Clark finally making headway
boston.com
By Scot Lehigh
The Boston Globe
12/19/2003
CONCORD, N.H.
DURING A WEEK that was everything a Republican president could hope for, it was the kind of day that, of the Democrats, only Wesley Clark could have.
With the capture of Saddam Hussein pushing George W. Bush's polling numbers up (at least temporarily) from competitive to formidable, the former supreme allied commander returned from testifying at the war-crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic, the man whose forces he ran out of Kosovo, to spend Wednesday laying out his ideas for trying the deposed Iraqi dictator.
Talk of your transition from testimony to testimonials.
First human-rights advocate Samantha Power praised Clark for helping reverse a long history of US inaction in the face of genocide. "That changed in the mid-1990s, and it changed in large measure because General Clark rose through the ranks of the American military," she told the audience at the Franklin Pierce Law Center.
Then Edita Tahiri, an Albanian Kosovar, offered her own stunning encomium. "General Clark," she said, "is the savior of my nation, the Albanians of Kosovo. He is the savior of my personal life."
All that underscored the central message of Clark's campaign: In the general, Democrats have a man who has actually conducted the sort of effective, multilateral foreign policy their party celebrates.
But just in case anyone missed that message, Clark drove the point home. Predicting that Bush would question the national-security credentials and resolution of the Democrats, he said: "Let me tell you what happens if he tries to do that. I'll put my 34 years of defending the United States of America and the results that I and my teammates in the United States Armed Forces achieved against his three years of failed policies, any day."
To be sure, there were awkward moments; the capture of Saddam presents both the Democratic candidates and the Republican president with uncomfortable incongruities in their own positions. Would Bush have invaded Iraq if he had known that months of searching would turn up none of the predicted weapons of mass destruction? Asked, in an ABC interview that aired Tuesday, about the failure to find WMD, the president took shelter in a repeated -- and animated -- insistence that Saddam had presented a threat to the United States.
For antiwar Democrats, the parallel question is this: Under their policies, wouldn't the murderous dictator be in power today rather than in prison? Post-capture politics have already occasioned another stumble by Democratic front-runner Howard Dean, who asserted that apprehending Saddam hasn't made America safer, a conclusion roundly criticized by his primary rivals.
For his part, the general tried to avoid a misstep with a sidestep. When a reporter asked whether, given Clark's opposition to the war, Saddam would still be in power if the general were president, Clark said he "would have gone after Saddam Hussein in a different way and with different priorities," and with UN aprroval. In an interview afterward, Clark told the Globe that the options could have ranged from more robust inspections to human-rights monitors to multilateral military action.
"We could have encroached on Saddam bit by bit, then we could have brought him down, at a different time in a different way," he said. "We could have put human-rights inspectors in there. We could have demanded that they reform their practices."
That seems unlikely, but such are the feints and evasions of presidential politics.
Still, despite that tap-dance, what is clear is that Clark, after an awkward entrance into the race, has found his footing.
He discusses foreign affairs with a confidence and fluidity that only US Senator John Kerry matches, offering up a stream of thoughtful proposals. Nor does he seem out of his element talking about domestic policy.
As the campaign heads into the holiday season, Clark can look forward to the strong possibility of a Granite State showing that enhances his candidacy. And, after that, a route to more promising ground in the Feb. 3 round of primaries in the South and West. Meanwhile, his campaign aides predict fourth-quarter fund-raising of $10 million, which, if realized, would underscore how serious his effort has become.
It's no wonder, then, that in a week when a cloud of depression has overspread the Democratic field, Clark and his team see a silver lining.
Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company. |
