Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
Wesley Clark Archive
July 02, 2008
Clark, McCain and the forms of courage
As the McCain-Clark dustup continues into its fourth day (mostly courtesy of McCain), it seems to me that there is one interesting way in which it reveals assumptions about Presidential qualifications. One could make a fairly plausible point about how being a POW would prepare someone for the Presidency: in a word, courage. It was courageous for McCain to fly...
June 30, 2008
Piling on re Wes Clark on John McCain
Mark and Jonathan are entirely right about Wes Clark and John McCain. Clark's criticism was not of the honor or veracity of McCain's service record but of its relevance to his qualifications to be president. Clark in fact said McCain as a POW was a hero to him and millions of others.
On Capitol Hill, I can't think of a lasting contribution McCain has made to defense or national security policy (other than the POW-MIA issue and normalization of relations with Vietnam), despite his powerful position. I invite readers to provide examples that I have missed.
Getting the General's Back
As Talleyrand might say, the Obama campaign's disavowal of Clark's comments on McCain is worse than a crime: it's a blunder. Josh sums it up well, although I think that there is a broader point, which Josh has made at other times. This is an example of what he calls "bitch-slap" politics: can a candidate defend himself and his people,...
August 08, 2007
"Why terrorists aren't soldiers"
Wes Clark and Kal Raustiala argue that treatment as "unlawful combatants" is better than the terrorists deserve.
February 05, 2006
Shooting for a C- in Iraq
Can we use our presence as leverage to make the Shi'a coalition ruling Iraq govern on a national, rather than an ethnic and sectarian, basis?
September 22, 2005
Leadership
Wes Clark focuses the minds of the "Out of Iraq Caucus."
May 28, 2005
Good news for Clark fans
The Carpetbagger Report says Clark is positioning himself well for 2008.
April 16, 2005
Clark to Dems: Get over Vietnam
Oh, and he's running for President.
February 10, 2004
Obit for a worthy campaign
Wesley Clark is out of the race. That was the logical thing to do after finishing third twice in Southern states today. Clark made some bad plays and hit some tough breaks. (Howard Dean's collapse came just a week too early; otherwise, we might be writing today about how Clark's brilliant strategy of skipping Iowa and letting Dean finish off...
January 23, 2004
Did Clark insult the junior officers?
John F. Kerry and Wesley K. Clark were both war heroes as junior officers in Vietnam. Clark, gravely wounded in a firefight, stayed on his feet and rallied his troops to fight off the enemy. Kerry, commanding a small fleet of gunboats on the Mekong River, organized a daring and successful counterattack on ambushers who were firing on his vessels...
January 22, 2004
Was George W. Bush a "deserter"?
Last week I criticized Wesley Clark for standing by and not protesting while Michael Moore called George W. Bush a "deserter." As I read the law, Bush was not guilty of the extremely serious crime of "desertion," but only of the less serious, though hardly trivial, offense of being Absent Without Leave (AWOL). But I don't know where Peter Jennings...
January 21, 2004
The Clark campaign: now what?
Clark’s odds have clearly lengthened. The polls suggest that he was getting some votes as the perceived “anti-Dean” that are now going to Kerry and Edwards. Now we get to see whether Clark’s organization of 150,000 volunteers has staying power or not, and whether Kerry and Edwards can build finance and organization fast enough to compete. The other factor to...
January 18, 2004
Foul, Clark, offense. Unnecessary roughness.
For the first time in this campaign, I'm disappointed in my candidate. He's made some mistakes before, but this is the first time he's done something actually wrong. Michael Moore, at a Clark fundraiser, said that he looked forward to a debate between "the general and the deserter." Clark, asked about it later, said: "I've heard those charges. I don't...
January 17, 2004
Steve Sachs's critique of Clark
Steve Sachs (via Instapundit) has a thoughtful post in which he compares Wesley Clark's victory op-ed to his speech some months later criticizing the decision to go to war. He considers, but dismisses, the idea that Clark's thought might be consistent, though complex. [Scroll down one item for more on that general issue.] Sachs makes, I think, at least one...
Clark's complex consistency
Philosoraptor, commenting on the Wesley Clark victory op-ed in the Times of London that is being misrepresented as "pro-war," has a good explanation of part of what's going on here: Clark has enough brains to understand, and enough integrity to acknowledge, the arguments in favor of courses of action which, on balance, he opposes. People who never ever admit that...
January 16, 2004
Why Wesley Clark is Karl Rove's nighmare
Richard Cohen goes to a Clark fundraiser in Dallas and reports back. Look, no candidate ought be held to account for every comment he makes on the campaign trail. But the best spin on Howard Dean's comment that he really thinks Clark is a Republican is: he probably didn't mean it....
Is Clark a hawk or a dove?
