six and place a very strong second in John Edwards' birth state. There is one way that Kerry loses and one way only -- a major revelation that causes late states to abandon him in droves (you know, like the revelation that Dean was insane).

Troy asked in the Dean thread which superficiality put Kerry in the top spot. It was the "Dean's crazy" thing, which made voters turn toward the candidate they thought was safest and most electable. Clark's biggest mistake was skipping Iowa, though he couldn't have known it at the time. He was preparing for a Dean-Clark race and like I said on the night of the Iowa caucus, he was tied with Dean for the biggest loser of the night. He had no idea Dean was going to implode so fast or that Kerry's campaign (or Edwards') would be reborn. If he'd been in Iowa, it's possible he could have been Kerry or Edwards. I still don't think it would have happened, as he was an unknown quantity to Dems at a time they were looking for a safe choice, but by the time of NH the voters were so happy to have found a safe choice they wanted to annoint him. This is all about timing and Kerry's blessed that way on two fronts: he became the electable alternative to Dean just in time to win Iowa and NH without taking the hits a frontrunner normally does, and the primary season is so compressed now that there is very little to do to stop momentum (this was by design to avoid a long, drawn out battle). And the knocks on Kerry (that he's aloof, lacks passion, lacks a common touch, lacks political courage, and has been far more into investigations than legislating in the Senate) don't qualify as the sorts of revelations that will knock him off his position. For Kerry to lose now, there has to be a scandal of some sort. The Botox thing has legs, by the way. Probably not in the primaries but if you think Rush and O'Reilly and all the other assholes won't put it right out front in the general, well... They will.

MacBeth, I think, is a little quick to accept the fairytale version of the Draft Clark movement. I have tons of respect for Clark, but he explored a Senate run previously and he's had an interest in the political game for some time. This isn't simply a case of a patriot being dragged against his will into politics. I am also interested in MacB's feelings about Clark's abortion stance, considering that he's said he was against any restrictions whatsoever (including partial birth or anything else). He is, far and away, the most radical pro-choice candidate in the race. Is that likely to appeal to the center? I think not. I think it's right up there with Dean's support for gay civil unions (which Clark also supports - does that scare you any, Manny?).

The opportunist rap is similar to the is-he-really-a-Democrat thing. There's a view that he's carpetbagging by running as a Dem, considering that he clearly was not one before. This may appeal to people who identify as independents, but people who identify with a party do so more because they agree with the party platform on various, important issues than because they are mindlessly partisan. In other words, I believe that for the most part people come to their ideology honestly. I know I do and I afford my Republican friends the benefit of the doubt that they do as well. My feelings about virtually every major issue preclude me from voting for Republicans in almost every case. Conversely, I understand why people who feel strongly about core GOP issues would rarely consider voting Democrat. I don't think that's a bad thing at all. We only have two major parties. In the face of that, it's no wonder there are fairly strict partisan divisions. If Clark actually feels the way he now says he does about taxes, abortion, health care, education, etc. (and, make no mistake, his views as stated on the trail are as far left as anyone running -- his stated positions are demonstrably more liberal than Dean's for example and it's him, not Dean, who has the support of McGovern and Michael Moore), it is really hard to square that with his previous support of Bush, Cheney, Reagan and Nixon. He campaigns as a man of deep principle on these major issues. His readiness to support candidates who have held radically opposing views on these major issues strikes me less as a refreshing freedom from partisanship and more as a squishy value system.

As for my criticism that he doesn't blink enough, I would love to hear one serious issue that the anti-Dean/pro-Clark crowd had with any of Dean's policy positions or record as governor. My admittedly superficial criticisms of Clark have been based on the idea that he plays creepy and that a creepy seeming guy is not as "electable" (to get back to that holiest of grails) as a fake good old boy. On paper, I like Clark better than Dean. One of the major reasons I supported Dean was that he listened to and spoke to the grass roots and was bringing new voters into the system. I think that is a far better argument for electability than playing to the center. And I think that, given their personalities on the trail, Clark has about as good a chance of exciting previously disenfranchised voters as Kerry does. Which is to say, virtually none.

