I’m signed up to receive email updates from most of the presidential campaigns, whether I’m inclined to support their candidate or not. I got one last week announcing some interesting personnel additions.
This campaign was alerting its supporters to the fact that two key people had been added to their staff — one in a media/communications capacity and the other as legal counsel. Both hires are pretty impressive for the campaign. The media guy is an experienced p.r. professional and a veteran political journalist for the Wall Street Journal for over 20 years. The lawyer, meanwhile, is a former Chief Counsel for the Democratic National Committee.
So, which campaign was announcing these new additions? The Draft Wesley Clark team.
Now if the same campaign team could only field a candidate, they’d be in business.
The Draft Clark folks, who operate as if they were an actual presidential campaign, have all the ingredients of a well-organized campaign staff. Great website, campaign blog, offices in DC and New Hampshire, on-air advertisements, local activists, the works.
While Howard Dean’s campaign is known for its web-savvy strategy, the Draft Clark effort is almost as impressive. Clark MeetUp, for example, has now reached over 400 cities and over 6,000 volunteers. In addition, DraftWesleyClark.com is now #2 among all presidential candidate sites (second only to Dean).
All of this interest and support will come in very handy should Gen. Clark decide to jump into the race. But will he?
I admit that I’m intrigued by what Clark would bring to the race. His resume is impressive, to say the least, despite not having held elective office. He’s smart, he’s experienced on national security and foreign policy issues, and I see him having broad appeal among Independents and left-leaning Republican voters.
In the spring, I would have said that time is of the essence for Clark. Now it’s August and time has all but run out.
Clark very well may be thinking that he has time. After all, at this point in the 1992 campaign — early August 1991 — Paul Tsongas and Bill Clinton were the only announced candidates, and neither were campaigning aggressively.
This is not, however, 1991. There are nine candidates, some of whom have already raised well over $10 million and have been campaigning for as long as nine months. Many of the best campaign strategists, field organizers, pollsters, media flaks, and fundraisers have been snatched up by the other candidates. Anyone thinking about jumping in now, whether it’s Clark, Joe Biden, or anyone else, would have an almost impossible time trying to catch up to rival campaigns.
Clark may yet give it a shot and part of me hopes he does. He may believe — accurately — that most Americans, even Dem primary voters, have not yet focused sufficient attention on the race and are still open as to which candidates deserve support.
The financial and organizational hurdles, however, will be nearly insurmountable should Clark decide to join the race over the next month. I know Clark has experience leading troops and commanding an army, but he’d need quite a fighting force to have a meaningful impact so late in the game.