JOHN FUND'S POLITICAL DIARY
Bill and Hillary line up behind Wesley Clark.
Thursday, September 18, 2003 12:01 a.m.
The Democratic presidential campaign has been a bust so far. After nearly a year of campaigning, the only one of the nine announced candidates to catch fire has been Howard Dean, whom party leaders deride as too liberal and too error-prone to beat President Bush. That explains the extraordinary welcome that many Democrats yesterday gave Wesley Clark's announcement that he was joining the presidential race.
The chief boosters of Mr. Clark's candidacy are none other than Bill and Hillary Clinton. Mr. Clark hails from Little Rock, Ark., knew President Clinton when he was still a governor, and had an extraordinary degree of contact with him when he served as NATO commander during the Kosovo bombing campaign of 1999.
Mr. Clinton has nothing but praise for him: "He is brilliant, he is brave, and he is good." As for New York's junior senator, she distanced herself yesterday from reports that she had already agreed to serve as co-chairman of the Clark campaign. But Fox News reports that her office doesn't deny that such a role "is in the works and might happen soon."
If that happens, Mrs. Clinton could walk into the Clark campaign headquarters and feel as if she had stepped back in time to her husband's White House circa 1996. Clinton commerce secretary Mickey Kantor will be a senior Clark adviser. Bruce Lindsey, the White House counsel for President Clinton, will be providing advice. So too will Eli Segal, Mr. Clinton's 1992 campaign chairman. Mr. Clark's spokesman is none other than Mark Fabiani, who handled damage control on scandals for President Clinton. No one would be surprised if Chris Lehane, Mr. Fabiani's business partner and Al Gore's former press secretary, also joined the campaign. Mr. Lehane resigned from Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign just last week.
Still, his record in the military is a mixed one. Sen. James Inhofe, a Republican member of the Armed Services Committee, told me that Mr. Clark was known as "Clinton's general" during his time as NATO commander and constantly ran decisions about the Kosovo war directly by the White House. One general who served with him called him "brilliant" but added that his "need to win, right down to the core of his fiber," makes him "highly manipulative." Another general told the Washington Post "There are an awful lot of people who believe Wes will tell anybody what they want to hear and tell somebody the exact opposite five minutes later." Sounds like another Arkansas politician we know--but can Mr. Clark do it as well as Bill Clinton?
One of the challenges Mr. Clark will face will be his closeness to the Clintons. It is no secret that they are suspicious of Dr. Dean, the current front-runner, whom they fear would be trounced so badly against President Bush that he could hurt Hillary's prospects in 2008. Should Mr. Clark be elected president, the Clintons would have a strong ally in the Oval Office. If he does well but doesn't get the nomination, he may be viewed as a suitable running mate for Mrs. Clinton or some other Democratic nominee in the future.
Mr. Clark is no doubt running for president for many reasons. But an
important, unacknowledged one is that he is the favorite candidate of the
Democratic Party's two best-known figures. To the extent that he succeeds, the
Clintons will see their already substantial influence in the Democratic Party
grow. Mr. Clark no doubt is his own man, but with so many old Clinton hands
surrounding him, don't be surprised if Mr. Clinton is occasionally tempted to
act as if he were still Mr. Clark's commander-in-chief.
Copyright © 2003 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Tracing Clark's military mapBy Jack KellyTHE WASHINGTON TIMES Published September 19, 2003 Retired Gen. Wesley Clark has thrown his helmet into the ring. He has improved the Democratic presidential field by entering it, just as he improved the Army by leaving it. Gen. Clark is a brilliant man, and a brave one. A Rhodes scholar, he was decorated three times for heroism as commander of an armor company in Vietnam. "Those of us who knew him as a captain thought the country would be shortchanged if he didn't rise to very high rank," said a retired Army colonel who was a student of Wesley Clark's when Gen. Clark taught at West Point. But Gen. Clark's kindergarten teacher probably noted he doesn't play well with others. Gen. Clark "is able, though not nearly as able as he thinks, and has tended to put his career ahead of his men to the point of excess," said a defense consultant well acquainted with the Army's senior officers. "He is opportunistic and lacks integrity. He will be an absolute menace if he gets into a position where he can exert influence on the Army because he lacks true vision and is prone to be vindictive." Gen. Clark "regards each and every one of his subordinates as a potential threat to his career," said an officer who served under him when Gen. Clark commanded a brigade of the 4th Infantry Division in the 1980s. An officer who served under Clark when he commanded the 1st Cavalry Division said he was "the poster child for everything that is wrong with the general officer corps." Gen. Clark doesn't get along terribly well with superiors or with allies either, which lead to his premature departure as commander of NATO. Gen. Clark was CINCEUR when the Kosovo war began, and bears much of the responsibility for President Clinton's decision to try to bomb Serb dictator Slobodan Milosevic out of Kosovo. Gen. Clark argued that after a few days of bombing, Mr. Milosevic would fold his tent and slink away. When the Serbs didn't budge after months of bombing, Gen. Clark lost Mr. Clinton's favor. As the war dragged on, Gen. Clark advocated the use of ground troops. This put him at loggerheads with Gen. Henry Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and with Gen. Eric Shinseki, chief of staff of the Army, who thought this was a terrible idea. These generals faulted Gen. Clark for getting America into an unnecessary war, and for having done a poor job of preparing for it. "NATO did not expect a long war," wrote former Clinton national security aide Ivo Daalder. "Worse, it did not even prepare for the possibility." The conduct of the war drew unprecedented criticism from Gen. Clark's predecessor, Gen. George Joulwan, and a quiet rebellion by subordinate commanders. "Clark found his control over ongoing operations eroding," wrote retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevich. "Rather than the theater commander, he became hardly more than a kibitzer." What may have triggered Gen. Clark's early departure from NATO was a confrontation with the British general who was to command NATO peacekeepers. After a Serb surrender had been negotiated with the help of the Russians, Gen. Clark ordered British Lt. Gen. Michael Jackson to parachute troops onto the airport at the Kosovar capital of Pristina, so NATO would hold it before Russian peacekeepers arrived. Gen. Jackson refused. "I'm not going to start the Third World War for you," he told Gen. Clark, according to accounts in British newspapers. Shortly after the confrontation with Gen. Jackson, Gen. Clark was told his tour as CINCEUR would end two months early. Neither Gen. Shelton nor Defense Secretary William Cohen attended his retirement ceremony, a remarkable snub for a four-star general. Gen. Clark read Mr. Milosevic wrong, helping to provoke the Kosovo war, which he then fought badly. Gen. Clark picked up where he left off in his second career as a television kibitzer of military operations. As an analyst for CNN, Gen. Clark harshly criticized the war plan for Iraq devised by Gen. Tommy Franks, the CENTCOM commander, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Gen. Clark turned out to be completely wrong. It says something fascinating about the Democratic field that this failed general is the class of it. Jack Kelly, a syndicated columnist, is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh (Pa.) Post-Gazette. Copyright © 2003 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. |
