Posted on 08/19/2004 7:42:47 PM PDT by Yonkers Finest
Please let me know what your think about Gen. Wesley Clark. It's very rare that you see a person receive such love/hate on both sides of the playing field. Liberals and Conservatives alike seem to always have mixed reviews about him. As someone who had the opportunity to personally speak to him albeit for a brief time I personally like him even if we don't share 100% of the same opinions. Many of my friends and family members were also afforded the opportunity to meet and talk to him in a very personal matter and all share similar feelings of support for the man. So how do the other people at FreeRepublic see Gen. Clark.
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Opportunist. Poor one at that!
I saw him at the Marriot Crystal City lobby last week when I was checking out.
I thought he was short.
He comes off as unpolished and in over his head, compared to others on the national stage at his level.
The impression he always gave me was that he was the kind of guy who rose in rank in the military because he kept quiet and knew the right people. When he got to a certain level, he didn't need to keep quiet anymore. That's when his problems became most apparent (his 'starting WW3 moment,' and most of his presidential campaign are good examples of this).
It's the difference between a man with balls and a man who acts like he has balls. He is in the 'acting' category, in my book, based on his behavior as I have seen it on the national stage.
'Not ready for prime time.' A classic case of a guy who started believing his own publicity - no restraint, poor judgment, and questionable wisdom.
War criminal.
He rose to one step beyond his level of incompetency...and then attempted to make a superhuman leap beyond even that.
I agree with you and HitmanNY. He only won OK because the RATs put out an ad to vote Clark to hurt Kerry. BTW Kerry came in 3rd.
Clark had no business getting his 4th star and heading NATO! Louzy 4-star Clinton General!
A fish eyed fool
Clark? Where's my barf bag?
I think General Wesley Clark has fallen to the lime light bug... This means that he is susceptible to DNC manipulations. I think he has not been told the whole truth about anything, and his retired military status bars him from finding out anything through the usual channels.
Strategically, he should ditch the Kerry campaign and retire. He might be able to save some face.
Michael Moore campaigned with him.......NUF SAID!
Clark is a completely self-serving man.
The Peter Principle, while more of a cutsey idea than a legit provable idea, is definitely real.
"In a hierarchically structured administration, people tend to be promoted up to their "level of incompetence". The principle is based on the observation that in such an organization new employees typically start in the lower ranks, but when they prove to be competent in the task to which they are assigned, they get promoted to a higher rank. This process of climbing up the hierarchical ladder can go on indefinitely, until the employee reaches a position where he or she is no longer competent. At that moment the process typically stops, since the established rules of bureacracies make that it is very difficult to "demote" someone to a lower rank, even if that person would be much better fitted and more happy in that lower position. The net result is that most of the higher levels of a bureaucracy will be filled by incompetent people, who got there because they were quite good at doing a different (and usually, but not always, easier) task than the one they are expected to do."
Clark is no dummy, but to be fair, he isn't nearly as skilled and savvy as he thought he was. A classic case of the Peter Principle at work - he rose to a level he wasn't well suited to, and rather than accept that, he beleived his publicity and went for a notch even higher. All the seams started showing.
The rest is history.
A total embarrassment to our honorable US Army. How this guy became a general is beyond me. I don't mind him being a democrat, but how could such a baffoon become a general?
* Best I could do....
nyuk nyuk...
I think he is whacked because he also (like me) wants to do some time traveling...funny weird, not funny ha-ha, when you consider that he was actually given command of so many men...
For a good laugh put him next to Gen. Franks.
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