Does Clark Have a Prayer?
CONTINETTI, MATTHEW
Does Clark Have a Prayer? With the general in New Hampshire BY MATTHEW CONTINETTI Manchester, New Hampshire It's around 1 p.m. on Tuesday, January 13, and General Wesley K. Clark, the former...
...They will be joined by, among others, Enron whistleblower Sherron Watkins, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Samantha Power, and the filmmakers Barry Levinson and Michael Moore...
...These voters now support Clark...
...I can't believe [Clark's] doing so well...
...on Tuesday, January 13, and General Wesley K. Clark, the former supreme commander of NATO and Democratic presidential candidate, is visiting Child Health Services, a clinic for low-income children...
...But, when you listen to him speak, it's hard not to notice that he has a slightly paranoid view of the Bush administration...
...As Joe Trippi, frontrunner Howard Dean's campaign manager, put it, "[Clark's] been shooting free throws by himself on one end of the court while we've been throwing elbows at each other at the other end...
...The other candidates, of course, are doing their best to drag Clark back into the mosh pit...
...Matthew Continetti is an editorial assistant at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...The charge that President Bush was plotting regime change in Iraq and elsewhere early in his presidency has become the Clark campaign's central foreign-policy issue...
...Pop music is piped in over a loudspeaker—at one point, Madonna's "Beautiful Stranger" plays...
...The U.S...
...If you think of the Dean campaign as a balloon," Smith tells me, "the air is seeping out a little bit...
...That's what we're going to talk about...
...Because he's so damn crazy...
...But many of his surrogates will descend on New Hampshire on Saturday, January 17, to campaign for the general...
...Until October he was a registered Independent...
...Last September, shortly after he announced his candidacy, the general had a 45-minute talk with a group of reporters...
...Lay it out for me: A, B, C, and D." Janet Clark proceeds to explain, and the general stares at her with wide, unblinking brown eyes...
...Others snap pictures...
...It always comes down to money...
...The Lieberman campaign sent several pairs of flip-flops to Clark 2004 headquarters, taunting the candidate over his conflicting statements about the war in Iraq...
...Not to be left out, the Kerry campaign has dispatched volunteers to crash Clark events, where they pass out flyers attacking the general's record...
...The message that's come from the other camps that Dean is unelectable is starting to take hold...
...What he meant, Clark explained to the New York Times, was: "I never thought there would be any evidence linking September 11 and Saddam Hussein...
...Smith says that while Howard Dean's hard-core supporters still support the former Vermont governor, less-committed voters are wary of Dean's anger...
...Since running for president, Clark has said otherwise...
...Clark has definitely spent countless hours delivering his stump speech, which he has honed to perfection...
...his voice is hoarse, and he rushes through parts of his stump speech: "America needs leadership," he says...
...It's a diverse group of voters, equal parts students and senior citizens...
...He donates a stuffed animal to the toy bank...
...According to Clark, the list was part of a "five-year plan" for regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan...
...The slickly produced, 15-minute film attempts to sell General Clark's main strength: his biography...
...Because he's so damn crazy...
...It's funny," the reporter says eventually, under her breath...
...Ahmad Jackson, the general's personal assistant, has to pull him away from talking to every last voter...
...It's a slim chance," he says...
...That's a term of art...
...He takes a quick tour of the facility, which is decorated in bold, primary colors, and asks questions about children's health issues, the clinic's funding, and what he as president could do to help...
...In his recent book, Winning Modern Wars, as well as on the stump, Clark says that, in a visit to the Pentagon several months after September 11, he had a conversation with "a man with three stars who used to work for me...
...Clark, meanwhile, has been assigned the cramped "adolescent waiting area," where about 50 journalists, photographers, and camera crews are jostling for space around the square table where Clark will hold a discussion with employees...
...You get a sense of how far the Clark campaign has come when you watch American Son...
...Clark has presented no evidence to back this up, other than what he told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette a few months ago: "You only have to listen to the gossip around Washington and to hear what the neoconservatives are saying, and you will get the flavor of this...
...Signature Clinton phrases have made their way into Clark's stump speech...
...For example, in order to make us more secure, Clark proposes a "combined Joint Counterterror-ism Strike-Force," formed under NATO, which would include troops from countries outside the alliance, among them "Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates...
