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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
Supporters say Wesley Clark can do to Bush what he did to Milosevic. But first the telegenic military hero has to take on Howard Dean.
Sep 5, 2003 | The waiting game will soon be over.
Wesley Clark, retired NATO commander, former CNN analyst, ardent Bush critic, and dream presidential candidate to a lot of wistful Democrats, says he will soon announce whether he is running for president. The guessing has played out for nearly a year as Clark, a political neophyte, has worked behind the scenes, quietly gauging his chances.
On Wednesday Clark officially declared himself a Democrat, telling CNN that if he ran for president, he'd seek the Democratic nomination. "It's a party that stands for internationalism. It's a party that stands for ordinary men and women," Clark said. "It's a party that stands for fair play and equity and justice and common sense and reasonable dialogue." He told the network he hadn't made up his mind to run but added, "I'm closer to working my way through it."
"He's not going to go into battle without an accurate assessment of local troops on the ground, and allies," says John Hlinko, co-founder of DraftWesleyClark.com, one of the handful of grassroots online groups urging the telegenic general to enter the Democratic primary. The organizations do no work directly with Clark and insist they remain in the dark about his intentions to run for president.
His candidacy, this late in the game, would be novel, to say the least.
"He has no political experience, no fundraising, little name recognition, and no endorsements," notes Rogan Kersh, a professor of politics at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. "In normal times that's a recipe for utter humiliation, and you may as well stay home."
But these are not normal times. This is the first presidential election since 9/11, and terrorism and national security are the issues that reign supreme. "This year the Democrats need some kind of military credentials," insists Kersh, who also notes that the number of undecided Democrats has doubled over the summer.
It's also the first White House vote in 16 years when Democrats won't be seeing a Clinton or a Gore on the ticket. And while former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean has emerged as the Democratic front-runner on the strength of his Internet insurgency and his strong opposition to the war, 50 percent of the Democratic voters in a recent CBS News poll said they wish there were somebody else to vote for.
Those factors point toward a Clark candidacy. "All indications are Gen. Clark is moving forward with a bid," says Larry Weatherford, political director for DraftClark2004.com.
An army of believers is out there. "I really think the Democrats want a winner, and Wesley Clark is the most electable," says Davis Travis, a Wisconsin state representative who was one of Bill Clinton's earliest state supporters in the 1992 presidential campaign. "Republicans are going to try to wrap George Bush in a flag, but I don't think you can make anybody more patriotic than Wesley Clark."
Clark may be hoping that Democrats are so angry about the direction of the country that they'll be willing take a chance on a political rookie with a gold-plated résumé. And one who could win votes in the South. While Dean plays into voters' desire to "take our country back," as he says on the stump, some worry he won't have the electoral reach to do it.
"Democrats know they want their country back, but who's going to get for them?" asks James Zogby. A former senior advisor to the Gore campaign, Zogby also served as deputy campaign manager for Jesse Jackson's '84 presidential run. "Wesley Clark can say, 'I've got the résumé, and I'm more capable of getting it back.'"
And what a résumé it is. A Southerner from Little Rock, Ark., who graduated first in his class at West Point and became a Rhodes scholar, Clark was awarded the Purple Heart in Vietnam. He became a four-star general, later serving as supreme commander of NATO troops, and he defeated Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and stopped the Serbs' ethnic cleansing of the Albanians.
Clark was also a fervent critic of the war with Iraq, claiming the Bush White House had misled America and needlessly put American troops in harm's way. In the days and weeks immediately following Saddam Hussein's fall from power, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other allies of the Pentagon derided Clark, although not by name, as a "TV general" who'd lost touch with the realities of war. Fast-forward three months to American soldiers being killed on a near-daily basis, Islamic terrorists pouring into an unstable Iraq, and the reconstruction of that country sucking tens of billions of dollars out of the U.S. treasury, and suddenly Clark's sober warnings appear dead on.
Which is one reason the buzz has been building for weeks. "There's something intriguing about him, and people are talking about Clark all the time," says Ken Sunshine, a longtime Democratic activist who runs a New York City public relations firm and who once served as Barbra Streisand's spokesman. "Obviously he's a smart, capable guy and very attractive on paper."
Esquire magazine has called Clark "handsome, well-spoken, personable, driven, organized, disciplined, passionate, courageous, fair-minded, loyal." The Atlantic Monthly dubbed him "the dream candidate."
But some campaign pros say that dream might turn out to be a mirage. They aren't sure how Clark, if he runs after getting such a late start, will be able to compete from an organizational and financial standpoint. And despite his ubiquitous presence on cable TV and the Sunday morning talk shows, they aren't sure what kind of candidate Clark would make.
