"Clark's claim to presidential stature derives from directing NATO's 78 days of war at 15,000 feet over Serbia," Will wrote. "It was the liberals' dream war: tenuously related to U.S. security, with an overriding aim, to which much was sacrificed, to have zero U.S. fatalities."
washingtonpost.com
Trying to Push Clark Over the Bar
By Terry M. Neal
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 3, 2003; 7:23 AM
What would make people take temporary leave of their jobs -- and perhaps their senses -- to work full-time promoting the presidential candidacy of someone they have never met and who has not announced his intentions?
Last week, we moseyed over to the offices of DraftWesleyClark.com, two blocks from the White House, in an attempt to answer this and other perplexing questions about the draft Gen. Wesley Clark movement. What we found were three guys in a cramped room filled with posters, videotapes and flyers featuring the smiling visage of the reluctant political warrior.
John Hlinko, Josh Margulies and Chris Kofinis are the nucleus of the organization. They are ground zero of the Draft Clark movement, although the folks at www.DraftClark2004.com might take exception to that. (Jason McIntosh, director of that Little Rock, Ark.-based group, told The Post's Lois Romano recently, "We're human capital." DraftClark2004.com says it has coordinators in every state willing to work for Clark. The two groups have vowed to work together if Clark enters the race.)
Margulies, an attorney and registered Republican, took leave from his law practice in upstate New York to work on the effort with Hlinko, who is Margulies's brother-in-law and a political consultant who specializes in grass-roots campaigns.
"For me, this is more than party," Margulies said. "I'm a registered Republican, but I was born American."
"We kid around a lot, but this is deadly serious," said Kofinis, a former Cal State Northridge politics professor. "We are really focused on what needs to be done."
Here's how serious they are: They've collected $1 million in contribution promises from about 7,500 people around the country for a potential Clark candidacy; bought radio and television ads in Iowa, New Hampshire, Arkansas and the District, and recruited thousands of volunteers in almost every state.
The idea for both Clark groups is to have a national infrastructure ready and willing to go to work the second Clark decides to jump in, so he does not have to start from scratch.
Last week, DraftWesleyClark.com released a so-called "blind" poll of candidates' resumes, commissioned from independent pollster John Zogby. Clark led the six declared Democratic candidates tested in the poll and beat President Bush in a head-to-head match-up.
The General Theory
The technique for blind polls is unusual, if not controversial. In such polls, candidates' resumes, without names, are matched against each other. In the Zogby blind poll, Clark's resume beat the resumes of former Vermont governor Howard Dean, Sen. John Kerry, Sen. John Edwards, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Rep. Richard Gephardt, and Sen. Bob Graham.
More importantly, perhaps, to the Draft Clark folks is that Clark's resume beat Bush in a hypothetical contest. The poll compared Clark and Bush this way:
"If the presidential election were held today, which of the following two candidates would you vote to be the next president? The Democratic candidate is a former four-star general and NATO supreme commander during the Clinton administration. He was first in his class at West Point, a Rhodes Scholar, is a decorated Vietnam veteran, and is a national security expert. He is a successful businessman leading the effort to reduce our dependence on oil. Is a moderate on domestic policy issues and is from the South. The Republican candidate is George W. Bush."
The Clark resume beat Bush's name by 49 to 40 percent.
For the poll survey, 1,019 likely voters were interviewed Aug. 16-19. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the sample to this question.
The way the Draft Clark people see it, Clark would move immediately to the top of the Democratic field by neutralizing voter fears about the party's weakness on national security issues. Clark, who opposed the Iraq war and gained significant exposure talking about it on CNN, brings a credibility to the anti-Iraq war argument that most of the Democratic candidates lack, his supporters say. Clark has been portrayed in some media reports as a particular threat to Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran whose military service stands out in the field of candidates. And Clark's supporters tout polls showing that many Democrats are not entirely satisfied with the current field.
"The question is, who can we entrust with the safety of our country," Hlinko said. "He gets in the race, he's immediately in the top three."
But of course, there's another side of the argument. How does a guy who is unknown by the vast majority of voters jump into a race eight months after everyone else and raise the money to make himself competitive? Money's not the only factor, but a good resume doesn't pay for air travel, office space, advertising and staff. (Nobody at DraftWesleyClark.com is getting paid now, according to the group's leaders, although four or five of the top staffers hope to pull a salary after expenses are paid.)
The depth of the money problem is apparent from another Zogby poll -- one that was not commissioned by the Draft Clark folks. That poll shows that in New Hampshire, the most important early primary state, most respondents didn't even know Clark's name. Seventy-two percent couldn't tell the difference between Gen. Clark and a Clark Bar. Fewer than 20 percent of respondents said they were unfamiliar with Gephardt, Dean, Lieberman or Kerry. Of the New Hampshirites who did know Clark, 14 percent had a favorable impression of him and 11 percent had an unfavorable impression.
Clark, who has said he will announce a decision on running in the next couple of weeks, would have about five months to make up that ground, with a fraction of the money as the other top-tier candidates. Even if DraftWesleyClark.com receives the $5 million its leaders expect in contribution pledges -- pledges, not cash -- before the end of September, the campaign would still be in a huge hole compared to the other top candidates, most of whom will have raised more than $20 million in real cash by that point.
"There's always a small chance that there could be some Perot or Ventura magic, and that's what it would take," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "But the great probability is, it's too late...He's laboring under the impression, and the Draft Clark people are too, that he is a well-known person. He is well-known among the political community, but that's it. Just because he was on CNN chitchatting doesn't mean he is."
The Scuttlebutt
Publicly, Clark has done little to discourage talk of his candidacy. Privately, two sources told Talking Points this week that he's in the process of interviewing potential top campaign staffers.
A Clark candidacy has the chattering class chattering. And there are some distinctly different takes.
Columnist George Will dismissed talk of Clark's strength in a Washington Post column Sunday under the headline, "Not Like Ike."
"Clark's claim to presidential stature derives from directing NATO's 78 days of war at 15,000 feet over Serbia," Will wrote. "It was the liberals' dream war: tenuously related to U.S. security, with an overriding aim, to which much was sacrificed, to have zero U.S. fatalities."
In an analytical and relatively neutral column on the same subject, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne on Tuesday explained the Clark almost-juggernaut: "But if the Democrats' dislike of Bush leads some in their ranks to support his seemingly most outspoken opponent, it leads others to a pragmatic judgment: The party's obligation is to nominate the candidate with the best profile for taking the fight to Bush's turf. That has produced a longing for Clark among some Democrats and a significant outpouring of support in chat rooms and on Internet sites set up to encourage him to run."
I have written repeatedly, to the dismay of the Draft Clark crowd, that it seems impossible for anyone to jump in this late and run a successful race. But those are two issues: I very well could be wrong about the impossibility that Clark will jump in. Whether he can be successful is the other issue. Stranger things have happened in presidential primaries. I just can't think of any off the top of my head.
© 2003 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive |
