General Perot: What’s going on with Wes Clark?

Wesley Clark keeps making the headlines. Which is good for a presidential candidate. But he keeps making the wrong kinds of headlines — the kinds that take two or three news cycles to sort out. This is not so good for a presidential candidate.

These little mini-controversies keep coming. They’re usually about something the general has said, or said he said, or said he heard. And every little one provides great fodder for the obsessive types that stay glued to Inside Politics, O’Reilly, Hardball … the whole shouting match. It’s happening so regularly now that we’re starting to wonder if real people aren’t taking notice, too.

Sure, voters may not pay strict attention to presidential campaigns some 11 months out. But they’re aware on some level. You channel-surf past CNN enough times and see Wesley Clark explaining and clarifying still another curious comment, and eventually people begin to ask: What’s with this guy?

If this kind of thing had happened just once or twice, that’d be the end of it. Every presidential candidate deserves a free pass or two. But with Wesley K. Clark, it seems to be happening 24/7. The background noise he throws off begins to obscure whatever of import he has to say.

The latest dust-up was more like a dust bunny. Did the Democratic frontrunner, Howard Dean, ask Wesley Clark to join him on the ticket or not? Wes Clark says Yes. Howard Dean’s campaign consiglieri says No. So then Wes Clark backs off — excuse us, "clarifies" his position — by saying the offer was Dangled Out There, not put in so many words. But the rest of us don’t really care, do we? It’s like guessing who’ll finish second in the Kentucky Derby a year before the race. But it’s another example of Wes Clark’s propensity to trip himself up.

Even weirder was the interview the general had with George Stephanopoulos on ABC the other Sunday morning, when he was confronted by the all too usual contrast between his old self and the new model. Here, for example, is the general back in September of 2002 on the subject of Saddam Hussein: He "is not only malevolent and violent, but also unpredictable. He retains his chemical and biological warfare capabilities and is actively pursuing nuclear capabilities." And again: "Saddam Hussein does constitute a danger. He’s calculating, he’s stubborn."

Okay. We thought we understood. Saddam bad. Saddam a danger. Saddam a threat. Saddam a violent, unpredictable dictator with chemical and biological programs and in pursuit of nukes. So what’s the problem?

The problem is that the new Wes Clark doesn’t sound much like the old, or much concerned about Saddam Hussein at all. Especially now that Saddam’s regime has been changed, and the bedraggled tyrant himself dragged out of his hole in the ground. Suddenly Wes Clark doesn’t give a darn: "Our threat was not Saddam Hussein. It was Osama bin Laden. And the president of the United States deliberately misled the American people away from a struggle against Osama bin Laden. He misled us and took us into an unnecessary war. This is a captain who’s untrustworthy and should be replaced and that’s why I’m running." — Wesley K. Clark, December 21, 2003, on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

Huh? Does anybody not see the disconnect here? And not just between Wes Clark and post-9/11 America. But between The Candidate and The General.

What would the old general we thought we knew think of this impostor? That he’s just running for political office now and would say anything?

Weirdest of all is this new either-or business about Saddam and Osama. As if the American military couldn’t hunt both. And hasn’t been doing just that. Result: one down and Osama to go.

What happens to the Clark campaign if/when some GIs find Osama in his cave? What will The Candidate say then — that the real threat was North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il all along? We don’t know much about planning a presidential campaign, but basing it on the survival of the world’s most wanted terrorist doesn’t seem like a good long-term strategy.

As for this new Wes Clark’s braggadocio about how he would catch the elusive Osama if we’d just let him be commander-in-chief, well, it might all be more impressive if General Clark had caught Ratko Mladic, the Serbs’ Osama, in the Balkans. Instead, he was snapped partying with the jolly old butcher of Bosnia.

Time was when we could attribute The Candidate’s sillier comments to political immaturity. Or an over-zealous, over-programmed, over-experienced, over-clintonized campaign staff. But we’re not so sure any more.

There’s something about the way he shoots from the lip that’s kind of, well, goofy. See his embarrassing guy-on-the-barstool interview with Rolling Stone, which was filled with conspiracy theories about secret five-year plans advanced by mystery men at the Pentagon. What we thought was an aberration at the time is turning out to be a pattern.