...We're still humble," says Jamal Simmons, Clark's spokesman...
...Nope," Clark said...
...After the roundtable, I ask Janet Clark what she thinks of the candidate...
...Clark's position, in fact, has been considerably more nuanced...
...In an interview former Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill gave to 60 Minutes, as well as in The Price of Loyalty, a new book by journalist Ron Suskind, O'Neill charges that the administration was planning to invade Iraq as early as January 2001...
...Anything up to the head coming out of the womb...
...The main problem for Clark, he says, is that his campaign operation is not as well-oiled as Dean's...
...I ask...
...On the day of the 60 Minutes interview, Clark released this statement: "Today, Paul O'Neill confirmed what I have been saying all along: The Bush administration's focus on Iraq was not tied to the war on terror...
...Don't worry about the cameras, he tells them...
...Others include former Arkansas senator Dale Bumpers, former Clinton economic officials Mickey Kantor and Laura Tyson, former State Department spokesman James Rubin, Democratic congressmen Rahm Emmanuel and Charles Rangel—and, to some extent, former President Clinton himself, who speaks with Clark campaign chair Eli Segal daily and, according to the New York Post, has made fundraising calls in support of Clark (Clinton's office denied the report...
...Everything I had learned about Saddam Hussein told me that he would be the last person al Qaeda would trust or that he would trust them...
...When asked his position on abortion, Clark said, "I don't think you should get the law involved in abortion—" "At all...
...He's said that "there's no way" the Bush administration "can walk away from its responsibility in 9/11...
...The Clark campaign has already distributed 50,000 copies of the DVD to New Hampshire voters, and one Clark strategist tells me there are plans to distribute 20,000 more...
...And these," he continues, gesturing toward the journalists surrounding him, "are the explorers...
...Hence the surprise at the Clark surge here in recent weeks...
...soil?—and after the other campaigns pounced, Clark was forced to backtrack...
...We're short on homeland security and long on homeland insecurity," Clark says...
...It was a long-standing plan that was discussed from the opening days of the Bush White House...
...Madonna is a Clark supporter...
...After the impromptu lecture, he shakes hands with the staff...
...Rebuffed, I turn to a 12-year-old boy who's here because his mother works at the clinic...
...It was an imprudent thing to say—can anyone guarantee there won't be another big attack on U.S...
...Outside, a Kerry volunteer hands out flyers labeled "What Wes Clark Told the Concord Monitor About 9/11...
...O'Neill's allegations—which are actually quite different from what Clark has alleged—have made their way into the general's stump speech...
...As we talk, Smith fidgets with his empty coffee cup...
...The implication is that the Bush administration, for some reason or another, doesn't want to...
...We don't expect anybody to show up...
...paign aides say this is a not uncommon reaction...
...What is 'advocacy...
...His poll numbers are up, as is attendance at the now-daily "Conversations with Clark" town-hall meetings, which are held throughout the state...
...Last week, Clark reassessed the Bush presidency, telling an audience in Dallas that "I think we're dealing with the most closed, imperialistic, nastiest administration in living memory...
...He's "going to put America back to work...
...No limits...
...Last week, Clark found new "proof" for his theory...
...Inside, a packed crowd waits patiently for Clark, who starts his speech 40 minutes late...
...One morning in January, I meet with Andy Smith, the director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center and an expert on New Hampshire's political demographics...
...Liberation—the powerful balm that justifies painful sacrifice, erases lingering doubt and reinforces bold actions...
...I can't believe [Clark's] doing so well all of a sudden...
...Late-term abortion...
...Nervously eyeing the general's ascent in the polls, Howard Dean called Clark a "Republican...
...A bunch of us snicker at the bizarre analogy...
...One voter tells Clark after the film that, while he "expected to be impressed" when he showed up to see the general, he did not expect to have tears in his eyes...
...He added that his views on Iraq resembled those of Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman, both of whom voted to authorize the conflict...
...They even put Richard Nixon to shame...
...I ask...
...I ask...
...She mentions that the center engages in "child advocacy...
...Why is that...
...And they're going to talk about it at places like Alvirne High School, in Hudson, the scene of Wednesday night's "Conversation with Clark...
...military effort...
...It is largely successful in doing so...
...Nope, Nope...
