Slate: The virtues and shortcomings of Wes Clark's Campaign

[wyldwolf]

An evenhanded and, I believe, nuetral take on Wesley Clark

Clark is a more genuine and—if this is possible—less exciting version of Kerry. He makes no attempt to dress up his practicality. If he were a senator, this would be a disaster. But because he's a soldier and has killed bad guys, it works. At the Iowa forum, Clark argues that Americans are pragmatic, and he criticizes the Bush administration accordingly:

They do things backward. They have some preconceived solutions, and then they look for circumstances that they can use to excuse putting those solutions in place. They had a tax cut plan. Well, first it was, "The government had too much of our money," so they were gonna give our money back. And then it was, "We were in a recession." But it wasn't exactly like the tax cut was designed to pull us out of the recession. Most of the cuts were way out in the future. … It was a solution looking for a problem. Same thing happened with Iraq. These guys were talking about going into Iraq back before the election. … They used 9/11 as the pretext to take us into that war, I think under false pretenses.

This critique lacks the moral edge of Dean's attack on Bush's divisiveness or Edwards' attack on Bush's elitism. But it has greater truth and, I suspect, broader resonance with public opinion. It doesn't demand that you think Bush is a bad guy or the Republican Party is evil. It only demands that you to look at the facts and put them together to form a relatively charitable, though fatal, conclusion: Bush lacks the temperament to adapt and solve problems as a president must. Gephardt calls Bush a failure and posits that the failure would continue in a second term, but he doesn't explain why. Clark explains why.

In the campaign, Clark's earnestness is an asset. Democrats are trying to paint him as a Republican opportunist. Republicans are trying to paint him as a Clintonesque truth-stretcher. These portrayals won't stick because they don't fit his demeanor.

[mhr]

1. Shortcomings

Pro Big Business

Anti Little People

Virtues - None!

[SWPAdem]

4. Chance of this being an unbiased opinion based on fact....NONE

n/t

[Bread and Circus]

2. link?

[wyldwolf]

3. oops! Sorry!

http://slate.msn.com/id/2089468/

[yellowdawgdem]

5. seems authentic

Yeah, he comes across as a republican general who is very liberal, to the left of most repubs. Yet I remember that one tactic used in campaigning is, in this case, starting off farther to the left, and moving to the center after getting the nomination. So, and I can see him doing that, and moving farther to the right on certain issues. However, in spite of this worry of mine (that he will waffle a bit on the patriot act offshore drilling, and other unknown issues) he seems pragmatic and keeps saying he wants to restore our democracy. I also have concerns about who he'd appoint for his cabinet, wouldn't he have ties to repubs? But when I saw how the Iowans responded to him, so many older women giving him long hugs and all, I also saw the plusses. He will appeal to a broad-base of americans, including many moderate repubs, seniors, veterans, southerners, etc etc. So I see the plusses, but still have some worries. Also he looked like he had on some weird brown makeup. lol.

[wyldwolf]

6. Why do you assume he has ties to republicans and would appoint them?

..his campaign is already full of Clinton and Gore operatives.

Also, after his stated progressive opinions, can I assume you think he sounds like a liberal republican because you associate the military with the GOP?

[Julien Sorel]

7. This is a negative piece.

The picture alone would be bad enough, but the piece itself, repeatedly accusing Clark of being 'boring,' is icing on the cake. It's as close as you can get to writing a hack job at this stage without coming across as a right wing chatter monkey.


I just double checked, and it's Saletan at work again. We can expect to see lots more of these 'balanced' attacks as time goes on.

[wyldwolf]

8. I considered it nuetral...

As a big Clark supporter, I don't really consider the criticism here justifies this as a negative piece. It certainly has it's fair share of compliments to Clark.

[yellowdawgdem]

9. ties to repubs? Dunno why.

I'm not sure why I thought that, automatically. Maybe I just am taking in the information on him, little by little. Again, it is good to hear that he does have lots of Clinton and Gore people in his campaign. One thing I do like about him is that he doesn't seem to have a grudge going on anyone, and is very quick on the questions. He thinks it over, and you can see him quickly coming up with a good response. He would wipe the floor with Dubya.

[wyldwolf]

10. thinking fast is a virtue in both politics and war...

...it can save your ass in both situations!