Reply #188: Because he might actually be an honest, sincere person

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I'd always been somewhat leery of General Clark, mostly because he's a General, and I'm suspicious of blurring the line between civilian and military power.

Well, one day, I was watching Democracy Now during the primaries and they had a segment about Wesley Clark. DN has been very hard on Clark, back throughout the military action in former Yugoslavia.

Jeremy Scahill from DN (who I also respect quite a bit) sort of ambushed Clark as he was leaving an appearance, and started asking him some REALLY hard questions: the usual ones, including the 'why did you swap hats with a war criminal in Kosovo' (ie., the photograph), etc... They were precisely the sort of questions that any candidate's 'handler' would have them avoid.

However, Clark stopped, shook off his handlers (who were motioning him to move on), and answered the damned questions. He not only answered them, he answered the HELL out of them. I have honestly NOT seen a politician give such honest and thoughtful answers to 'attack-type' questions in my life.

He stood there for what must have been 20 minutes, taking each very slanted question (Scahill obviously wasn't a Clark supporter, to say the least), and providing a really, really good answer to them. They were honest, forthright, and you could tell from his answers that he had truly thought each decision through. Absolutely no spin. I think by the end of it, even Jeremy Scahill seemed a bit impressed by the sheer QUALITY of the answers he was getting.

After that, I realized that Clark really was an authentic, thoughtful smart guy. Very smart guy. I didn't vote for him in the primaries, since it was clear he was going to drop out at that point, but he was definitely one of my top choices -- which surprised the hell out of me, quite frankly.