Matthew Yglesias likes my defense of Clark, but thinks I ought to concede that there was "murkiness" about his position. I think the murkiness was more external (in the way Clark was perceived) than internal. Part of the fault lay with Clark's own explanations. Here's how I understand what Clark believed, and said: 1. Clark always thought the Iraqi regime...
More Drudge sludge, via Common Dreams
Wesley Clark has been honored by a combined sliming effort from right and left: Common Dreams reproduces Clark's London Times article from the days immediately following the fall of Baghdad, under the sarcastic headline "Anti-War Candidate?" and Drudge links to it. A Bushite friend writes triumphantly: "Sure sounds like a hawk to me ... Clark ... is obligated to explain...
CNN and the RNC ladle the Drudge sludge
The palpable falsehood that Wesley Clark supported going to war with Iraq at the time the use-of-force resolution was passed is now being repeated both by the Chair of the RNC and by Lou Dobbs of CNN. Dana Hull and Drew Brown of Knight-Ridder report the charge and its falsity as part of a single story, which is the right...
January 15, 2004
Did Bill Clinton fire Wesley Clark?
Glenn Reynolds wants to know whether Bill Clinton fired Wesley Clark. Here's a hint: Four months after Hugh Shelton and William Cohen fooled Clinton into moving Clark out of his job as SACEUR and thus forcing him to retire, Clinton awarded Clark the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Update: Reynolds updates, quoting one of his correspondents explaining the important difference between...
Exclusive falsehood
Drudge has a breathless "exclusive" today on the transcript of Wesley Clark's HASC testimony that Digby found three days ago and I commented on yesterday. A reader wants to know what Drudge thinks is "exclusive." I think the answer is pretty obvious: what's exclusive is Drudge's complete misinterpretation of what Clark said. Drudge says that Clark "made the case for...
Two essays on Wesley Clark
Two good essays in the New Republic on why Wesley Clark should be President, offsetting TNR's bizarre official (publisher-driven) endorsement of Lieberman. J. Peter Scoblic, the managing editor, explains why Clark is the right leader for the country right now: Clark may also be able to persuade the antiwar left of the merits of a true muscular multilateralism--not least through...
January 13, 2004
Clark on Iraq and al-Qaeda
Digby of Hullabaloo finds the document that should -- but, given the quality of political journalism, probably won't -- put to rest the question of Wesley Clark's alleged inconsistency over the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda. It's the transcript of Clark's House Armed Services Committee testimony. It's almost exactly contemporary with the tape (apparently supplied by the Lieberman camp, according...
January 12, 2004
Clark tells the truth,
and is called a liar for it
In October 2002, the New York Times ran a story about connections between Iraq and al-Qaeda, part of the "liberal" media support effort for the White House disinformation campaign trying to pin responsibility for 9-11 on Iraq. (That effort was a success: to this day, most Americans believe that Iraq was responsible for 9-11, despite the fact that the operation...
January 10, 2004
Todays' polling numbers: "A two-man race"
ARG New Hampshire tracking Dean 35 (even) Clark 21 (+1) Kerry 10 (-1) Lieberman 8 (even) Gephardt 4 (-1) Edwards 3 (even) Kucinich 2 (even) Undecided 17 (+1) Rasmussen national tracking Dean 24 Clark 16 Lieberman 10 Gephardt 10 Kerry 9 Edwards 7 Moseley-Braun 4 Sharpton 3 Kucinich 1 Not Sure 16 Rasmussen's analysis: At the national level, the contest...
January 09, 2004
Of course, all of Clark's military colleagues hated him ...
... not counting the former superintendents of West Point and Annapolis, who seem to think he was some sort of hero or something: Clark's actions throughout the Kosovo conflict, culminating in his testimony at the Hague Tribunal, could form a chapter in manuals on modern character-based military leadership. But what do they know?...
Two more points
Clark has a fourth straight day of two-point gains in the ARG New Hampshire tracking poll. Dean and Lieberman stay even, while Kerry drops another point. Current figures (Monday's numbers in parens) Dean 35 (39) Clark 20 (12) Kerry 11 (14) Lieberman 8 (6) Gephardt 5 (6) Since Monday, Dean's lead over Clark has shrunk from 27 points to 15...
January 08, 2004
Two points a day
The latest ARG tracking has Clark up another two points to, 18%; he's gained a total of six points over three days. Dean is down a point, to 35%; he's down a total of four. Kerry is also down a point, to 12, down a total of two, while Lieberman is up another point to 8. Because the reported results...
January 07, 2004
More on Clark's tax plan
Ruy Teixeira, who has both a more expert an a more dispassionate view than I do, thinks that Clark's tax program is good politics, and that Dean's isn't. I note that Jane Galt is concerned that Clark's plan doesn't add up: that is, that it actually includes more tax cuts than tax increases, thus failing its intention to be revenue-neutral....
