Reply #86: Here is the pertinent part of the transcript.....

[madfloridian]

You will probably be skeptical of it as well. But that's ok.

"CHARLIE ROSE: One of the - Mark Fabiani I think it was, one of your
advisors, said about you, "we created this campaign as an anti-Dean
campaign, and then there was no Dean."

WESLEY CLARK: Well, there was always some truth in that, because that
- I mean, John Kerry would have been the perfect qualifications that
everyone would have looked for. He had foreign policy experience, he
was an elected official. And the others had the qualifications to some
extent, but it seemed like nobody was taking off and then suddenly
Howard Dean took off. Maybe that`s what accounted for so many people
coming to me from inside the party and asking me to run.

But I felt like it was a call of duty. It wasn`t a particularly
anti-anybody. But it was a call of duty that people asked me to accept,
and I did.

CHARLIE ROSE: There is this also, that somehow your candidacy was
propelled by people who support Hillary Clinton or have supported
President Clinton, and therefore Senator Clinton and President Clinton,
and they hoped that you would be a kind of stalking horse for them...

WESLEY CLARK: Well, I don`t know about...

CHARLIE ROSE: Stopping Dean in the process so that whatever might
happen would still keep options open for them.

WESLEY CLARK: Yeah, I don`t see that. What happened actually is there
were a lot of people who looked at all the candidates, and they just
came to me and asked me to run. And they came to me and asked me to run
knowing that I had no political experience and that my views on some of
the important touchstone Democratic Party issues weren`t articulated.
But I was very grateful for their confidence. And I think we had a
good, steep learning curve. We did very well on the campaign trail.
And you know, what happened happened. But it was a tremendously
enriching experience, and I think, Charlie, that we were able to take a
lot of issues out to the voters with real credibility."