Four Star Fading Fast
By Vincent Fiore on 11/06/03
Nationwide, auto body painters Earl Scheib, Inc., makes a handsome living out of painting cars for the audacious sum of $199.99, or thereabouts. Like nearly anything done on the cheap, the beauty and superiority of it is virtually skin deep. Since it is meant to dazzle instead of endure, one sees a picture not representative of the true product but rather the cosmetic application meant to satisfy the want of something new, unless one looks at the car from thirty feet away and moving.
A relatively short time later though, even distance cannot hide the reality of it. The luster has faded, and the peeling and cracking that was hidden has emerged. What was there is truly still there; a waning, pallid auto that may have looked good at first blush, but reverts to form after limited weathering. This is symptomatic of the candidacy of Democrat presidential aspirant Wesley Clark.
Having been adoringly painted by the Earl Scheib's of the progressive media, his four star luster is quickly starting to fade into a flaccid dullness. Colorless, directionally lacking, and mostly clueless, the hyperventilating over Wesley Clark, "President" has been forcefully slapped with the actuality of Wesley Clark, four star dullard.
Clark's sudden ascension to prominence has begun to taper off, as even the vanguard of elite media types that gave him his political star status has had to own up to the fact that as a candidate for president, he is turning up lame. Having come in late to begin with, Clark had little money and even less name recognition outside of military circles. But a media desperate for a candidate to face George W. Bush second, and remove Vermont Governor Howard Dean as the front runner first gave Clark what few ever get in the political process, namely fawning press over a virtual nobody in military dress.
With the paving of a "Clark for President" road starting back in late 2002 with visits to New Hampshire and North Carolina to endorse local democrat candidates, the media has played the steady part of the driving force. It was only natural that when Clark announced his intention to run as a democrat in mid-September that it was treated as the political equivalent of the Second Coming. If I overreach with that statement, it is meant to match media overreach in relation to Clark, and only to provide some sense of perspective. Amazingly, here is General Wesley Clark, an absolute "never heard of him" in the eyes of certainly most American's, suddenly gracing the cover of Newsweek's September 29th issue. Even more, he lands atop the Newsweek poll taken just days after he announces his entering of the race.
The poll, taken in the third week of September, had Clark at 14%, with Sen. Joe Lieberman and Gov. Howard Dean at 12% and Sen. John Kerry at 10%. On the same poll, President Bush got 47% to Clark's 43% in the head to head match up. But the deficiencies of Clark the candidate are becoming more apparent as time ticks away toward the 2004 elections. The CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, taken October 24-26 now has Clark trailing Howard Dean. This same poll had Clark up as much as 9 points at one time. {http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr031028.asp } But that was before Clark hit the campaign trail in earnest.
Clark's banner theme of a "New American patriotism" is no more than cover for the extreme antiwar crowd whose vote he must have to get through the primaries. His continued flip-flopping on the war in Iraq enables Sen. Joe Lieberman to remark at a recent debate in Detroit on Clark's "six different positions" on it. Clark's early inability to flatly promulgate his party moniker has cost him valuable credibility, a must for a political novice. His latest review of Bush's national security policy in which he lays responsibility for 9/11 at Bush's doorstep cannot be taken as anything but pandering to the Bush-hating left of the democrat party. On the President's request for 87 billion dollars to fight the war on terrorism and rebuild Iraq, Clark does what he continually has done; he contradicts himself. Saying in one breath that he opposes the request, but then telling reporters later on "eventually we're going to have to do our part in the reconstruction of Iraq" these contradictions in policy have become Clark's modus operandi.
All this adds up to what Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle recently accused the Administration of having, a "credibility gap." Only the gap seems to exist among democrat candidates, specifically Clark, that now bedevils him in every party debate and media sound bite. The one thing Clark has managed to do like a seasoned Washington insider, is offer banalities instead of policy solutions. Like all his running mates, he is intellectually bereft on most policy matters, but robust with acidic commentary as relating to the president.
It is unclear if Clark can write a happy ending to his candidacy. The more he presents himself, the more inept he looks. His strategy of late seems to put him squarely in the camp of Howard Dean, whose anti-Bush elocution has propelled him to the head of the pack. So critical has Clark been of Bush that Roll Call commentate Morton Kondracke, well know as a centrist Democrat, remarked in a commentary how Clark "sounds like Howard Dean in uniform." {http://www.rollcall.com/issues/49_46/kondracke/3387-1.html} If so, this would present the same problem that will haunt either man upon winning their party's primary: squaring their liberal positions to the electorate nationwide.
It is no secret that the Vermont Governor was courting the hard left from day one by taking a populist antiwar position, thereby defining the differences between himself and the other democrat contenders. In the case of Wesley Clark, it was supposed that he would represent something democrats have lacked for decades: political viability with the American electorate on national security. Strangely enough, Clark has talked less about what he does know, which is military matters, and has continually harped on what he doesn't know, which politically, are the domestic issue's. His only consistent policy is to attack George W. Bush, and to mortgage the country he served for most of his adult life by advocating its sovereignty to the UN.
Wesley Clark's entering into politics will, I believe, turn out to be more of a jaunt than a journey. His success to date is almost exclusively media induced, and now beginning to slide. The late Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Herb Caen famously said: "A man begins cutting his wisdom teeth the first time he bites off more than he can chew."
It would seem that Wesley Clark has a mouthful indeed. |