 

I agree with a lot of the statements about Clark and I also think that Macbeth is buying into a little too much of the draft Clark campaign mythology. Clark is clearly an opportunist and while his beliefs may be dearly held his past record indicates that he just as easily could've run as a moderate Republican if the political situation was reversed. Unlike the draft Powell movements Clark never discouraged it and even openly supported it. The draft Clark movement was much more similar to the draft Perot movement in 1992 and few don't consider Perot an opportunist. Also getting to be a commander of NATO requires ambition and ego which Clark has an abundance of and one of the most widely heard criticisms of Clark from other officers was that he was too eager to climb the ranks.

I don't have any problem with Clark being an opportunist and most people looking to run for President are ambitous and run when they think they have a good opportunity to. I don't think Clark will win the nomination for some of the reasons other posters have stated but I'll throw in two more:

1. Clark has the same problem that John McCain did in that he is running in a partisan nomination system where the extreme base matters. Other than harshly criticizing Bush's focus on Iraq Clark doesn't come off as a liberal Dem and to win the Dem. nomination that liberal base matters. Clinton in 92 had the luxury of competing against a more moderate pro-business opponent than even him, Tsongas, while many of the major liberal Dems. sat out. at the same time Clinton had political skills that few politicians possess. Gore only got major traction when he started sounding more liberal and even after being nominated many of his base deserted him for Nader. Unfortunately for candidates like Clark and McCain they might run better in the general election than they do in their respective primaries. Even though much of the Dem. base continues to say they are supporting Kerry for electibility purposes he is still far more liberal in word and action than the rest of the Dem candidates besides Kucinich and Sharpton.

2. The skills that make a good military officers are not the same skills that make a good a politician. If you look at the problems that Powell has with the rest of the Admin and even going back to Eisenhower's feuds with the Republican party there is a disconnect between the mindset of officer and politician. I can't quite put my finger on it but I think it has to do with that officers are trained to be pragmatic in both deed and word and also to be consistent. The best politicians, Clinton for example, are more flexible in how they think and particularly in what they say. I think this is something that Powell understood which is why he never ran for President.

Don't get me wrong though I deeply respect military officers and think that Powell, Clark, Army Chief of Staff Shinseki and any number of officers would make good presidents, better than what we got and most of the people running. I just don't think that they can win.

Finally I'll add that I expect to vote for whoever the Dems nominate but I'm undecided on what Dem candidate to support right now. They all have their strengthes and weaknesses.

 

Good post, Sisir Chang.

 

Great posts, Macbeth, Batman and Chang. I can't really add anything more except to say what do you think about Clark for VP ?

I am thinking that Clark would be a very interesting VP candidate. Despite Kerry's war hero status it might still be necessary to go strong after the notion that Democrats believe strongly in defending the country against real threats such as terrorism. Bush has to run on this security issue as there really isn't much else for him to talk about.

Clark could also add some of the excitement of Dean, partly because he is not as scripted as a more polished guy like Edwards. The lack of politico speak could of course increase the risk of a blunder.

 

I predict if Clark drops in the next two weeks we'll see a Kerry - Clark ticket. That would fit Kerry's strategy of emphasizing the impression of being trustworthy on security and balances Kerry impression as an east coast liberal insider with a Southern moderate outsider.

 

BATMAN JONES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I apologize for the spelling errors, I need to start typing this in WORD first.

 

Troy:

Totally agree with you on Clark.

Dean's another matter. As for a Kerry-Edwards debate being pre-empted by Dean, Sharpton and Kucinich staying in (you left out Clark and Lieberman by the way. Why?), Clark would have said the same thing about Kerry and Edwards pre-empting a Dean-Clark debate when they were the frontrunners. Democracy's a pesky b****, isn't it?

