Posted on 10/13/2003 4:47:46 PM PDT by Pokey78
For the second time in a generation, the Democratic Party is in search of a white knight, a charismatic outsider who can seize the White House from a seemingly impregnable incumbent.
And Democratic kingmakers are again turning their gazes to an Oxford man, and a Southerner.
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Just like Bill Clinton, this new Democratic front-runner is from Arkansas, a Rhodes scholar who slogged his way to Oxford.
Like Mr Clinton, Gen Wesley Clark, studied at Oxford in the late 1960s, against the background din of the Vietnam War.
But there the parallels end. Mr Clinton's Oxford years drifted by in a haze of self-indulgence. He experimented with drugs, attended at least one anti-Vietnam war rally, and honed his flirtation skills, all the while failing to take any final examinations. In contrast, Gen Clark's Oxford contemporaries paint a picture of a young man weighed down by duty.
Gen Clark's years at Magdalen, from 1966 to 1968, were successful. He won a swimming Blue and took a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics.
At the same time, he was a serving US army officer, freshly graduated from West Point military academy. His friends and comrades were fighting and dying in Vietnam, and he knew he would be joining them. He married his American sweetheart, Gert, in his second year at Magdalen.
Born Wesley Kanne in Chicago in 1944, he moved to Arkansas four years later, after the death of his father Benjamin, a Jewish lawyer.
He took the name of his stepfather, Victor Clark, a banker, and has described a childhood as "the poorest kid in the richest neighbourhood" of Little Rock, the state capital. Raised a Baptist, he converted to Catholicism after marrying.
At Oxford, Gen Clark threw himself into the Vietnam debate, defending the US position in arguments with classmates, and at the Oxford Union.
Stew Early, a fellow Rhodes scholar and Gen Clark's oldest Oxford friend, thought a mixture of personal loyalty and ambition drove him.
"A lot of his buddies were already in Vietnam, and he wanted to support them," he said. Today, political rivals question Gen Clark's credentials as a Democrat. A political novice before leaping into the presidential race less than a month ago, he once voted for Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
Yet, in recent polls, Gen Clark has leapt to the front of the crowded field of Democrats seeking the presidential nomination.
Hollywood liberals gush over his military record in Vietnam and Kosovo, swooning at his Silver Star medal, his two Bronze Stars and Purple Heart.
Their calculation is simple. Mr Clinton was the man for the Democrats in 1992, when a slumping economy was the nation's most visible threat.
Now, in a scarier, more hostile world, Democrats are sorely tempted by the cross-party appeal of a decorated four-star general, who just happens to be a social liberal. Mr Early argues that party labels do not fit his friend.
"To the extent that you might have thought he was a Republican, I don't think he identified with the business establishment, or great wealth," he said. "That wasn't where he came from. He wanted to become a great general."
Mr Early, a management consultant, still recognises the competitive, driven Oxford student in his friend - the pair still jump in the nearest swimming pool whenever they meet, to test who is faster.
Oxford marked Gen Clark forever, Mr Early believes.
"He's not an ideologue. Studying abroad, you learn there are some very bright people who think differently from you. If you go to Oxford saying 'There's only the American way' you're going to lose a lot."
Raised a Republican, he converted to Democrat last week.
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I think that the plan is for President Clark to order the Pentagon to build a time machine so Clinton can go back and ace his exams. He might even change his taste in women, but then he'd never have been president which leads to a paradox... But I'm sure that Clark's got that all figured out.
-PJ
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