First, I want to see a ticket with Dean and Clark on it (I happen to have a bias in that order), and I'm sure I'm not alone on this wish for the strongest possible ticket. We've went through a couple of back-n-forths on the courtship in September, to the distancing in December already. Just when you think this long-running "soap opera" is done, we get another episode. Here's a couple of more from
Thursday and
Friday:
Clark was overheard telling Garrett Scholes, a commercial photographer from Kittery, Maine, not only that Dean had indeed asked him to be vice president but also that he hadn't "ruled it out."
Clark put more distance between himself and a Dean ticket by saying, "I don't want to be Howard Dean's Dick Cheney. We've already tried that model of government, and it doesn't work. That's what's misled America thus far."
The media will keep picking at this, so I would imagine that the speculation is only going to get more intense (though we idealists can dream otherwise)... but anyway, it's interesting how Clark's private conversations differ from the public ones his staffers play up, which has got to drive Clark's spokespersons a bit crazy.