The pin cushion stuff came after months of daily, sometimes hourly, relentless attacks from Kerry, Gephardt and Lieberman. In their defense, before their attacks Dean had questioned them as to why they weren't standing up to Bush (on the war and everything else) but I think he was ******* right to do so. Every other candidate in this race sucked balls before Dean taught them the electorate didn't want a 2002 repeat. Edwards didn't directly attack Dean like the others, but his "I don't think anger will win" thing was clearly a swipe at Dean and it was the thing he based his entire candidacy on at that point. But while Dean questioned the other guys credentials as effective spokespersons for the opposition, it was nothing compared to the way the other guys tore apart his record and every marginally questionable quote from his past, all the while suggesting he wasn't fit to be president. I'd be angry at those guys too if I was Dean and so would you. And his response to the attacks was certainly no more extreme than your friend Dole's "Stop lying about my record." As far as him being angry in general, all Democrats are angry at the Bush years. Thanks to Dean's early success, the candidates are now too. Every other candidate (except Lieberman) has co-opted this part of Dean's attack, starting with Gephardt learning how to call Bush a "miserable failure" and continuing in kind ever since. As for him being an angry person, that's a load of crap. I've said it before: in his twelve years as governor he's never been known to yell at a staff member. Clinton, on the other hand, was known for his famous temper and proclivity for swearing up a furious storm behind closed doors. Anyone who knows those two guys would tell you Clinton's "anger" outpaces Dean's easily and we all know how the Democrats feel about Clinton.

As for the old man thing, see the Dean's collapsing thread for my response to that. Having politely indulged a Republican heckler and then been interrupted by him when he tried to respond he told him to be quiet. It was blown out of proportion like so many other accusations against Dean.

I find it really hard to square your respect for McCain with your disdain for Dean. They both spoke their minds with little regard for political niceties and they were both killed by oppo candidates questioning their fitness to be president based on myths about their demeanors. What Kerry and Gephardt and Lieberman and Edwards did to Dean was exactly what Bush did to McCain. In both cases it was low and wrong and in both cases it worked. That's politics. Maybe you didn't fall for it with McCain, but you clearly bought the hype with Dean.

And that doesn't even account for the robo-calling, which you naively dismissed in the other thread. The Kerry camp was the only group with the will and the means to do it and it is by no means beneath them. I believe they did it, with or without the candidate's knowledge, but I don't even need that to be true to think Kerry's a scumbag. His relentless, groundless attacks on Dean from over a month ago are enough to keep me from supporting his candidacy.

 

yo................


The pin cushion stuff came after months of daily, sometimes hourly, relentless attacks from Kerry, Gephardt and Lieberman. In their defense, before their attacks Dean had questioned them as to why they weren't standing up to Bush (on the war and everything else) but I think he was ******* right to do so. Every other candidate in this race sucked balls before Dean taught them the electorate didn't want a 2002 repeat.
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Early on at the beginning of last year, John Kerry was criticized for saying we " need regime change in Iraq, and in the UNited States." I think that was before Dean's popularity rose.
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I'd be angry at those guys too if I was Dean and so would you. And his response to the attacks was certainly no more extreme than your friend Dole's "Stop lying about my record."
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Except Bob Dole did that against George Bush who WAS lying about his record. The other candidates you mentioned never lied, they simply stated facts, and in some cases there was video for Dean to state for them.


As far as him being angry in general, all Democrats are angry at the Bush years. Thanks to Dean's early success, the candidates are now too. Every other candidate (except Lieberman) has co-opted this part of Dean's attack, starting with Gephardt learning how to call Bush a "miserable failure" and continuing in kind ever since.

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Kucinich was the very first candidate to criticize George Bush to great response in Spring of 2002. So it can be argued that Dean coopted that from him.

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As for him being an angry person, that's a load of crap. I've said it before: in his twelve years as governor he's never been known to yell at a staff member. Clinton, on the other hand, was known for his famous temper and proclivity for swearing up a furious storm behind closed doors.
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I saw meet the press sunday, Dean said the exact same thing, are you Howie??

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As for the old man thing, see the Dean's collapsing thread for my response to that. Having politely indulged a Republican heckler and then been interrupted by him when he tried to respond he told him to be quiet. It was blown out of proportion like so many other accusations against Dean.

