An open letter to all on Wesley Clark:
Wesley Clark: Radical Centrist Progressive
"Imagine a former General who says that the minimum wage should be $10/hour, if you're willing to take adult education courses. Imagine a former General who points the finger at oil, and says that in ten years, we just won't use any. Imagine a former General who calls for life sentences for corporate
criminals. Imagine a former General who just says flat-out that the US government will import drugs from Canada until the drug companies lower their prices to reasonable levels. Imagine a former General who pledges to dedicate government resources to eliminating cancer and AIDS in ten years. Imagine a former General who comes out and says that the prison population is our responsibility, not something that will just go away if we ignore it. Imagine a General who calls for doctors for everyone and medical malpractice
reform by calling upon doctors and lawyers to act honorably. Imagine a former General who calls for a mandatory draft again, with military service,
national service, and education part of the New American Patriotism. Imagine a former General who says that he will eliminate terrorism and solve the
crisis in the Middle East, that he will successfully finish the war we are in without losing who we are in the process. Imagine a former General that truly asks Americans to make hard choices about what country they want to have, and promises them the country they'll get if they make the right ones. Imagine that man, and that's the Clark who can make this a contest again. It's also the Clark who, primary victor or not, will redefine the party and this country."
- http://www.theclarksphere.com/
I thought that would be a good introduction to Clark. What we have with Clark is a golden opportunity to redefine ourselves not only as a party, but as a nation. Let me preface my remarks by suggesting that reading about any candidate, whether it be my thoughts or those in the general press, don't even begin to do justice to Clark's abilities nor his formidable presence. Before you give allegiance to Dean, please watch Clark whenever you have an opportunity. A good place to begin is his campaign website (http://www.clark04.com/), which has video footage as well as information concerning upcoming media appearances on C-Span or elsewhere.
In his closing remarks at a town hall meeting yesterday in New Hampshire, Clark reflected briefly on what we are up against in next year's election.
We are up against a President with unprecedented machinery who will exploit the flag, patriotism and national security in the most ruthless of means. I
am convinced that only Clark has what it takes to stop him.
Clark is not the product of the political world. He has never sought political office, never aspired to be President. Rather, he one of America's finest. As a progressive leftist, I say that without hesitation. While not a politician, Clark has dedicated his life to public service. To
say the least, his military record is breathtaking. I have included links to articles of interest at the end.
One of the understandable fears of Clark is that he's nothing but a military guy. But look again. He's no ordinary General, the fact of which explains certain hostilities he faced his whole career in the military. It only takes listening to him for 5 minutes discussing the complexities of trade, the promise of nanotechnology, our reliance on oil, our fiscal woes, or the future of the great plains to realize that Clark really was a Rhodes Scholar for a reason, not to mention his degree in economics. The first thing that shocked me was his vision for the nation, not only domestically but
globally. He has a profound sense of where America stands today and where we should be headed tomorrow. In fact, I see the same depth of knowledge in him that I saw in Clinton.
Moreover, only Clark has the ability to rise above the bitter partisan nastiness that has consumed the nation. He is a true outsider, with a deep
and positive vision for the nation and the world. His scholarly background appeals to the intellectuals; his blue-collar background and
astounding military record appeals to independents and wavering Republicans; his solid Democratic values and policies appeal to the rank and file
Democrats, and so on. This may all sound naive, but call me an idealist. I truly believe he can, at the very least, temper the vitriol that has
infested our body politic. Make no bones about it, the Republicans will come at him with full force and all the tricks in the book. Unlike the other candidates, however, I think they will ring hollow if used against Clark. Witness Clark on the campaign trail now. He's taking the flag back
not just for the Democratic Party, but for all dissenters and the rest of America. No candidate can do that more convincingly than Clark.
One of the biggest mistakes the Republicans made was choosing Bush over McCain. Can you imagine what we'd actually be up against if McCain became
President? Forget 2004...and for that matter forget 2008. McCain would have solidified the Republican hold on government for 10 years at the very least. Democrats will be making the same mistake if we fail to nominate Clark.
