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The photos from the Singapore summit were meant to impress, but the substance was thin indeed — for a vague pledge to work towards complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula our president gave up U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises in a surprise move that whacked both South Korea and Japan. Maybe it will all work out. But to understand what President Donald Trump is really after, let me put this into perspective. Trump is a businessman, so let's think of him as a new CEO and his supporters as the shareholders. When new CEOs come in they work hard to...

Mr. Clark I am very confused by your recent comments suggesting that McCain being a prisoner of war didn't qualify as experience when it came to being commander in chief. So I was curious to see how long Senator McCain was a prisoner of war, and did you know that Senator McCain was a POW in VIETNAM longer than Obama has been a senator? that's right see McCain was held and tortured by our enemies from 1967 to 1973 Obama has only been in the senate since he took the oath of office in 2005, even if I give Obama...

Let’s leave aside for a moment General Weasley Clark’s increasingly embarrassing attempts to defend his “Face the Nation” claim that “his hero” John McCain is actually unqualified for the presidency. When asked by a half-dozen interviewers to specify one area in which his candidate, Barack Obama, is actually MORE qualified than McCain, the Weasley One always returns to the same word – “judgment.” Obama’s qualified, in other words, because he displayed better judgment than McCain on the issue of the Iraq War. But there’s an obvious follow-up to this argument that General Clark hasn’t yet faced.. He suggests that “judgment”...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, whose stock as Sen. Barack Obama's possible vice presidential running mate had been rising, may have ruined his chances with his belittling attack on Sen. John McCain's war record. Clark, along with other Obama surrogates, followed the campaign's line of downgrading McCain's performance as a Vietnam War POW. But Clark was particularly insulting. ("I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.") He also got more attention by appearing on CBS's "Face the Nation," while other surrogates addressed campaign gatherings. A footnote: Clark had...

Rove’s Third Term By PAUL KRUGMAN Al Gore never claimed that he invented the Internet. Howard Dean didn’t scream. Hillary Clinton didn’t say she was staying in the race because Barack Obama might be assassinated. And Wesley Clark didn’t impugn John McCain’s military service. Scott McClellan, the former White House press secretary, titled his tell-all memoir “What Happened.” But a true account of modern American politics should be titled “What Didn’t Happen.” Again and again we’ve had media firestorms over supposedly revealing incidents that never actually took place. The latest fake scandal fit the usual pattern as an awkwardly phrased...

Wesley Clark claims John McCain's military service does not qualify him for the White House, but Clark spoke differently on that matter for John Kerry during a speech at the 2004 Democratic convention. Video

FLASHBACK: Wesley Clark, Then and Now. Plus, dodging missiles. [videos]

One of the dumbest things about the Clark kerfuffle is that because there are so many elements of military service that people respect, the narrow critique he’s offering against McCain seems almost beside the point. I see service mainly as a testament to character and fortitude; others see it as evidence of good judgment, and others as an important lesson for a C-in-C to have (i.e. “experience”) before committing other men to war. So far as I know, McCain has never staked his own wartime ordeal to any one of these, preferring to let voters draw whatever they find most...

Clark Finds a Home Among Obama Advisors (updated)Ed LaskyOn Sunday, Wes Clark, who had been on Hillary Clinton's campaign list of advisers, seems to have adroitly switched sides to support Barack Obama and did so in a very maladroit way. He impugned the character of John McCain and his war-record on Meet The Press Sunday. He insulted McCain by saying that  "I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president." But this is far from the first time Clark has insulted people in a very crude way.   Last year, for example,...

Let me be clear, John McCain is not my first choice for becoming the next president; he’s not even number 2. And I have often thought that the role of live “war hero” should be reserved for people who were instrumental in winning battles and wars. So in a literal sense what Wesley Clark said is true: "I don't think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president." "It doesn't take a great deal of effort to get shot down," McCain himself is fond of saying. But as Kathleen Parker eloquently puts it:...

Why was Wesley Clark shuffled off?

To start off, as many of you have already read, Obama threw Wes Clark, if not under the bus, at least into the bumper "As he's said many times before, Senator Obama honors and respects Senator McCain's service, and of course he rejects yesterday's statement by General Clark," said Obama campaign spokeman Bill Burton. Is this what the Hope 'n Change xPress will bring us throughout the campaign? Some Obama supporter comes out, says something nasty, gets the talking point out there for all to see, then Obama, who really needs to wash the blood and gore off his bus...

Dole weighs in on Clark McCain said he'd rather focus on issues facing Americans, but of course he's on much better turf discussing biography and questions about his Vietnam service. And his campaign pours it on, sending over a Bob Dole statement with some trademark zingers. "The attack by General Wesley Clark on Senator John McCain’s war record and qualifications for the presidency is beyond comprehension. Clark’s absurd remarks signal further erosion in our nation’s political discourse. He should have stayed in bed Sunday morning. It’s unfortunate that a former General who ran for the presidency on his own war...

ABC News' Bret Hovell Reports: John McCain, taking questions from reporters aboard his Straight Talk Express: The Airplane Edition, said it was time for the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama to cut retired Gen. Wesley Clark loose. "I think it's up to Sen. Obama now to not only repudiate him, but to cut him loose," McCain said to a small group of reporters somewhere between Indianapolis, IN, and Cartagena, Colombia. For two days, the Obama campaign has been off message, forced to manage the fallout surrounding comments Clark made about McCain's war service in a broadcast interview Sunday. The highly...

Ollie North calls Wes Clark "petty and small"

An interesting trend has developed in the Obama campaign that I feel compelled to discuss... RUF reported yesterday on the blogger who questioned McCains military service and Wesley Clark's comments as well. In the past we've reported on Obama address not one, but TWO preachers from his former Church and their radical comments that led to numerous youtube hits. Additionally we've addressed the Obama campaign responding to members of his campaign staff refusing to seat women of a Muslim faith behind him during speeches... The Obama campaign continuously responds to all of these outrageous stories with the generic 'this is...

The Talk Shows Sunday, June 29th, 2008 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Gov. Ed Rendell, D-Pa.; former Rep. Rob Portman, R-Ohio; Bob Barr, Libertarian presidential candidate.MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger, R-Calif., Dave Freudenthal, D-Wyo., and Bill Ritter, D-Colo.FACE THE NATION (CBS): Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.; retired Gen. Wesley Clark.THIS WEEK (ABC): Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill.; Gov. Tim Pawlenty, R-Minn.; Ralph Nader, independent presidential candidate.LATE EDITION (CNN) : U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker; Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; Govs. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., and Bobby Jindal, R-La.; Terry McAuliffe, campaign...

The highest voltage third rail of this presidential campaign may not be race, sex, or age, but Senator John McCain's military service. McCain's campaign Sunday issued a pair of outraged statements after retired general and Barack Obama supporter Wesley Clark said he didn't think that McCain’s service as a fighter pilot and prisoner of war was relevant to running the country. Obama has consistently praised McCain's service, and called him "a genuine American hero." But farther to the left—and among some of McCain's conservative enemies as well—harsher attacks are circulating. Critics have accused McCain of war crimes for bombing targets...

Day three of the Clark controversy, and things keep getting more and more interesting. Today, Barack Obama is apparently denying that his own speech yesterday in Ohio -- where we all assumed he was specifically repudiating Clark's comments -- was, in fact, aimed at Gen. Clark. Here is what Obama had to say today: "... I notice that I think in at least one publication it was reported that my comments yesterday about Senator McCain were in a response to General Clark. I think my staff will confirm that was in a draft of that speech that I had written...