...That's because Clark, who is 59, is an unconventional candidate and a latecomer to Democratic politics...
...Not for the first time...
...It's the usual chitchat—where we're from, where we went to school—and after a few minutes, we fall back into silence...
...And you...
...A few people stand...
...Certainly in certain cases we should go to war before our enemies strike," Clark said...
...But these missteps have done little to stop Clark's rise in New Hampshire, and the Kerry supporter handing out attack literature at the Franklin Pierce Law Center is, for the most part, ignored...
...But the clinic workers don't seem to mind...
...Thomason is one of many Clinton allies who have signed on with the general...
...Then there's the interview Clark gave to the editorial board of the Manchester Union Leader in early January...
...Smith pauses...
...You don't put the law in there," Clark said...
...He's locked in conversation with one Janet Clark, the director of special medical pediatrics, who has worked here for 20 years, and who is not, she is quick to say, related to the candidate...
...asked a puzzled Joseph W. McQuaid, the Union Leader's publisher...
...Clark seems tired...
...For a moment, anyway...
...It's standard Democratic primary fare, until Clark notices that the clinicians are uncomfortable with the dozens of cameras looming over their shoulders...
...Later in the same essay, Clark praised the war's architects: "President Bush and Tony Blair should be proud of their resolve in the face of so much doubt...
...Cam"It's funny," the reporter says, under her breath...
...When Clark enters the lecture hall, the audience explodes into applause...
...only Howard Dean raised more...
...She tells me that she is a Democrat, and is planning to vote in the primary, but today, she's "just an impartial observer...
...Another misstep came on January 11, when a videotape surfaced of Clark in October 2002 saying, "Certainly there's a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda...
...Instead, he's labeled the attacks "old-style politics...
...What did you think...
...Clark hasn't fought back...
...A lot of the Clinton people have been through campaigns here, but not recently...
...Before the general enters the school cafeteria, where the conversation will take place, I watch a screening of American Son, Clark's campaign film, made by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, the Hollywood producer responsible for Bill Clinton's syrupy biopic, The Man from Hope...
...And it's also helped a neophyte gain his political footing...
...They summarize an interview in which Clark stated, "We are not going to have one of these incidents"—meaning a 9/11-magnitude terrorist attack—if he is elected president...
...The Clinton connection has its advantages...
...But it's a chance...
...I say that it's up to the woman and her doctor, her conscience...
...It's helped Clark collect money—he'd raised about $10 million by December 31...
...And both of whom, in all probability, would have agreed with Clark in 2002, when he told the Associated Press that, although he had "reservations" about a possible war, he saw some logic to President Bush's position...
...As the press van makes its way toward the event, where Clark will answer questions from voters, I talk with a reporter from one of the major news networks who has followed Clark for several months...
...In the course of the discussion, the Washington Post reported, Clark said he "probably" would have voted to authorize the war if he had been a member of Congress in the fall of 2002...
...From Clark's point of view, it's working...
...He's said, for example, that the White House tried to have him fired from CNN, where he was a commentator during the Iraq war...
...His background is full of superlatives—a Rhodes scholar, he graduated at the top of his class at West point and is a champion swimmer, a retired four-star general, and a lover of Plato...
...Why is that...
...Edwards, who has visited the clinic before, will speak in the "community room," a relatively spacious area with over a dozen chairs for press...
...Clark's staffers, she confides, "weren't too happy about that...
...By the end, he has the audience on its feet...
...Clark's main advantage, on the other hand, is that he's the only candidate who has proved he can raise money as quickly as Dean...
...The general is not really crazy...
...After the speech, Clark's campaign bus, the "Wes Express," spirits journalists to a "Conversation with Clark" in Hudson, about 30 miles away...
...He looks at me and shrugs...
...Says Smith, "The primary process will come down to money...
...9/11 was an excuse to topple Hussein...
...He's "a big believer in family values," which means, among other things, "taking care of the environment...
...The scene seemed to confirm what Chris Lehane, Clark's senior communications strategist, told the Washington Post recently: "Something's happening here...
...According to former Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, this isn't a coincidence: The Bush administration started planning their actions against Iraq during their first days in the White House . . . despite being warned that our greatest threat was Osama bin Laden...
