Keeping busy, waiting for the later-half of 2007 to roll around

May 4, 2005

I’ve often wondered what presidential candidates, who have no day job, do for four years. One can’t just go around campaigning for a race that doesn’t exist (I guess they could, but voters wouldn’t respond very well). When it comes to 2008, most of the likely Dem aspirants are plenty busy attending to their professional responsibilities. Senators like Clinton, Kerry, Bayh, and Feingold are tending to their senatorial duties, while governors like Richardson, Warner, Vilsack, will, at a minimum, serve through the end of this year.

So, if you’re John Edwards or Wesley Clark, what exactly do you do with your time? Both of them seem to have crafted productive ways to stay busy.

Edwards has not only picked an important policy issue to make his own, he’s even given himself a pseudo-day job that he can reference on the campaign trail.

Nonetheless, so far in 2005, Edwards has found the time to appear at state party dinners in New Hampshire and Wisconsin, picket with striking truck drivers in Iowa, and make appearances in urban centers of Democratic cash and influence from New York to Boston to Los Angeles. His One America political action committee is accepting contributions. Maybe he’ll run and maybe he won’t, but Edwards is laying the campaign groundwork, just in case.

In the meantime, Edwards has taken a position as head of a new institute tailored to his interests: the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he received his law degree. Read into this what you want, but Edwards’ position is described by the University as a part-time role, and it has a two-year term.

Clark, meanwhile, has been one of the hardest working pols in the country lately, despite not having a platform to use.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, for example, that Clark seems to be taking advantage of every opportunity to make a high-profile appearance. In one seven-day span in April, Clark appeared alongside House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to announce the Dems’ G.I. Bill of Rights, he testified before the House Armed Services Committee on the war in Iraq (and made Richard Perle look pretty ridiculous in the process), and received a warm welcome at a gathering of the Association of State Democratic Chairs.

This week, it’s more of the same. Clark has a new essay in the Washington Monthly on democracy in the Middle East (it’s quite good, if you haven’t read it); he’ll appear on a Center for American Progress panel discussion on data collection and national security; and tonight Clark will deliver the keynote speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s “Tribute to Liberators” dinner.

It’s nice to see these guys stay busy, but can they keep this up for the next three years?

I hope Clark keeps it up, raising his profile and getting the experience he needs to be a better campaigner next time around. He was really the best pick in the 2004 field; he just wasn’t ready to run, and he jumped in too late. I see a signal in the fact that he hasn’t run for a lesser office. He’s keeping his options open for 2008.

  • I agree with the above comment, though I’d add that both Clark and Edwards–my top two choices for the nomination last time–might do quite well for themselves by staying out of the spotlight between now and 2007. The Senate is going to get very rough, and as Dems we haven’t had all that much luck running nominees from that body anyway; as for the governors, while I like Warner quite a bit, and see good biographies and political skills in Vilsack and Richardson, they’re going to come under fire from Republicans looking to pre-emptively attack them, and at least with the latter two, they bring clear political weaknesses anyway (Vilsack is charismatically challenged; Richardson reputedly has the Clinton/bimbo problem, and his tenure as Sec’y of Energy was clouded in several respects). Meanwhile, Edwards and Clark are building expertise in two highly salient areas of policy, refining their fundraising and stump-speaking pitches, and exercising considerable control over their own public exposure. Don’t be shocked if, one way or another, they comprise the 2008 Democratic presidential ticket, though no doubt my own bias here colors the analysis.

  • However the race for 2008 shakes out I see one good thing here. Edwards, Clark and Dean are really doing a lot to reconnect the Democratic party with the people.
    Another thing is the list of contenders for 2008 is really strong, Clark, Clinton, Edwards, and Kerry. Looking at the Republican side Frist is one of the most mentioned and he’s a joke.
    There is one thing that crosses my mind, if we retake the White House somebody is going to have a huge mess to clean up.

  • There have been a few articles about Clark recently suggesting we may need a draft. I hope that doesn’t become the tangled web it might. I think he’s doing a great job of working with leading Democrats around the country — a good move for a campaign and an even better move for running a country.

  • Wes Clark can keep it up. Remember that old Army enlistment ad, “We do more by 9am than most people do all day”? Clark lives it. Whether his base can keep up with him remains to be seen, but we’ll give it our best shot.

  • The article is quite good even if you *have* read it.

    (Sorry, pedantic quibble)

  • The way I see it, General Wesley K. Clark is a gift to the Democratic Party nicely packaged wrapped with four gold stars that will make it nigh impossible for the GOP from attacking the Democratic Party as being “weak on national security”as long as he is on board. He will provide invaluable aid to the Democratic cause in the years ahead in fighting the Bush PNAC regime and I am sure he will not shirk his duty to the country he loves. What drives him goes far beyond political ambition.

    “Duty, honor, country.”

  • Very interesting analysis! I personally like Clark the best. He is an amazing guy, maybe almost too good to be President, but very good for the country.

  • Anyone who gets up at 5:30 every morning to swim before the work schedule he put’s himself through has energy to spare! Clark’s my favorite for 2008 and is proving day by day to be the Democratic Party’s most forceful defender and advocate. Clark’s grassroots support remains strong, committed and connected. Clark and the grassroots will have a real impact on the 2006 races.

  • Wes Clark was the first candidate I ever gave money to – and I doubt anyone gave money based on his position on Rwanda. Here’s a guy good for the Dems, but perhaps a bit too new to the political circus and with too few political connections to take the nomination, which may hold true in 2008 as well.

    He fleshes out any Dem ticket nicely, and its a pity for the Dems to pass him by, since his stances on defense will probably go much further than personality.

    There’s always that claim: The Republicans take down their dictators, and leave America and the world worse off. The Dems take down their dictators without a single American dying – and leave the world better. Who do you trust more for foreign policy?

  • I see what both Edwards and Clark are doing as being very important for the Democratic Party in the next four years.

    Hopefully Edwards can come up with some ideas for helping the poor that can’t be labeled as liberals redistributing wealth from those who made the right choices in life to those who made all the wrong choices. We need to change the perception that everyone in poverty is either a drunk or drug addict, or single mothers who turn into welfare queens that keep pumping out children so they can drive a Cadillac on their welfare money.

    Hopefully Clark can help educate the public on the madness being perpetrated by the Bush Administration and Republicans. He needs to keep driving home the message that spreading democracy is more about building the institutions that can help facilitate it’s spread and less about taking down dictators. As you pointed out, his essay “War Doesn’t and Didn’t Bring Democracy” is pretty good. So are his essays, “America’s Virtual Empire,” Washington Monthly, November 2003, “An Army of One?” Washington Monthly, September 2002, and “Broken Engagement,” Washington Monthly, May 2004.

    I hope to see similar essays from Edwards on poverty…

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