Clark’s running; count on it

April 18, 2005

To follow up on an observation from last week, the question as to whether or not Wesley Clark is running for president again is no longer in doubt. This guy’s in for sure.

Mark Kleiman, for example, saw Clark at a Los Angeles fundraiser over the weekend, at which the former general made his intentions clear.

Just back from a fundraiser for Wesley Clark’s WesPac, with Clark himself as the main attraction.

Clark is running for President in 2008. He stopped just shy of a formal announcement, but left no one in doubt about his intentions. The crowd of about 150 seemed delighted.

Just as importantly, this site has a video of Clark’s speech, which I’d strongly recommend watching. It has Ezra Klein keyed up and Matthew Yglesias cautiously optimistic.

There’ll be plenty of time to talk about the merits of prospective candidates, but one thing jumped out at me while watching the video: Clark is getting better at this kind of thing. A year ago, I strongly underestimated the difficulty a first-time candidate has in learning to use the stump and work a room. I more or less assumed Clark, a brilliant man and a quick study, would pick up on these skills — honed over years by typical pols — and it wouldn’t be a problem. It was.

But Clark has made vast improvements in this area. His speaking style and ability to connect got better as the 2004 campaign rolled on, and Clark eventually got to be pretty good — right around the time he dropped out of the race.

Clark already has the resume. If he can become a terrific political candidate too, he’s likely to have far more success next time than he did last year.

If Clark had gotten in sooner, he might have been Dean–without the supposed “implosion”. He would have probably won the primary. This bit of hindsight is 20/20, but I firmly beleive if it was Clark instead of Kerry (maybe even Clark instead of Edwards) we would have won.

  • I could argue with Copper’s unsupported name-calling, but what’s there to say about simple name-calling? If you have a problem with Clark, Copper, spell it out.

    I talked to Wes Clark, Jr. at the event on Saturday and he said that half the time they didn’t even have a campaign manager during the 2004 primary. Remember how we all found out after Kerry lost that his campaign was run by a guy who was 1 for 7? Clark’s too smart for that. Now that he’s had time to learn politics, observe who the right people are to have on one’s staff, develop credibility with Democratic party leaders — like Reid and Pelosi and all of those who he has campaigned for across the nation — he’ll be able to make it happen.

    Watch and learn.

  • Well, Copper, what’s so great about Bayh? And why should anyone vote for him? After that, tell me why Clark is a loser for the Dems…

  • One thing that was painfully obvious during the presidential primaries was the virtual blackout of Clark. Between “establishment” Washington insiders and the corporate controlled media they made darn sure Wes didn’t get too much traction. The Radical Regressives in general and rove in particular knew he would be unbeatable.

    It will be interesting to see how this quick study works his way around not getting any media exposure if he decides to run. His “troops” are ready and we know it’s up to us to get the word out about this once in a lifetime candidate for president!

  • Continuing with jen’s thoughts…
    I complained to one of the Oregonian’s liberal columnists about Clark’s lack of coverage here, and he replied that Dean had more reason to bitch about the media than Clark. Plus, they favored the frontrunner – assumed to be Dean, then Kerry, once he got rolling.
    I am not thinking about ’08 yet, but I’m glad Clark is.

  • The one thing Clark has to work on is controlling his lip. He’s a bit of an intellectual, and he needs to learn to talk to Americans the way he’d talk to his Army grunts.

    But I’m a big fan. Voters want convictions, energy, and charisma, and Clark has at least two of those three.

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