Clark to enter presidential race

It is clear that Clark can't lie very well. He should really try to take lessons from Bill Clinton who, before he was elected, was able to convince the press that he never really got a draft notice; never really inhaled; and never really had an affair with Jeniffer Flowers.

Clark really should study the brilliant equivocations of Bill Clinton such as:

I don't anyone can show that I changed policy SOLELY because of a campaign contibution.

This just in:
Bill Clinton Caues Cancer
Bill Clinton Killed Christ
Bill Clinton is the Antichrist
Bill Clinton Boinked Mother Theresa
Bill Clinton flew the jets into the WTC and the Pentagon
Bill Clinton is Saddam Hussein
Bill Clinton got a blowjob and the Republicans didn't!

Bill Clinton was elected to a third term as President of the United States.

Oh really- are such exaggerations necessary?

I never heard that Clinton caused Cancer.

I have heard that his mother had Cancer.

But Clinton causing Cancer- no way.

Perhaps there is a confusion between Cancer and Answer. Could it be a typo?

Clinton did answer when he was asked whether he and Monica were ever alone, Clinton said; We were never really alone

which would have made some interesting viewing by members of the White House staff.

Oh come now, Italgato. Surely you can stretch the imagination just a wee bit to understand how they could never be alone yet not be viewed by White House staff. Even I can do that and I'm a prude!

wolf

Where have you been hiding? A good part of the reason for all the lies and deception rests with the electorate. People do not want to hear the truth telling it is a sure road to defeat. Therefore politicians will tell people what they want to hear. With the lie changing just enough to satisfy the particular group or audience

I know politics is full of lies and hidden agendas. That doesn't mean we must accept this, nor assume deceit as the nature of politics, as Edgar implied. In the long run, politics is what we make of it.

If you don't play the game you don't get elected. I didn't make that a rule, but, politicians and the electorate did.

One thing to argue in favor of Wesley Clark's electability: it appears the right has nothing on him. Not that the conservative attack machine hasn't been up and running.

What's notable is how weak the attacks themselves are.

There are the hysterical conspiracies, that he was responsible for the deaths at Waco, that he's "Hillary's sock puppet."

There is that he's a conspiracy-monger, that he lied about the Bushies pressuring him to finger Iraq for 9/11, and also about them trying to fire him from CNN.

There is also the "he's no Ike" line, which aims to minimize his achievements and trash his Supreme Commander aura.

For example, on 9/6, Fox's Mort Kondracke said:



And on 9/16, his colleague Fred Barnes offered:



On the same program, Brit Hume sarcastically remarked, "decisive figure, that one," following old footage of Clark politely refusing to take reporters' questions after checking with an aide.

In the Washington Post article cited previously, former colleagues describe him as 'abrasive', 'manipulative' and 'will tell anybody what they want to hear', -- a lack of support that led to a slightly early, forced retirement.

(Of course, there is also much praise from other former colleagues such as General Barry McCaffrey, with one saying his critics are fueled by "jealousy and envy [and] misunderstanding".)

And finally, his detractors are trying to hype an incident where he lost a fight with a subordinate over whether to block the Russians from securing an airport during Kosovo.

That's a lot of random **** being thrown at the wall. And none of it seems likely to stick.

You can call a guy abrasive, manipulative, indecisive, conspiratorial, hot-headed, or thin-skinned all day long. But if he doesn't show those qualities on camera or on the campaign trail, no one will care. On TV, he has consistently come across as pleasant and mild-mannered. It will be very hard to attack this man's personality.

And to demean a military achievement, any military achievement, particularly a truly international coalition that secured peace and in which no American blood was shed, is walking on thin ice -- as the Right loves to remind the Left.

These attacks are non-starters, unless Clark does something in front of the cameras to lend credence to them.

Indeed, such a mammal is in the White House now.

From the Newsweek cover story:



The Water Walker

The point to the firing wasn't jealousy by comrades, but autocratic ideology.

Its sticking all-right. The man's name had hardly registered with me before, and as a leftie in principle I should be glad about a military man running for liberal causes, yet just a few weeks into the (Draft) Clark campaign I'm already dismayed.

Not that he doesnt seem to have gotten the issues right many times. From the same Newsweek article you quote, for example:



and



All spot-on, to my opinion, and apparently, he cares enough about those issues to put his own position on the line, as the Kosovo example showed:



But then there's all the other stuff - the "how" rather than "what" stuff. Again, from the same Newsweek article you quote, the following, below - and would you really want a man like that to be your President?

A poll on network (ABC, I think) news has Clark the front runner and Dean and Lieberman tied for second.

Edgar - it was Newsweek - and the same poll has him trumping Bush Jr among Independents, women and Southerners, too (so PDiddie might be right after all about the **** not sticking).

I posted all those polling results here.