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I actually saw that on C-Span . Dean handled that horribly. It seemed as though he felt like that was his chance to say " you had your turn, now its mine." Except it would have been a lot better against another opponent instead of an old man who barely made sense in the first place.

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I find it really hard to square your respect for McCain with your disdain for Dean. They both spoke their minds with little regard for political niceties and they were both killed by oppo candidates questioning their fitness to be president based on myths about their demeanors. What Kerry and Gephardt and Lieberman and Edwards did to Dean was exactly what Bush did to McCain.
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Wrong. For starters John McCain fought in Vietnam, he didnt get a chance to ski. I am angry at that. There is a reason I have that quote at the bottom. My father and my uncles , both minority and poor, HAD to go to fight in Vietnam , while rich people like Dr. Dean and George Bush got to stay home. My father went to war with a separated shoulder from a hs football injury, so Im not buying that "my backs bad, but not bad enough to ski" excuse.

Next place your wrong... George Bush had his allies send out fliers that McCain had father "black children out of wedlock" ... (as if being black was supposed to make that even more horrible?) So to say that Kerry mentioning FACTS ( he did want medicare cut) against dean is the same as the bull**** Bush pulled is insane.

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And that doesn't even account for the robo-calling, which you naively dismissed in the other thread. The Kerry camp was the only group with the will and the means to do it and it is by no means beneath them. I believe they did it, with or without the candidate's knowledge, but I don't even need that to be true to think Kerry's a scumbag.



A scumbag? Give me a break... Take off the orange cap and Dean sweater. You have no evidence that they made the robo-calling and I dismissed that because there was NO REASON for them to do that. A Person willing to caucus is going to KNOW where they go. Anyways, Kerry and Edwards surged in the polls done by the local media. People werent confused there. Just Trippi trying to save face for his horrible tumble....

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I know of John McCain, John McCain's actually replied to a letter of mine (with a pen , not automatic ****), and Howard Dean is no John McCain.

 

Hey Troy McClure and Batman Jones.

Um isn't this supposed to be a thread about Wesley Clark?

 

Sisir: yes, so I'll keep it brief, just to respond and then get out.

Troy:

Yes, I remember Kerry saying that. I also remember the defense of the statement complete with Cleland reference. I loved it and, for a brief moment, it almost made up for the spineless war vote (not that support for a popular war is spineless in itself -- but failing to have a debate, as Byrd pointed out, was shirking one of the most serious responsibilities of our Congress). I supported Kerry then, briefly. It was one of the few, few times he has shown any political spine.

The Dole comparison was meant to parallel the way the two guys handled attacks. And the line didn't go over well for Dole either. No, this year's guys didn't actually lie about Dean's record, but they knowingly distorted the Confederate flag comment and characterized Dean as being against Medicare when what he was actually against was the way it was administered. And he hadn't voiced any problem with Medicare in many years. The main thing they did though was to disparage his character and his fitness to be president, which was what I meant by the McCain comparison. I wasn't talking about the black baby -- I was talking about the suggestions that he was hotheaded and crazy as a result of his POW days, suggestions that were far more damaging to him than the black baby stuff.

Re: Kucinich. No, it can't. Neither can you attribute the Dems finally acting like an opposition party to Sharpton. Dean broke fundraising records (most raised in a quarter by a Democrat ever, AND at the lowest avg. donation) and vaulted to the top of the polls by standing up to the GOP and it was then that the other candidates followed suit.

Re: Meet the Press. That's funny. I didn't see it. And I said the same thing here a couple days ago in another thread. Maybe Dean's people are reading the board. More likely, they're just expressing a well known fact like I was. I didn't read it or see it anywhere else.

Re: the old man and the let me talk thing. I agree with you that it was a mistake. I disagree with the characterization of the guy as some harmless old codger. He was heckling. Still, a mistake and a costly one, but silly to use it as evidence that Dean's a hothead.