Nailed it!
I didn't watch Wesley Clark on Meet the Press. Tim Russert makes me break out in hives. But I just read the transcript, and thought Clark did very well. In particular, I thought this response was pitch-perfect: MR. RUSSERT: General, you had this to say. "Having other people tell you what to do is no substitute for having been there...
The lines finally cross
Latest ARG tracking numbers: Dean 36, down 1 from yesterday Clark 16, up 2 Kerry 13, down 1 Lieberman 7, even A two-point jump in a three-day moving average means that the most recent day must have been a very good one for Clark. That could, of course, be noise: there's a big error band around the estimate from a...
January 06, 2004
Clark close to Dean in new national poll
Some very good news for Wesley Clark in the latest Gallup poll: he's back within 4 points of Dean, and way ahead of the rest: Dean 24, Clark 20, Kerry 11 Lieberman 10, Gephardt 9, Edwards 6. There's a big gender gap; Clark is clobbering Dean among men and getting clobbered among women. That seems to back up the idea...
Clark to take live questions on-line
I've been roped in to participating in what the Clark campaign is calling a "wireside chat," Wednesday at 5pm Eastern time. Wesley Clark will be taking live on-line questions from a group of 10-12 bloggers and providing impromptu answers. You can monitor the fun at: Clark Wireside Chat Or log in at irc://irc.forclark.com #wireside...
January 05, 2004
Clark passing Kerry in NH?
A New Hampshire TV station reports that a poll conducted for another campaign shows that Clark has passed Kerry and is now in second place in New Hampshire. The ARG tracking poll doesn't agree, showing Kerry up by 2. [Update Tuesday's ARG numbers have Clark up two, tied with Kerry. That's a three-day moving average, suggesting a fairly large jump...
The Clark tax reform plan
Campaign-generated "big ideas" are mostly bad ideas, both because they haven't had enough staff work and because designing policy to fit into 30-second spots usually has bad results. So I lost some sleep over the weekend worrying about what sort of "domestic signature issue" Wesley Clark's people had dreamed up. Against that background, what actually emerged looks amazingly good, at...
January 01, 2004
The bandwagon starts to roll
South Knox Bubba switches support from Dean to Clark. That Clark's nomination is now inevitable must be obvious to even the least observant. Why Dean insists on continuing an obviously hopeless struggle is a puzzle....
December 26, 2003
Wesley Clark's eerie sanity
If you weren’t at my house for the world premiere of American Son, there’s only one way to get back on the Los Angeles A-list: come this Tuesday (the 30th). [Email me at clark@markarkleiman.com for details.] Here’s Kevin Drum’s account of the festivities last time, and here’s mine We’re promised another conference call, with the candidate taking questions live. (The...
December 22, 2003
Will someone please explain to Andrew Sulivan
the meaning of "first refusal"?
Andrew Sullivan criticizes Wesley Clark: An interesting position from Wesley Clark: And I would say to the Europeans, I pledge to you as the American president that we'll consult with you first. You get the right of first refusal on the security concerns that we have. We'll bring you in. The right of first refusal. I'm with Clark on consultation...
December 21, 2003
"American Son": the Wesley Clark biopic
Last Thursday's 600 house-party fund-raisers didn't get much attention, but raising the better part of a million dollars in one evening without a lobbyist in sight isn't a bad trick, if you can pull it off. At my place, the crowd seemed genuinely wowed by the biopic, which I thought was a very effective job. Hugh Shelton's cowardly slur (I...
News from the Clark campaign gets some decent ink
Wesley Clark, after a month of unceasing mass-media battering, seems to finally be getting some decent ink. Why? Hard to say. Reporters need stories, and there's only a story about the Dempcratic primaries if someone emerges to give Howard Dean a fight. There's no point re-litigating the question of whether Clark flip-flopped on the war; that's the reporters' story, and...
December 16, 2003
Does George Bush prefer Halliburton to victory?
Kevin Drum catches Jay Nordlinger at NRO with his rhetorical pants down: Nordlinger says that one of Clark's comments ought to disqualify him from consideration for the Presidency, and Kevin finds a precisely parallel quote from George W. Bush. That brought a grin to my face, but only for a moment. After all, speaking no more dishonestly than George W....
December 15, 2003
What Clark "flip-flop"?
It's now the conventional wisdom that Wesley Clark "contradicted himself' or "flip-flopped" or (in Michael Kinsely's words) "couldn't get his story straight" about the war in Iraq. That claim, no how matter how often it's repeated or how much damage it does to Clark's campaign, remains untrue. His position, as I understand it, is clear and consistent, though perhaps too...
