Mullings: An American Cyber-column By Rich Galen

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General Disaster

Presented by:
The Republican Leadership Council

Friday, September 19, 2003

Click here for an Easy Print Version

The newest entrant into the campaign for the Democratic nomination for President is Wesley Clark, of Arkansas.

Last week, Clark (who likes to be referred to as "The General") announced he was an official candidate and took off on an airplane for his first appearance as an official candidate in Florida.

On that airplane to Florida with The General were a number of national political reporters.

The national political reporters, while on the airplane, asked The General about his position on the war in Iraq - specifically whether he would have voted for the resolution to grant the President the authority to go to war.

From the NY Times' Adam Nagourney - one of the national political reporters aboard the airplane - this:

"At the time, I probably would have voted for it, but I think that's too simple a question," General Clark said.
A moment later, he said: "I don't know if I would have or not. I've said it both ways because when you get into this, what happens is you have to put yourself in a position - on balance, I probably would have voted for it."

After that bit of foolishness, The General yelled for help (literally) from his press secretary, Mary Jacoby. Again, Mr. Nagourney:

Mary, help!" he called to his press secretary � "Come back and listen to this."
"I want to clarify - we're moving quickly here," Ms. Jacoby said. "You said you would have voted for the resolution as leverage for a U.N.-based solution."
"Right," General Clark responded. "Exactly."

To borrow from that rent-a-car ad - NOT exactly. What The General said was he "probably would have voted for it."

A day later, at a speech to students at the University of Iowa The General, responding to headlines like the one atop the very article we're working with here: "Clark Says He Would Have Voted for War," said that going into Iraq was "a major blunder" which led to this headline on the MSNBC website:

"Clark Flip-Flops on Iraq War Vote."

Oh, yeah. This is going great. Two days a candidate; two wonderful headlines.

Think about how the media demanded that Arnold Schwarzenegger be willing to discuss every semicolon in every subsection of every bill ever introduced into the California legislature.

Now think about the fact that The General's only presumed expertise is the use of military force in foreign affairs and he couldn't even answer the one question which serves as the basis - the sole basis - of his candidacy.

Deborah Orin of the NY Post asked me what I thought about all this:

"GOP strategist Rich Galen said: "He's not ready for prime time, he's not ready to be president. He's not ready to be a member of Congress. In a debate, any freshman congressman could kick his four-star butt back to Arkansas."

As further evidence of the lack of enthusiasm Democratic voters have for their own candidates, The General broke on top of the latest Newsweek poll, being favored by 14 percent of "Registered Democrats and Democratic leaners." The rest of the field polled as follows:

Dean - 12
Lieberman - 12
Kerry - 10
Gephardt - 8
Sharpton - 7
Edwards - 6
Graham - 4
Mosely Braun - 2
Kucinich - 2

By the way, in head-to-head matchups, President Bush beats them all, but that's not the point.

I used an appearance on the Fox News Channel with Tony Snow yesterday to point out that the breathless reporting of The General's poll numbers should be tempered by new numbers coming out of California which have Bustamante and Schwarzenegger in a statistical tie at 28-26. Tom McClintock came in third at - this is why I love this stuff - 14 percent.

Ironic, huh?

You remember last week when Gray Davis claimed that California was home to people from many different planets? Maybe that was an unconscious tip off to his next career move if he's recalled:
Mayor of Roswell, New Mexico

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Wow! Links Galore! Links to the Nagourney, MSNBC, Newsweek, and NY Post articles plus the article in the Roswell Daily Record from 1947 about the discovery of aliens. AND one of the best Catchy Captions ever.

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