Clark entry: Bush can now feel hot breath of Dem pack

By John Hughes

SALT LAKE CITY – We just may have a real race for the presidency in 2004 after all. While President Bush's standing in the polls has been slipping slightly in the face of a lazy economy and troubles in Iraq, no Democratic challenger has so far leapt out of the pack at this early stage to cause serious tremors in the White House.
Enter Gen. Wesley Clark. Pluses: career soldier first in his class at West Point, Rhodes scholar, wounded in Vietnam, articulate, a lot of television exposure during the Iraq war. Downside: never been elected to anything in his life, and never been in a political campaign outside the Army. Of course, neither had Eisenhower, who did get elected president, or Colin Powell, who probably could have been.
We have a long way to go and General Clark has yet to be tested in the exhausting, bone-crunching, inquisitorial crucible into which we cast all those who aspire to lead the most powerful country in the world. The Washington press corps will rough him up for his lack of expertise in domestic politics.
But he is hailed as a fresh face in the campaign, with military credentials that would enable him to go toe-to-toe with Mr. Bush in the areas of national security and foreign policy. Ordinarily, a presidential election campaign is not won on foreign policy. This time, when we are in a war with foreign terrorists, it could be lost on it.
The presidential election campaign is an extraordinary process in which a Democratic contender who is to be successful must capture the left wing of his or her party to become the candidate, and then the political center of the nation to win the presidency. Conversely, a Republican contender must capture the right wing of his or her party to become the candidate, and then the political center of the country to become president.
Hitherto, the nine previously announced Democratic presidential candidates (until Clark made it 10) have seemed unable to master this technique of developing an appeal to both left and center.
Howard Dean, ex-governor of Vermont, has emerged as the sweetheart of the liberal left, seemingly outpacing such earlier touted candidates as John Kerry and Joe Lieberman. Mr. Kerry, a Vietnam war veteran wounded in action, is finding it hard to shed his patrician New England image despite arriving at campaign rallies on a Harley Davidson. Mr. Lieberman, who in the last presidential election often seemed to garner more public affection as Al Gore's running mate than did Mr. Gore, somehow has not caught fire this time around.
In pumping millions into Mr. Dean's campaign, many political observers think the Democrats are bent on political suicide, opting for a man who pleases their liberal convictions, but who could not gain the votes of the political center necessary to carry the party to victory in the White House.
Clark thus offers himself as an alternative, a Southerner, and conceivably someone who could capture political centrists turned off by Dean's proudly proclaimed liberalism. A recent Newsweek poll has him already modestly leading the Democratic field.
By American standards, where the election campaign is still to go on for another 12 tortuous months, Clark is a latecomer. He has no organization, and nobody knows how much funding. What he does seem to have is the expertise and support of Bill and Hillary Clinton and a number of their past political operatives. Various conspiratorial theories are advanced to explain this support. One is that Clark is being positioned to run as a vice-presidential candidate in Hillary Clinton's bid for the presidency in 2008.
Another, which seems less likely, is that a Hillary-Clark ticket could yet emerge for 2004 should things go really bad for Bush. Some of Clark's military colleagues, citing his longtime ambition, are less generous than others. But among many there is widespread respect for his intellect and leadership qualities.
One retired general I talked to this weekend, a former Rhodes scholar like Clark, actually taught him as a cadet at West Point, and supervised him when he later returned to teach courses there. Interestingly, Clark taught government and politics. Said the general: "He was a star on the West Point debating team, which was always one, two, or three on the college circuit. He'll be a match for anybody in debate. He's smart enough to know what he doesn't know. He'll surround himself with very smart advisers on domestic politics.

he is appealing in the sense that he is not bushieboy. but really i don't know his views on anything.

Neither does he...

On SAt. Sept. 20th 3:07AM,, I posted evidence that Clark is either a liar or very forgetful. I am sure that his opponents will call up all of his quotes from the past.

It is too bad that Clark doesn't have the forensic skill of Bill Clinton-

eg. I never inhaled

No one can say that I changed policy SOLELY for a campaign contribution

We were never alone.

Nevertheless, General Clark will, sooner or later, be forced to explain the following:

"On the question of Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction, Clark seemed remarkably confident of their existence. Clark told CNN's Miles O'Brien that Saddam Hussein "does have weapons of mass destruction" When O'Brien asked,"And you could say that categorically?" Clark was resolute. "Absolutely"( CNN_ 1/18/03)

When CNN's Zahn ( 4/2/02) asked if he had any doubts about finding the weapons, Clark responded:
" I think they will be found. There's so much intelligence on this"

(That sounds as if it came DIRECTLY from the Republican Play Book)


And, He might have inspired George W. Bush's comment-
"Bring them on"

Clark wrote in the London Times-4/11/03-

"The campaign in Iraq illustrates the continuing progress of military technology and tactics. But if there is a single overriding lesson it must be this: American military power, especially when buttressed by Britain's is virtually unchallengeable today. TAKE US ON? DON'T TRY! AND THAT'S NOT HUBRIS, IT'S JUST PLAIN FACT"




The article from FAIR concludes with:

Another "plain fact" is this. While political reporters might welcome Clark's entry into the campaign, to label a candidate with such views "anti-war" is to render the term meaningless."

http://www.fair.org/press-releases/clark-antiwar.html