Too bad Clark was such an awful candidate.
Oon Monday, John Kerry gave what both his fans and his critics say was his best speech on Iraq and foreign policy so far. Basically, Kerry has decided that the Iraq war is a Vietnam-like mistake, that the "world," not America, should fix Iraq, and that America should get out, fast. Of course, this is basically an expanded version of one of his recent antiwar stances. And now that I've read Kerry's first, best, and allegedly last iteration of his views on Iraq and the war on terrorism, I've come to one obvious conclusion: The Democrats should have nominated Wesley Clark.
Truth be told, I was never a big fan of the guy. But if the Clark everyone expected to run had actually run, Bush would be in huge trouble right now. Recall that before Clark got into the primaries he was generally perceived to be a moderate, Southern New Democrat and something of a hawk on foreign policy. When he ran the Kosovo war — which was not authorized by the UN, not aimed at WMDs, not part of the war on terrorism — he was always pushing for a more aggressive approach. As late as 2002 Clark was toasting the Bush team at a Republican fundraiser and he even admitted that he'd voted for Reagan and might have become an active Republican if only the White House had returned his phone calls.
The problem for Clark was that he didn't run as Clark. He ran as a Howard Dean with a mothballed general's uniform. That's why, at the time, I kept referring to him as the "Johnny Bravo" candidate. This was a reference to the Brady Bunch episode in which some slick music promoters asked Greg Brady to be a new rock star, "Johnny Bravo." Greg thought they liked him for his talent, when all they really wanted was someone who looked good in the costume. Democratic insiders — starting with Bill Clinton himself — kept insisting that a Democratic candidate with Wesley Clark's credibility on defense would crush the Republicans because American voters favor Democrats on domestic issues by a wide margin.
But the Democrats failed to grasp that the Republicans had won the foreign-policy debate not because they offered better props and costumes. They won it because they had better ideas. Ever since Reagan, the Democrats have attributed the GOP's advantage on foreign policy to flag-waving, gauzy commercials, and cheap appeals to patriotism. Conservatives couldn't possibly be right on the merits! It had to be some trick concocted by Mike Deaver, Lee Atwater, or Karl Rove. What the Democrats seemed not to notice was that none of the winning Republican candidates, with the exception of G. H. W. Bush, were war heroes. Bob Dole, who was one, got trounced — and so did the first President Bush in 1992.
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http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200409220845.asp
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