Re: the service issue. If I had your family background it would bother me too. For myself, I don't have a problem with anyone avoiding service in Vietnam any way they could if they didn't believe in the war. If they did believe in it and avoiding service, or if they avoided it and then sought to label others as unpatriotic or whatever, after avoiding service, then I do. But not because they didn't serve (or went AWOL) -- because they're hypocrites. Even so, I don't fault your position. Totally understandable.

I don't have an orange hat or Dean sweater. I'm on his email list and that's the limit. I've never given a dollar or volunteered an hour. And I've only been to his website and blog once. I'm not the diehard Dean fan you think I am and there are other candidates to whom I am closer on the issues. Over the course of this campaign, on this site, I have expressed support for Kerry, Dean, Clark, Dean, Kerry and Edwards. In that order (chronologically).

What pisses me off is that this guy had unprecedented success in involving new voters and finally showed a way to compete with Bush's money through involving new people at small donations and the party basically said no thanks. They painted him as a liberal - he's not one. They painted him as hostile to Medicare - he isn't. They said he had an outsized temper and a demeanor ill-befitting the office - he doesn't.

I don't actually know why you hate Dean or Trippi (or the 'Deaniacs') so much. I don't know why you and the party were so eager to get rid of them. But it was a mistake. The grass roots movement that Dean represented is what I defend when I defend him. It was one of the greatest gifts the party's received in a long, long time and they returned it to sender.

p.s. Sorry. That was as brief as I could be.

 

It seems that I remember people like Major bemoaning the fact that Clark can never clarify where he stands on stuff. Is that recollection of mine a good one?

For a while there, I thought this was a real problem of his, but I think he has solved that, but created a new problem now. Here's my thoughts on Clark.

He's a guy I really want to like. When there were first rumors about a Presidential run over a year ago, he was my guy based on what I knew about him. On CNN, he was always very evenhanded, and his analysis of the various military situations made a lot of sense and were clearly well thought out. His record was awesome, including an ability to get countries to work together within NATO. That seemed like a perfect counterbalance to Bush's go-it-alone tendencies, and it took away Bush's biggest strength (military). He seemed fairly moderate to me, although we knew relatively little about his stance on issues.

Then he kept waffling on whether to join the race or not - I thought he joined a month or two too late, but didn't really think much of it. He had the potential to be a Democratic John McCain - not subservient to traditional Democratic lobbyists and potentially above the politics. Once he finally joined, he was absolutely the guy I was behind 100% - and the only guy that I thought had a good shot of beating Bush.

Then he started opening his mouth, and it all started going downhill. He had some unclear statements on Iraq, and it seemed every time he tried to explain them, he made the situation even more confusing. I felt like I could explain his position far better than he could. That was just a result of not being a politician - if he could get past the primaries, I didn't think it would be a problem, but it was going to hold him back in the primaries.

I really liked that he came up with specific proposals, rather than just promising everything to everyone.... but I don't think that campaign style was working. He wasn't gaining traction on Dean (and later Kerry), and he felt he had to change. So first used the Dean strategy and started bashing Bush mercilessly - he was the guy I was hoping would present a contrast to Bush by being above all that. Then Kerry did well, so he brought out the "Kerry was only a junior officer" card, which I thought was absolutely ridiculous. I only saw it in print, but it just oozes of arrogance to me.

My Republican friends commented to me that he seemed to have the campaign strategy of "Look at me, I'm a general!" and I'm starting to agree. The thing is that everyone knows he's a General - he shouldn't have to repeating that over and over. The bash of Kerry was just flat-out uncalled for, I thought. Let your experience speak for itself.

I also think his views on some of these issues are just not well thought-out. For example, his abortion view is just crazy. He is way beyond Roe v. Wade - he wouldn't even say abortion 1 day before birth was bad, I think. It's almost like he was told "be pro-choice" and he simplified that to "I'll never go against abortions". I get the feeling many of his views are now being developed by someone other than himself, and that sucks.

The potential for him to be a Democratic John McCain is gone. He'd still give Bush a good fight, but he's not the candidate I was hoping he would be.