Playing politics with national security at the Hague
Speaking (see previous post) of playing politics with national security, the Bush Administration's decision to keep Wes Clark's testimony against Milosovic off TV -- made on transparently flimsy "security" grounds -- is really pretty disgusting, and deserves more outcry from the press than it's getting....
December 12, 2003
Does it come down to Clark v. Dean?
I think Josh Marshall is among our sharpest political analysts. I think that especially strongly when he's saying what I want to hear. His bet is that the Democratic race comes down to Dean and Clark, and that Dean doesn't have all the advantages. The latest poll showing Dean getting a big bump in Iowa after the Gore endorsement makes...
You're invited
This coming Thursday, the 18th, marks the release of the new Wes Clark campaign bio video, which is supposed to do for him what "A Man from Hope" did for Clinton. The campaign has decided to do the release at a nation-wide chain of house-party fund-raisers, at which Clark fans new and old will watch the video and then participate...
December 08, 2003
50,000 turn out for Clark
So President Al Gore has chosen Howard Dean as his successor. I think of Ev Dirksen, leader of the Taft forces at the Republican Convention in 1952 (and no, dammit, I'm not old enough to remember it) pointing down at Thomas E. Dewey and rumbling, "Do ... not ... follow ... that ... man! He led us down the road...
December 05, 2003
Is Dean really inevitable?
The New Republic's &c offers a cautionary note to the "Dean is inevitable" school of thought: if Kerry collapses, as he appears to be doing in New Hampshire, Clark is the obvious beneficiary. It seems to me that the same is true of Edwards and Lieberman, the other two likely early casualties. All of those votes ought to be much...
December 02, 2003
Glenn Reynolds on Clark and Waco:
Nothing there
Glenn Reynolds isn't impressed with the attempt of some wing-nuts to implicate Wesley Clark in the Waco affair. I seem to recall having criticized Glenn once or twice in the pastm, and my astrologer predicts I may do so again someday. But even though he and I often don't see things the same way, Glenn always calls 'em as he...
December 01, 2003
Another dumb hit-piece on Wesley Clark
Nick Confessore at Tapped does a nice takedown on a Weekly Standard hit-piece on Wesley Clark. The basic idea of the Standard piece is that when Clark states a fairly obvious inference from things the people in and around the Bush Administration has said and done -- that Iraq might not be the final target of the neocons' policy of...
November 30, 2003
Why take out Slobodan Milosevic but not Saddam Hussein?
William Saletan at Slate loves the Wes Clark bio spot. Jacob Weisburg thinks it's effective television, but doubts Clark's consistency: if it was worth fighting Milosevic, says Weisburg, then why not Saddam Hussein? Please, Jacob, ask me a hard one. Taking out Milosevic was, in the event, relatively easy, and once it was done it was done. We didn't...
November 26, 2003
National-greatness liberalism
My colleague Andrew Sabl, when he's not busy being a brilliant political theorist (if you haven't read Ruling Passions, run out and buy it) is also a very sharp observer of practical politics. So I find it very encouraging that, somewhat against his natural inclinations, Andy has decided to get behind Wesley Clark. Sabl's essay on Open Source Politics explains...
November 25, 2003
The Clark army grows
The number of signed-up volunteers for the Clark campaign in the Los Angeles area has tripled over the past three weeks, and is now at 3000. Nationally, the number is 150,000. And the campaign has figured out that the first thing to do with volunteers it to make more volunteers, by asking each newly signed-up person to email his or...
November 18, 2003
"Not bad"
David Hackworth interviews Wesley Clark in Maxim(?!). Not much new in the way of substance. But you have to admire the sheer style of this answer: Q. OK, in Vietnam you were wounded and nearly discharged. How bad was it? Not bad. I walked into a base camp and got greased. The guy emptied an AK magazine at me, and...
Has Wes Clark been reading Heinlein?
"Insult 'em until they apologize." (Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land, if memory serves, though a google finds similar phrases as early as The Star Beast and as late as the Lazarus Long stories.) That's how Clark dealt with a nasty Fox News interviewer who tried to suggest that calling Iraq a "sideshow" in the war on terrorism...
November 16, 2003
A plan for victory in Iraq
If you're bored with reading what other people say about Wesley Clark's ideas about national security, try reading what Clark says. He explains not only why he thought the invasion of Iraq a bad idea, but also what he'd plan to do from here, and why. Kevin Drum points out that the new Bush plan for Iraq -- a quick...
November 15, 2003
Some dietary advice for certain warbloggers
Glenn Reynolds replies to my attack on his attack on Wesley Clark's sanity and patriotism by calling it "overwrought" and denying that he meant what he said. If he wants to leave it that he considers Clark sane and patriotic, and never intended to say otherwise, I suppose I'm satisfied. Sometime when neither of us is busy he can explain...