Clark comes off well in this Washington Post profile.
More than 40 years ago, a high school swim team here showed up one man short for a state meet. Everyone assumed they would forfeit the relay race — the organizers, the school, even the team, which was resigned to loser status. But the teenage captain had a different plan.
Young Wes Clark announced that he would swim twice in the relay so the team could compete.
“I just couldn’t believe it — no one could. I was ready to forfeit,” said Phillip McMath, a member of that team and today a Little Rock attorney. “But the guy just won’t let himself lose, and he doesn’t tolerate failure in others.”
Wes Clark won the relay for Hall High School that day, demonstrating the traits that would define his life and his career: a supreme confidence in himself, an absolute disregard for conventional wisdom and a relentless force of will. Those gifts, and an undisputed brilliance, would carry him through a modest childhood shaped by profound loss, through West Point to the highest levels of the Army, and into the presidential race today — his first foray into politics.
This may mean that we’re past the first round of “tear-down” and that Clark can expect something closer to fair coverage in the near future.