New Battle Plan for the General
As much as retired Army General Wesley K. Clark might want to avoid the issue, it confronts him at every turn: For him, this has turned into a race between the general and the lieutenant-turned-senator.
After Monday night's surprising Iowa caucus returns, Clark and his aides had to prepare for a scenario they hadn't anticipated: The old putative front-runner, non-veteran Howard Dean, had been replaced by a new one, veteran John F. Kerry.
While Senator John Edwards languished low in the New Hampshire polls for months, his second-place Iowa finish makes him, too, a Granite State factor.
So now, buried between the lines of Clark's stump speeches and appearances, comes a new message: He embodies Kerry's national security credibility and Edwards's Southern background.
"I'm that package all in one vote," Clark said at a press conference in Portsmouth. "I'm a veteran. I've worked in leadership at the highest levels of government . . . I'm from the South, my mother was a secretary." Clark invited the Kerry comparison in a series of veterans-related events yesterday that his aides said had been planned long in advance.
Get the rest of the story from the Boston Globe.
Matt's Chat
No matter how Clark spins it, he's still an egomaniac (like Dean) who can't stand someone else getting the spotlight on something he thinks he's the expert on...in this case, it is military experience.Asked about Kerry's military rank at a press conference at his Manchester headquarters later that night, Clark said, "It's one thing to be a hero as a junior officer. He's done that, and I respect him for that. He's been a good senator. But I've had the military leadership at the top as well as the bottom."In less strained moments, Clark tries to shift the subject to the specific experience he gained as he rose through the military. "I'm not trying to draw a distinction between my rank and Senator Kerry's," Clark said in Portsmouth. "We were both young officers in Vietnam. We both pursued different paths of public service."
This guy is as dangerous as Dean...only he controls his anger better.
Mark's Remarks
Please dont mean by any stretch that I am defending John Fing Kerry, but:
Is Clark trying to imply that grunts who are heroic are not as important or as worthy of praise as generals? That is poppycock. General Patton, one of the greatest if not our greatest General, said it was the men who made his army move. He appreciated their sacrifices. Clark is being his sanctimonious self with that junior officer comment. Any commander knows the grunts are who make army work.
As for the Southern aspect, Clark also tries to appeal with his tales of being part Jewish, how his mom marched with civil rights people, how he stopped ethnic cleansing (the last one is definate spin, the atrocities continue in Kosovo and Bosnia).
General Clark is just waiting to blow up. He is a powder keg, and I think if he could be isolated from his Clinton handlers, we would have seen it by now. For now, they are putting all sorts of spin on the issues at hand, even when he has shown himself to be an inconsistent panderer.
And what in the blue hell does he mean that marriage "is a term of art?" (see the drudgereport)
This was Mark...thanks for reading.
