{"id":3989,"date":"2005-04-18T10:01:13","date_gmt":"2005-04-18T14:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3989.html"},"modified":"2005-04-18T10:01:13","modified_gmt":"2005-04-18T14:01:13","slug":"clarks-running-count-on-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/clarks-running-count-on-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Clark’s running; count on it"},"content":{"rendered":"

To follow up on an observation<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Mark Kleiman<\/a>, for example, saw Clark at a Los Angeles fundraiser over the weekend, at which the former general made his intentions clear.<\/p>\n

Just back from a fundraiser for Wesley Clark’s WesPac, with Clark himself as the main attraction. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

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.<\/p>\n

But Clark has made vast<\/i> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/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-3989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3989","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=3989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3989\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}