Wesley Clark’s Fading Four Stars
Exclusive commentary by CK Rairden
Jan 26, 2004
Twentieth century poet Neil Young once claimed, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.” If the trends continue in the democratic primary (and that’s a big “if”) and you get Howard Dean and Wesley Clark in the same room and can ask them that question, Neil Young’s theory could be tested. Howard Dean burned out in a 45-second speech after the Iowa Caucuses and Wesley Clark’s candidacy is dangerously close to fading away.
Wesley Clark’s initial mission was to thwart Dean’s momentum as he entered the race in September with the Clinton family blessing only after no other candidate from the field of Democrats could slow the Dean machine. The Clinton-led centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) also prodded Clark as they were in fear of losing relevancy to the angry left wing of Howard Dean’s “Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party.” The thought was Wesley Clark’s military pedigree would easily establish him as the anti-Dean candidate and Clark could vault to the front of this weak field. It started out well as Clark went directly to the front of the pack only slightly behind Howard Dean.
Then Wesley Clark began to speak.
He struggled with the most simple of questions early, beginning with the Iraq war resolution where he initially said he “probably would have voted for the congressional resolution authorizing war.” He then said he was misunderstood, and definitely would have not have voted for the resolution. The flip-flop has dogged Clark since and he is questioned about it to this day.
But that was only the beginning of Clark’s missteps. His campaign is suffering through Clark’s own self-inflicted ‘death by a thousand cuts.’
On the stump he has called President Bush “unpatriotic” while claiming the Administration “never intended to get Osama bin Laden.” He took an extreme position on abortion saying that the mother should be able to decide “up until the moment of birth” whether or not to abort. He flatly stated to the Concord (NH) Monitor that under a Clark Administration, “we are not going to have one of these [terrorist] incidents,” and then denied he made the guarantee. He even went as far as degrading John Kerry’s military rank, but later apologized. He literally turned in a Bill Clinton moment on ABC’s ‘This Week’ on Sunday when responding to a question on whether the claim he advised N.H. Congressional candidate Katrina Swett to vote for the resolution — if she were in Congress.
Clark’s Clintonesque response was ugly, “"It depends on what `the' is.”
But it’s his latest major gaffe that seems to have really struck a negative chord. Clark is still refusing to repudiate left-wing radical Michael Moore’s charge that President George W. Bush is a “deserter.” Moore made the charge while introducing and endorsing Clark on the stump last week. Clark has been given every opportunity to rebuke this charge, right up to Sunday morning’s ‘Meet the Press’ when host Tim Russert gave Clark, who was a guest on the program, numerous opportunities to rebut Moore’s serious charge.
Clark repeatedly refused praising Michael Moore as a “man of conscience.”
All this has led to the fading four star general coming off as a reserved Howard Dean, a flip-flopping angry left candidate who blames everyone except himself, but doesn’t scream and turn beet red when doing so. When confronted with his countless previous on-the-record statements that now conflict with his new liberal positions he either denies it, or says he was misunderstood. He even went as far as to warn veteran news anchor Tom Brokaw to “be careful” when Brokaw attempted to question him on several flip-flops.
None of this is playing well with democratic primary voters according to the free fall in his polling numbers.
--In New Hampshire he has fallen into a three way battle for third with Joe Lieberman and John Edwards and if the tracking polls are taken out to Tuesday, he may finish as low as fifth even though he skipped Iowa to concentrate on the Granite state.
It continues to two important February 3rd races on “Super Tuesday Light.”
--Clark has fallen to fourth in South Carolina behind Edwards, Kerry and Al Sharpton.
--Clark has also dropped 22 full points in only two weeks in Arizona. He’s fallen from a 39% front-runner to 17% and a close second behind a surging Kerry. It gets worse as two weeks ago Kerry was only polling at 5%.
--Clark does still lead in Oklahoma, but his numbers are down while John Kerry and John Edwards are both up 15 percentage points.
This all points to an agonizing, fading campaign that continues to drop in the polls.
But--this is still a very weak field of democrats and there is still a very small window for Clark to make some move forward. The chairman of the Democratic Party, Terry McAuliffe, has stated recently that if a candidate has no wins by February 3rd that they should drop out of the race. Wesley Clark needs a win in the worst way, but unless he makes some serious changes in his approach and demeanor by that date--“Super Tuesday Light” he will be strongly pushed by his party to quit.
And that would end the September to February presidential romance between the Democrats and Wesley Clark.
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