Posted on 09/19/2003 6:13:49 AM PDT by areafiftyone
The Democratic presidential campaign has been a bust so far.After nearly a year of campaigning, the only one of the nine announced candidates to catch fire has been Howard Dean, whom party leaders deride as too liberal and too error-prone to beat President Bush. That explains the extraordinary welcome that many Democrats yesterday gave General Wesley Clark’s announcement that he was joining the presidential race.
The chief boosters of General Clark’s candidacy are none other than William and Hillary Clinton. General Clark hails from Little Rock, Ark., knew Mr. Clinton when he was still a governor, and had an extraordinary degree of contact with him when he served as NATO commander during the Kosovo bombing campaign of 1999.
Mr. Clinton has nothing but praise for him: “He is brilliant, he is brave, and he is good.” As for New York’s junior senator,she distanced herself yesterday from reports that she had already agreed to serve as co-chairman of the Clark campaign. But Fox News reports that her office doesn’t deny that such a role “is in the works and might happen soon.”
If that happens, Mrs. Clinton could walk into the Clark campaign headquarters and feel as if she had stepped back in time to her husband’s White House circa 1996. Clinton commerce secretary Mickey Kantor will be a senior Clark adviser. Bruce Lindsey, the White House counsel for President Clinton,will be providing advice.So too will Eli Segal, Mr. Clinton’s 1992 campaign chairman. Mr. Clark’s spokesman is none other than Mark Fabiani, who handled damage control on scandals for President Clinton. No one would be surprised if Chris Lehane, Mr. Fabiani’s business partner and Al Gore’s former press secretary, also joined the campaign. Mr. Lehane resigned from Senator Kerry’s presidential campaign just last week.
Mr. Clark has never even run for student council, but he has qualities that may attract a wide range of supporters. He is clearly smart and ambitious, having been a Rhodes scholar two years before Mr. Clinton was. His inexperience could work to his advantage, since he has no voting record for opponents to pick over for inconsistencies. His Southern roots could make him competitive in states where Democrats need help. He opposed the war in Iraq, a litmus test on the Democratic left, but his military background could immunize him from charges of being weak on defense.
Still, his record in the military is a mixed one. Senator Inhofe, a Republican member of the Armed Services Committee, told me that General Clark was known as “Clinton’s general” during his time as NATO commander and constantly ran decisions about the Kosovo war directly by the White House. One general who served with him called him “brilliant” but added that his “need to win, right down to the core of his fiber,” makes him “highly manipulative.” Another general told the Washington Post: “There are an awful lot of people who believe Wes will tell anybody what they want to hear and tell somebody the exact opposite five minutes later.” Sounds like another Arkansas politician we know — but can General Clark do it as well as Mr. Clinton?
One of the challenges Mr. Clark will face will be his closeness to the Clintons. It is no secret that they are suspicious of Howard Dean, the current front-runner, whom they fear would be trounced so badly against Mr. Bush that he could hurt Hillary’s prospects in 2008. Should General Clark be elected president, the Clintons would have a strong ally in the Oval Office. If he does well but doesn’t get the nomination, he may be viewed as a suitable running mate for Mrs.Clinton or some other Democratic nominee in the future.
General Clark is no doubt running for president for many reasons. But an important, unacknowledged one is that he is the favorite candidate of the Democratic Party’s two best-known figures.To the extent that he succeeds,the Clintons will see their already substantial influence in the Democratic Party grow. General Clark no doubt is his own man, but with so many old Clinton hands surrounding him, don’t be surprised if Mr. Clinton is occasionally tempted to act as if he were still General Clark’s commander in chief.
She's running out of forums and is constricted by her Senate seat. She's a sh** ass Senator who cares nothing for the State of New York....just her little islands in Harlem and within the Jewish community.
She provokes too many people but if she stands side by side with a candidate, he can do the provoking, and she can suck up the air time.
No John, I agree with everything you say, except the above statement.
Democrats are not scared of dean because he's "too liberal". Democrats ARE scared of Dean because he is OPEN about his liberalism, and TELLING the voters WHAT he WOULD do. Unlike that piece of crap President we had.
I have this uneasy hunch that RapistX42 and The Hildebeaste will somehow use Clark's run to leverage her candidacy. They obviously care about no one but themselves; perhaps Clark is just a pawn?
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