...Like the general's speech in Concord, the "conversation" takes place before a standingroom-only audience, which is an achievement in itself on a night so cold that the Kerry supporters picketing outside resemble nothing so much as screaming, adolescent Eskimos...
...asks the general, interrupting...
...For the most part, the speech is Democratic boilerplate...
...Says Clark, "We've always had the ability to confront al Qaeda and defeat it...
...At the Franklin Pierce Law Center, Clark said, "The only name we hear [from Bush] is Saddam Hussein, and the only country we hear about is Iraq...
...The Bush administration has an unhealthy obsession with Iraq," says Bill Buck, a Clark spokesman...
...The next day finds General Clark at the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, where he is scheduled to speak on homeland security...
...Again, Clark was later forced to "clarify" his position, which, it turns out, does not sanction infanticide...
...As the other Democratic candidates flocked to Iowa in preparation for the January 19 caucuses (in which Clark is not competing), and went to work beating each other up with attack ads and verbal barbs, General Clark stayed in New Hampshire, which holds its primary on January 27...
...I've been against this war from the beginning," he tells audiences...
...But there are a few interesting ideas...
...I don't think Clark has people with the sort of intimate knowledge of politics that Dean's people have," he tells me...
...Clark enters the cafeteria to another standing ovation, after an introduction by a teacher from the school, who says the candidate "has spent countless hours thinking about the tough issues...
...On Monday, for example, during his appearance at Child Health Services, Clark told the press that no parent who "works hard and plays by the rules" should raise a child in poverty...
...They had reason not to be...
...I ask...
...You'll need to pick a smaller room next time," grouses a CNN cameraman to a Clark campaign aide...
...He's told reporters that his favorite music act is the band Journey...
...I'd say we doubled our press every day for the last couple of days," says one of Clark's press aides...
...It's the music I remember...
...Does Clark even have a chance...
...During the general's tour, I chat with the receptionist...
...These are all individuals involved with the campaign," says Bill Buck, when I ask him if Clinton had any role in organizing the January 17 event...
...Start with his stance on the war in Iraq...
...Nope," Clark said...
...Which is, come to think of it, a good phrase to describe Clark's behavior as he sits down to his "roundtable" with a group of social workers and pediatricians who work at Child Health Services...
...But the general, one campaign aide says, is not necessarily a Madonna fan...
...He lost...
...Clinton has not made an official endorsement...
...Maybe...
...This is the time of the campaign where moderate and conservative Democratic voters turn their attention to the election...
...One poll, from the American Research Group, shows that Clark has edged out Senator John Kerry for second place in New Hampshire, and is within 5 points of Dean...
...invasion, he says, was part of a "bait and switch" executed by the administration on the American people...
...He's given talks at Republican fundraisers, and has intermittently praised the Bush administration...
...Clark's former subordinate showed him a "list of countries" that the Bush administration had targeted for invasion...
...The Clark boomlet has attracted media from around the country and beyond—a crew from ZDF, a German television station, is here, along with CNN, ABC, CBS, and others...
...The strike force's mission would be to go into the border areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan and "capture or kill" Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders...
...Clark may not be a political natural, as journalist Joe Klein has called the former president, but he is a quick study...
...A good way to ignore the whirr and buzz: "Imagine we're microbes on Mars...
...He meant that the administration did not do enough to protect America from terrorist attack—because it was preoccupied with war against Saddam Hussein...
...If there's a bunch-up, if there are close races in both Iowa and New Hampshire, then Clark can go to the other states, the southern, more conservative states, and say, 'I'm the only guy who can stop Dean.'" "Is he...
...And I think this situation applies here, [italics added] but I am not sure we should write it down and publish [the doctrine of preventive war] as policy...
...It's this song called 'Don't Stop Believin'," he said...
...She mentions that John Edwards is scheduled to deliver a speech at Child Health Services later this afternoon...
...What does it mean...
...In the spring of 2003, as American tanks rolled into Baghdad, Clark wrote several columns for the Times of London in which he praised the U.S...
...These days, Clark is vehemently antiwar...
...Anything up to delivery...
...They've each expressed interest in being involved...
...Liberation is at hand," he wrote...
...Afterwards, the crowd mobs Clark...
...But what exactly...
...But the last time he ran for office, it was for president of his 12th-grade class...
Vol. 9 • January 2004 • No. 19
