{"id":3951,"date":"2005-04-12T11:30:09","date_gmt":"2005-04-12T15:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3951.html"},"modified":"2005-04-12T11:30:09","modified_gmt":"2005-04-12T15:30:09","slug":"wesley-clarks-busy-schedule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wesley-clarks-busy-schedule\/","title":{"rendered":"Wesley Clark’s busy schedule"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve sworn off speculating about would-be candidates in 2008, but that hasn’t stopped me from noticing that Wesley Clark<\/a> has been keeping a very busy schedule of late and been maintaining the kind of role in the party that will help him in the “long term” (wink, wink).<\/p>\n

What made me think of this is a press conference today on Capitol Hill (3 pm, if you’re in the neighborhood) featuring Clark alongside House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Reps. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) and Lane Evans (D-Ill.) announcing the Dems’ “G.I. Bill of Rights for the 21st Century.”<\/p>\n

This comes a week after Clark made Richard Perle look pretty ridiculous<\/a> at a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the war in Iraq. Which came the same week Clark received a warm welcome<\/a> from an annual gathering<\/a> of the Association of State Democratic Chairs.<\/p>\n

Also keep in mind that senior Dem leaders on the Hill are committed to a stronger, more persuasive message when it comes to national security and foreign policy, and have reached out to Clark<\/a> for assistance.<\/p>\n

Senior House Democrats have consulted leading military experts to help craft a strengthened message on Iraq, hoping to bolster their party’s position on defense issues and move beyond honoring American troops and calling for an exit strategy. […]<\/p>\n

Clark, the one-time Democratic presidential hopeful, spoke to the Caucus at its retreat [in February], telling Members, “if Democrats do not want to be soft on defense, they can’t adopt a ‘bring home the troops now’ policy.” He suggested Democrats hammer the Bush administration for failing to come up with a plan for success in Iraq, and argue that he owes the American public such a plan. <\/p>\n

Clark counseled Democrats to reframe their message to force the White House to articulate a success strategy, rather than simply call for an exit. He also suggested Democrats question Bush’s commitment to funding the troops, reconstructing the country and providing adequate training for Iraqi police and military personnel.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Time will tell what kind of impact these efforts will have on Clark’s political career, but as someone who backed him during the primaries, I’m glad to see Clark keeping busy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve sworn off speculating about would-be candidates in 2008, but that hasn’t stopped me from noticing that Wesley Clark has been keeping a very busy schedule of late and been maintaining the kind of role in the party that will help him in the “long term” (wink, wink). What made me think of this is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}