He reminds us at times of the smartest kid in the class who consistently fails Common Sense 101. We’ve all known the type. You’d trust ’em with calculating the square root of pi, but not to follow directions across town.

No, that’s not quite right. There’s something about Wes Clark in his more confusing moments that brings to mind another eccentric presidential candidate with no previous political experience and a little too much self-certainty. Only without that candidate’s personal fortune. And without the one big idea that Ross Perot had: Deficit Reduction!

What idea has Wesley Clark brought to the table instead? You have to stop and think. Well, there’s his image as an Anti-Warrior Warrior, as the Washington Post described him the other day. But it doesn’t quite hold up on even cursory inspection:

Deficit Reduction, we understood. It came charted and graphed and accompanied with lots of gloom-and-doom rhetoric about bankrupting the next generation. It got our attention. It got the attention of the other candidates, and especially the eventual winner in ’ 92.

But exactly what is an anti-warrior warrior — somebody who thinks his war was just fine, but not the current one, even though their aims seem remarkably similar? The moral interventionism, the humanitarian purpose, the nation-building, the argument that a threat to the peace must be met before it grows out of control …. General Clark once exemplified those ideas; now he opposes them.

Ross Perot turned out to be a strange man with a serious idea; Wesley Clark increasingly sounds like a serious man who says strange things.

We miss the old Wesley K. Clark. The new one sounds so odd so regularly that we’re beginning to wonder if there wasn’t something phony about the old one, too, and we just didn’t catch it at the time. But at least we’re still mystified, even fascinated, by the contrast between the two. A few more strange comments from this new one and we won’t even be interested any more.

"Clark/Hildabeaste in 2004. Write it down."

Although I doubt it, it wouldn't matter even if it turns out to be the Democrats' ticket in 2004.

All that Bush has to do is win his same states again in 2004 that he won in 2000, and due to the 2000 census shifting electoral votes, he then wins by 18 electoral votes instead of just winning by 4 like he did in 2000.

And the Democrats have *NO ONE* who can take any of Bush's 2000 states away, save for possibly West Virginia under ideal (for them) circumstances, which isn't enough of an electoral swing to matter.

So let Hillary run with Doctor Dean touting their new/old Hillary Care Rx. It won't matter. They still lose. Let Dean run with Clark. It won't matter, they still lose. Let Hillary run with Clark. Doesn't matter, they still lose. They'd have to find someone who could win Bush's states that he won in 2000, and they've got no one in either their declared or undeclared Presidential camps who can take those states from Bush.

Moreover, Bush won in 2000 with only 48% of the popular vote. Now in 2004 Bush is up at 63% national popularity. What was "close" in 2000 will now be an electoral blowout for Bush in 2004.

Consider that Republicans have gained more than 5% over Democrats in several battleground states' voter registration rolls. Consider that in 2000 Gore only squeaked by in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin...states that Bush now stands to add to his victory margin in 2004.

Then consider that the fat-cat Democrats are now trying to get their money back from the DNC. They've asked the FEC to rule that their soft money contributions have to be returned. Yes, they are a little late to the party, but the big money knows that 2004 is going to be a full tilt Republican blowout (+4 or even +5 in the Senate, +10 in the House, plus Repubs also win the Presidency in a 2004 landslide).

If the Dems can't find someone who can take away Bush's states that he won in 2000, then this 2004 election is O V E R.

And Wesley Clark as Admiral Stockdale:

I love it when politicians gaffe and, for my money, the most memorable blunder of the last fifteen years came from former vice presidential candidate Admiral James Bond Stockdale. You may remember him – Ross Perot’s running mate. And if his name doesn’t ring a bell, you probably remember him as the silver-haired flesh presser who introduced himself to the world by asking "Who am I? Why am I here?" at the first vice presidential debate in 1992. He went on to answer – a Washington outsider, a Vietnam POW, an academic in the race solely at the behest of Mr. Perot -- but his self-directed interrogatories got genuine laughs from the audience, and when minutes later he told America he "felt like an observer at a ping pong game" between candidates Dan Quayle and Al Gore, the Admiral genuinely appeared off in his own little world. Indeed, after that performance the good Admiral was probably the last guy on Earth most Americans wanted a heartbeat away from their nukes.

