{"id":566,"date":"2003-08-28T10:42:26","date_gmt":"2003-08-28T15:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/566.html"},"modified":"2003-08-28T10:42:26","modified_gmt":"2003-08-28T15:42:26","slug":"has-wesley-clark-quietly-been-helping-howard-dean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/has-wesley-clark-quietly-been-helping-howard-dean\/","title":{"rendered":"Has Wesley Clark quietly been helping Howard Dean?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post Online hosts daily moderated “chats” with prominent figures from a variety of fields. Yesterday, Howard Dean’s campaign manager, Joe Trippi, sat in for about an hour’s worth of Q&A<\/a>. Most of the exchanges were predictable, but one answer in particular stood out for me.<\/p>\n

A questioner from Croton Falls, NY, asked Trippi, “When will the campaign bring in heavyweights in the foreign policy area?”<\/p>\n

It’s a relatively interesting question. Dean and his senior staff have organized “tutorials” since the early spring with left-leaning foreign policy experts at several DC think tanks, especially at Brookings. Since Dean seems to lack foreign policy gravitas, high-profile advisors can help. (It worked for Bush, who was briefed by Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice during the 2000 campaign.)<\/p>\n

Trippi’s response included one name that jumped out at me.<\/p>\n

“We talked to a lot of people in foreign policy today,” Trippi said. “The Governor continues to meet and speak with people such as Madeline Albright, Sandy Berger, and Gen Wesley Clark and others.”<\/p>\n

Albright and Berger are huge names in the Democratic establishment on foreign policy, and if Dean is speaking with them, he’s no doubt getting good advice. But there was that third name Trippi mentioned…<\/p>\n

Dean has received foreign policy advice from Gen. Clark? Isn’t that a little noteworthy considering that Clark appears ready to challenge Dean for the Democratic presidential nomination?<\/p>\n

I’m a little surprised. Assuming Trippi is telling the truth, it raises a few other questions. Did Dean pay Clark as an advisor? What, exactly, did Clark advise Dean to say about foreign policy? If Clark throws his hat in the ring, shouldn’t it be viewed as a repudiation of Dean’s preparedness on the issue? Hmm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post Online hosts daily moderated “chats” with prominent figures from a variety of fields. Yesterday, Howard Dean’s campaign manager, Joe Trippi, sat in for about an hour’s worth of Q&A. Most of the exchanges were predictable, but one answer in particular stood out for me. A questioner from Croton Falls, NY, asked Trippi, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}