Bush without question.
He is milking money from our poorest customers.
I agree that Clark seems supremely qualified. So naturally you’re going to spin this into, “You MUST vote for the most qualified man”, as if the Presidency was like being a CEO of a company.
There’s this little matter of ideology. If you don’t believe in the man’s ideas, would you vote for him even if he were a super genius? Newt Gingrich was a very intelligent man. Would you vote for him?
I’m not American, but if I were, Clark’s rehashing of the old, “Free Health Care for Everyone” idea would be enough to disqualify him in a normal election, because I think adopting a socialized health care system is a disaster of monumental proportions.
Do you know who’s even more qualified than Clark? Dick Cheney. But how many of you would vote for him if he ran for President?
Since 1992, every DLC candidate has won the election.
A non-DLC Democrat hasn’t won since 1976.
Chew on that, Dean, Kerry, and Gephardt fans.
I just dropped in to comment on the same poll. Clark has had a rather shaky start but that poll is great news for him. Despite just having entered the race he is within a few points of Bush. At this point that’s amazing considering that there are probably many people who still haven’t heard of Clark.
The poll has some pretty bad news for Bush. In the question about re-election Bush it’s 44% yes and 50% no. His job approval ratings are at a shaky 51%. His iraq and economy numbers have also gone down with only 46% approval for the first and 57% disapproval for the second.
Not only is Bush beatable, I am begining to think it’s more likely than not that he will be beaten.
Hard to say, there is so much that can change between now and election time. I know that’s cliche, but there is just so much on the horizon then there has been for past elections. Elections are likely to take place in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2004. If they go well, that could give Bush a big plus on foreign policy. Obviously, the surprise finding of WMD or Osama would give him a boost.
The economy is also a big unknown. If it’s booming by spring 2004 and unemployment is swiftly dropping, he’s in great shape. If it’s the same or worse it probably hurts him. In most previous elections, we already knew the score on the economy. In 1995, we knew Clinton could run on a good economy in 1996, ditto for Reagan in 1984. Likewise, we knew it was crud and likely to stay that way for Carter and Bush I. This economy is hard to figure, so things could change in a big way in mid-2004.
Even within the Democratic field, there is so much unknown. There are seven candidates that have at least some chance to win the nomination. I don’t remember ever seeing more than three with a shot at it. That was in 1988 when Gore, Gephardt, and Dukakis were running pretty close for awhile.
If this article is true, I’m much less pleased by Clark. It’s an Op-Ed, but I can see it… Anyone?
Clark has impressive credentials. But this is an embarassment, and will hurt him:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37215-2003Sep19.html
Personally, I think it’s crap. Hillary has said so many times that she will complete her full six year term as Senator that I don’t think she could decide to run in 2004 at this point. When Bill Clinton made a statement leaving the door open to the possibility, Hillary put the kibosh on that and Bill had to come out and reiterate Hillary’s position the next day.
I think all this talk about Hillary is just a red herring to paint Clark as a minion doing the work for the Clintons. I’m also not too impressed with an opinion piece that ends with an ad hominem.
As for the bit about Clinton “firing” Clark, that is a bit of a over simplification.
Maybe, although Howard Dean certainly has overcome his early gaffes. But Clark does need to be more careful when chatting up reporters on a plane. It will be interesting to see how Clark does in Thursday’s Democratic debate. I wonder if he made a mistake accepting the invitation to the debate so soon after he announced.
Keep in mind that Clinton could almost never tell anyone to their face that he had fired them for a good reason. He always said it wasn’t his call, or he really wanted to keep them.
That being said, I don’t think the circumstances of Clark’s firing are going to be a campaign issue. What is going to be a campaign issue is his decisions and conduct as a general.
What I want to know is if he’s still the hawk that he was in 1998. The way he’s talked, it sounds like he went all dovish lately. A ploy to win the nomination?
The right’s attack on Clark, beyond exploiting the Iraq flip-flop, will probably follow the lines drawn here by Mark Steyn:
A new CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll has been released showing Bush slipping and Clark gaining.
CNN – Poll: Bush down, Clark up
Well, just to be explicitly clear, rsa it shows head-to-head, Clark presently beating Bush, although still within the margin of error of the sample.
Interesting comments in the current AvWeek (subscribers only at the web site, sorry - but click here if you like):
I’d be able to take this more seriously if they’d spelled his name right, if any of the derogatory remarks had names next to them, or if they didn’t seem like petty sniping. Food for thought, anyway.
**During the Kosovo air campaign, Clarke was criticized by airpower advocates for focusing on the tank-plinking count while ignoring strategic targets elsewhere that would have crippled Yugoslav war-making capabilities. **
Interesting. I can’t find the cite right now, but I read recently that Clark repeatedly asked the Pentagon for additional targets but getting anything was like pulling teeth. In any case, I see attacks on Clark like this all the time while it is rarely mentioned that his hands were effectively tied by NATO, the Pentagon, and the White House.
Most Americans can barely remember that war, so I think that these types of attacks will be pretty ineffective.
Actually, it’s because most Americans can barely remember Kosovo that the Republican smear campaign stands a pretty good chance of being effective. All they have to do is tell enough lies to make Clark’s competence as a commander an issue, and the damage will have been done.
Could Clark turn around the cold relations betweent he democratic party and America’s military which seems to have been in place since Vietnam? Certainly there is no rational reason for antipathy between the two, but reason has little to do with it. It would appear that many soldiers belive that Lefties spit on every soldier they see. Will his statements of wanting to cut the militry budget kill his chances with our soldiers even though he is well respected as a military commander?
I would think so, given Bush-in-the-flying-suit.
Actually I think that the thing that will help lefties the most with soldiers is Bush. The whole making reservists stay for an extra year will really hurt him.