General Clark's Idealistic Nation
Shlomi Sher GS
As America prepares for the 2004 Presidential election, we find ourselves being transformed from an idealistic nation into a fearful and belligerent one. How we vote in 2004 will determine whether this transformation is carried through, and therefore it will count among the most important decisions we have ever made. But for Democrats, in many ways the real decision is now. In a deeply ambivalent electorate, simultaneously risk-averse and dissatisfied with the status quo, the outcome may ultimately hinge on the perceived strengths and weaknesses of the candidate we choose now. If the Democrats nominate a loser, this century could get a lot uglier.
The serious contenders for the Democratic nomination are good people, and most of them would probably be good Presidents. But only one of them would be a good candidate in the general election. The congressional candidates, for all their real individual strengths, look, smell, and taste, to the ordinary voter, like a bland and homogeneous mush. Each of them could win if the basic underlying conditions – the economy, Iraq, homeland security – are unfavorable for Bush, but each of them will lose if those conditions are favorable for Bush. Howard Dean is different, because he could lose even if the conditions are unfavorable for Bush: Dean’s snickering, snooty, arrogant, angry tone and his short emotional fuse seem bound to alienate middle America.
Wesley Clark is the one candidate who not only would win if the conditions described above were unfavorable for Bush, but would stand a fighting chance even if those conditions were favorable for Bush. This is because, at a deeper level, the conditions are intrinsically and systemically favorable for Wesley Clark in three fundamental ways.
In the first election after 9/11, after two US wars in rapid succession, with hundreds of American soldiers killed and wounded in Iraq, and with the threat of further terrorist attacks looming large on the horizon, national security is on the country’s mind in a way that it hasn’t been in a long time. For an opposition party widely viewed as strong on domestic issues but weak on defense, it is difficult to underestimate the political significance of nominating General Wesley Clark. First in his class at West Point, decorated Vietnam war hero, four-star General, NATO Supreme Commander, Gen. Clark led allied forces in Kosovo in a military campaign widely regarded as a major success, without incurring a single American casualty. Michael Moore has said about the possibility of Clark’s nomination – “I’d love to see the debate between the General and the deserter.” That is a debate that Clark wins.
While the nation is fairly progressive on an issue-by-issue basis, there is a widespread cultural fear of liberals. Commentators who ask if Dean is too liberal on the issues have missed the basic point that Dean’s public image problem is not at root his policy liberalism, but rather his cultural liberalism. It is the snooty, arrogant Northeastern persona that makes a liability out of some of his liberal views. On the issues, Wesley Clark is no more conservative than Howard Dean, but Clark can’t be painted as a cultural liberal in the way that Dean can. Clark is a military man from the south who straightforwardly voices the simple American values of compassion and common sense. He is not culturally threatening. For example, in arguing for the assault weapons ban, Clark has said: “I have got 20 some odd guns in the house. I like to hunt. I have grown up with guns all my life, but people who like assault weapons should join the United States Army, we have them.” And in arguing for a serious investigation into the government’s failures on 9/11, Clark points out that “a basic principle of military operations is you conduct an after-action review. When the action’s over you bring people together. The commander, the subordinates, the staff members. You ask yourself what happened, why, and how do we fix it the next time?” At a time when the Fox News wing of the Republican Party has masterfully rewritten the language of politics in America, turning the estate tax into “the death tax” and bantering about “the people’s money, not the government’s money”, Wesley Clark promises to refocus the terms of the American political debate.
And then there is his personal profile. If you were casting the role of President for a Hollywood movie, you couldn’t do better than General Wesley Clark. Plain-spoken and yet extremely articulate, charismatic and yet firm, Clark looks and acts like an ideal American President. He is from the South, a region that will be crucial to any Democratic victory in 2004. And although some have seen it as a weakness, Clark’s status as a non-politician – an outsider – will likely prove a major advantage with an electorate which distrusts “Washington insiders,” and which – as evidenced in the candidacies of Ross Perot, Jesse Ventura, John McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and, dressed up to look like a cowboy on the ranch, George W. Bush – is drawn, sometimes irrationally, to outsiders.
In short, if the conditions are unfavorable for Bush, Clark is a sure winner. However, even if the conditions are favorable for Bush – a revived economy, no terror attacks, unexpected improvement of the situation in Iraq – the presidential four-star General with extensive military experience at a time of deep national security concerns, and the southerner with a cultural profile that could rescramble the political map, would stand a real chance at victory. There is no question which potential opponent Karl Rove most craves (a Vermont governor), and which potential opponent Karl Rove most fears (a four-star General). If Democrats want to maximize their odds of winning in 2004, the choice is obvious. And this is not an election we can afford to lose.
It is a remarkable but fortunate coincidence that the best candidate for 2004 would also be the best President for 2005. It’s not just that Clark is a progressive Democrat, though he is. Along with other military leaders, Clark submitted a brief urging the Supreme Court to uphold affirmative action in the University of Michigan case. He supports abortion rights, the assault weapons ban, the right of gays to serve in the armed forces, the Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal Court. He opposes Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, the Patriot Act’s assault on civil liberties, drilling in ANWR. And Clark has been a forceful and articulate opponent of the war in Iraq from the very beginning.
(Some of his opponents have recently accused Clark of waffling on the war. In fact, in the volumes he has written and spoken, both in strategic and political commentary, Clark’s only sin has been nuance. In the sound-bite world of American politics, nuance can easily be made to look like inconsistency, but in fact it is something we need at this moment. Next time one of his opponents brandishes an offending sentence, politely request the context. You’ll see the same prescient arguments Clark has been making for over a year: no immanence to the threat, the crucial importance of multilateralism, the likelihood of post-war chaos.)
But what separates Wesley Clark from the competition is his unequaled foreign policy vision. Everyone in the military – even Clark’s detractors – uniformly praise his brilliant strategic sense. Long ago, the Army tested 1000 officers to see how well they could extrapolate future trends from current data. Wesley Clark finished first. It is no surprise that Clark went on to become Director for Strategic Plans and Policy on the Joint Staff in the Clinton Administration. And his vision is one America needs at this perilous moment in our history: Four days after 9/11, when almost everyone in America was hot-headed, Clark wrote a thoughtful op-ed piece in the Guardian, arguing that the war on terror would not be won by military force, but that instead we should create an international law definition of terrorism, an international court for terrorism, work with other nations multilaterally to indict Al Qaeda members and bring them to trial, and use force rarely if at all, in targeted ways, and only as a last resort.
At this moment, we desperately need a President with the clarity of geopolitical vision to understand that, as Clark has stated, “The solution to terrorism is not going to be found in bullets. It’s not going to be found in precision ordnance or targeted strikes. It’s really going to be found in changing the conditions. It’s going to be found in establishing a global safety net that starts with security and goes to economic development and political development and the kinds of modernization which let others enjoy the fruits of modernization that we as Americans enjoy.” It is this breadth of vision that led literary critic Harold Bloom to write that “the time and the person have come together in Gen. Clark. There is potential greatness in him: Realism and hope intricately fuse in his character.”
There is one more reason Wesley Clark is the President we need in 2005. At this crucial moment in American history, the nation is divided, ambivalent, and afraid, and in need of more than just a series of policy enactments. We need a leader who can unite Americans behind the bright ideals which have traditionally made America great – a leader who can compellingly say, as Clark has, “Forget about the fear. Forget about the anger. And let’s move ahead and work our potential for the future.” Ultimately, then, the same quality which makes Clark a great candidate could make him a great President – his ability to truly be, in reality rather than rhetoric, a uniter and not a divider, in troubled and divided times. If elected, President Wesley Clark may help us become an idealistic nation once again.