We’ve met a latter-day Stockdale in this presidential campaign. He is fellow Vietnam vet and political newbie Wesley Clark. But whereas Stockdale knew who he was, the corporate-haired Clark seems genuinely clueless. Best documented, of course, is his stance on the use of force in Iraq, surely the defining “who am I?” issue for all Democrats this time around. In less than a week, the former CNN military analyst went from "probably would have voted for" to "I don't know if I would have or not" to "there was no reason to do this" to "I would never have voted for this war.” Not exactly the stuff of John Kerry – he of the “I authorized the president to threaten the use of force” when he voted to “authorize the president to use force” in Iraq – but disingenuous all the same. Then again, this is the same general/military analyst who predicted that a quick military victory in Iraq "was not going to happen," so perhaps things military just aren't this general's thing.

Mr. Clark’s explanation of why he’s running for president doesn’t inspire much confidence, either. I don’t buy the argument that he’s a Clinton pawn, mostly because it smacks so much of the conspiracy theories journalists are so fond of contriving. But there’s no denying that Clark himself said he wouldn’t be there -- as a candidate for the Democratic nomination, anyway -- if “Karl Rove had returned (his) phone calls." That's politically troublesome for Democrats, since it’s generally not a good idea to give the Democratic presidential nomination to someone who’s an admitted phone call away from the Republican party. And it’s factually troublesome for all Americans because, according to White House call logs, the phone calls never happened. For his part, Rove doesn't remember ever talking to Clark. Who Clark may or may not have called, and who didn't return his calls, and what color the sky was in that world, is only Clark's guess.

Which brings us to a third question, one not normally apropos for candidates for national office but a fair one in Stockdale's case and again in Clark's. That is: what planet is this guy living on? In Clark's case it's apparently the same one as Jayson Blair, because from where we're sitting, his version of the world bears only a passing resemblance to the rest of ours. Clark's tales of phantom phone calls to Rove are bad enough. But he also claims he got a call on September 11 from "people around the White House" asking him to link Saddam Hussein to the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Clark did receive a call, alright, but it wasn't from the White House. It was from Israeli-Canadian Middle East expert Thomas Hecht, who called to invite Clark to give a speech in Canada.

Two months later, Clark told a Phoenix radio station that that the White House tried to get him "knocked off" CNN because he might be critical of its conduct in the war. But when pressed to back his allegation, he admitted it was based solely on rumor. No one has corroborated these rumors since.

Then there's the four-star general's declaration that he isn't a military man but "just a person who's served in the United States armed forces for most of (his) adult life." Really? Under that logic, Ted Bundy wasn't a psychopathic killer, just “a person who prematurely terminated the lives of young women for most of his adult life.”

I expect the tangle-tongued Mr. Clark and his handlers to spend the next few months "clarifying” who he is and why he’s here. I, for one, would like to hear him spend less time defining himself as the guy on the business end of White House conspiracies and more time defining himself as a man with definite beliefs. If/when he does so, he’d be well advised to use the same English language as the rest of us – that being the one that assigns to a four-star general the appellation “military man.” (Ditto Mr. Kerry, who’d do well to bone up on the difference between authorizing the use of force and the threat of it.) And whatever he does, here’s hoping he declares for himself a winner in the ping pong game of realities going on in his noggin, sooner rather than later. If he doesn’t, the flipflopping conspiracy theorist risks being relegated to trivia question status, alongside Mr. Stockdale. There may be worse stations, but for a man who wants a future in public life, I’m unaware of them.

To win in 2004, the Dems *must* find a candidate who can take away some of Bush's states that he won in 2000. After all, if Bush simply wins those same states again, he wins re-election. So this election in 2004 is pretty simple: it is all about those states that Bush won in 2000. The rest of the states don't even count for this game this time.

Now, such candidates *do* exist.

If the Dems select Senator Breaux as their VP candidate, they *can* win Louisianna in 2004. Likewise, West Virginia could be won by a Democratic Presidential ticket.

But pro-abortion Dean (a freaking Planned Parenthood doctor, for crying out loud) and Hillary aren't going to win *either* of those pro-life states.

And if the Dems again lose in 2004 those states that Bush won in 2000, then Bush wins re-election no matter how the other states in this great nation go.

Thus, the battle is fixed on those states for now, and so far it ain't much of a competition. Should two or more of those states go into play, however, then the rest of the nation would finally matter to the 2004 campaign.

You heard it here, first.

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