John Harwood's column in this morning's WSJ has some interesting comments about Clark's prospects.
Gen. Clark Faces
A Difficult Terrain:
Domestic Policy
online.wsj.com
WASHINGTON -- Retired Gen. Wesley Clark has enjoyed a stronger entrance into the 2004 presidential race than his advisers ever dreamed of. Within a few days, the political novice took command of the cable-television airwaves, snagged a newsmagazine cover and shot to the front of some national polls.
But Gen. Clark isn't the Democratic front-runner any more than Sen. Joseph Lieberman was when superior name recognition placed him atop early national polls. Nor can he be until he demonstrates some command of the unfamiliar terrain of domestic policy, the natural habitat of Democratic primary voters.
Gen. Clark will take a first step toward doing so with a speech in New York Wednesday outlining how he would stimulate job growth. He will have a higher-profile opportunity Thursday in a Democratic debate on economic issues. In both venues, he will need to provide more than the artful pabulum he has offered so far.
There is no denying the value of the general's military credentials, which would substantially offset the Democratic ticket's longstanding disadvantage on national security. In the public imagination, Gen. Clark is no Dwight Eisenhower or even Norman Schwarzkopf. But silver-haired good looks, a Rhodes scholarship, TV polish and a general's four stars represent a good start.
Yet Gen. Clark's embarrassing opening flip-flop on support for the Iraq war resolution shows how far he has to go. It won't get easier when the questions concern health care, entitlement reform or affirmative action.
The most obvious strategy for Gen. Clark is the outsider's path marked in recent years by Ross Perot, John McCain, and now Howard Dean. "We're going to talk straight to the American people," Mr. Clark declared in his announcement speech, vowing to "ask the tough questions" and "demand the answers."
Which is precisely where he will find a relentless array of political landmines. John McCain talked straight by criticizing George W. Bush on tax cuts and promoting campaign-finance reform to disarm Republican-friendly business interests resistant to health-care reform. That made him the early sensation of the 2000 campaign -- but not the nominee.
As a self-styled Democratic centrist, Gen. Clark could try the same thing by giving organized labor (one-third of Iowa's Democratic caucus voters) a full-throated defense of trade expansion or by telling seniors (one-fifth of the national electorate) that Social Security benefits must be cut to assure the system's solvency. Yet those could cause the one-time commander of the Kosovo bombing campaign to lose altitude quickly in political battlegrounds of the Midwest and Florida.
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In fact, the thin record of the general's domestic-policy utterances suggest he is reading polls as closely as any center-left Democratic stalwart. He is "not particularly in favor" of raising the Social Security retirement age. He has signaled support for rolling back the unpopular Bush tax cuts for upper-income Americans, but not the popular ones benefiting middle-class voters, though doing only the former couldn't achieve his vaguely enunciated goal of balancing the budget "at some point." Only on government-funded vouchers for private-school tuition, which he says might be used "on an exceptional basis," has he signaled any appetite for taking on Democratic constituencies.
Offering straight talk is all the more delicate for Gen. Clark as a first-time candidate with no demonstrable base, no strong ties to labor or minority voters and no history even of Democratic affiliation until his own recent public pronouncement. "He still has to convince core Democrats that his instincts are good enough" to be trusted, says Elaine Kamarck, a former aide to Al Gore.
Gen. Clark was hunting for the right balance from domestic-policy experts long before last week's announcement. "I don't think he's Arnold Schwarzenegger," says Robert Reischauer, a former Congressional Budget Office chief impressed by the general's smarts. Mr. Reischauer argues that Gen. Clark need not go too far in making specific policy choices, because those would give Republicans easy targets in an election likely to turn on Mr. Bush's record and persona in any event.
That is also the Clark campaign's theory of the race. "It will not be an election that will turn on who has the best 10-point plan," says Clark communications chief Mark Fabiani.
Perhaps not, but holding back his domestic ideas poses risks for Gen. Clark just as surely as disclosing them does. Chief among them is allowing voters to believe that behind a warrior's bearing lies a typical politician's caution. |