Thus far, each of his policy proposals have fallen squarely in line with solid Democratic values. From his recently released proposal to invest $70
billion in early childhood education, his plan to fight AIDS, his jobs and manufacturing proposals, to the public service proposals, each can be
couched in the Radical Centrist Progressive philosophy. It's a winning agenda. And most importantly, it's a practical agenda. I doubt any
reasonable Democrat would object to any of his proposals. My sense, however, is that there are a lot of Democrats out there who are willfully allowing others to misrepresent Clark, or who simply haven't watched Clark. Indeed, as Elizabeth Drew wrote in the New York Review of Books, the greatest challenge facing Clark seems the wider and wider circulation of unexamined charges by some people who have opposed him in the past. Speaking of which, there are two articles in recent weeks that have attempted to savage Clark, one in The Nation, and the other in the New Yorker. There were several responses to those articles, three of which deserve mention here.
In response to Matt Taibbi's cover story on Clark in the Nation:
http://nuisance.blogspot.com/2003_11_01_nuisance_archive.html#107007468661202923
The New Yorker article by Peter Boyer deserved another pointed response. You can found those here:
http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2003/11/yglesias-m-11-14.html
and here:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2091194/
Remember folks, a thin majority still believe Mr. Bush is doing a good job as president, and a larger majority likes him personally. And as Democratic
pollster Mark Mellman wrote yesterday, emotions are communicated much more readily and much more clearly than policy positions. Emotions create images from which it is hard to escape. If Democrats offer only anger as Dean does, we will excite ourselves but swing voters won't buy in. Dean will be unable to shake the image he has created over the last year...and his inability to
do so will fail to pick-up the independents and wavering Republicans we need to win the election. The Republicans are in the midst of certain ascendancy in U.S. politics. Let us not gamble with this election by nominating Dean.
This is another piece you may find useful. I disagree with some of the following points, particularly his assertion that Clark hasn't thought through domestic policy. Listening to him on the stump has proven just the opposite
to me. Indeed, his experiences in the military gave him first-hand knowledge of domestic issues and certainly made him far more committed to
quality social policy. Anyhow, give this a read:
*********
How I became a Clark supporter
By Mark A.R. Kleiman
http://www.ospolitics.org/usa/archives/2003/11/26/how_i_beca.php
My support for Clark has not come naturally. I'm a partisan and liberal Democrat, no great lover of old Clinton staffers and smug New Democrats. I'm
prone to value experience in democratic politics over the hierarchical values of military service. And when I heard that Clark had voted for
Reagan, praised Bush, spoken at a Lincoln Day dinner, and said that he'd have been a Republican had Karl Rove returned his calls (no, I don't believe that he was joking -- though he may have been trying for sarcasm), I judged him an amoral opportunist and borderline con artist. In angry e-mails to a pro-Clark friend, I called the general an "ambipartisan" and summarized the Lincoln Day revelation as "Game Over."
But I figured I owed the largely unknown candidate a chance. Being a professor, I decided to read his book, Winning Modern Wars. After finishing it, I figured out what Clark is about, and why his candidacy is both baffling and compelling.
Clark clearly wrote the book himself. It's not the slick and scripted work of a ghostwriter. Put less politely, it contains errors ("populous" for
"populace," "principle" for "principal"), and repeats itself in spots. It forgives Rumsfeld on a couple of points when a typical candidate would never make such concessions. It goes into more military detail than a non-expert like me finds consistently engaging or even comprehensible. The writing style is personal: mostly clear, usually forceful, often quirky, rooted in facts and details, sometimes bracing, occasionally bombastic. The book won't win any prizes, and doesn't have to. It's the work of a candidate, not a professional writer.
As such, here's what it says.
1. Clark is an intensely patriotic internationalist.
Scan that again: It's rare these days, and I welcome it fervently. Clark isn't indifferent or hostile to American power: He wants the U.S. to be the most powerful country in the world in a hundred years, thinks it will be good for the world if that happens, and is here to tell us how to do that.
His answer is that of FDR, Truman, and Kennedy. The U.S. triumphs when it supports institutions that embody our values -- universally attractive, if
pursued seriously and humbly -- and further our interests -- to the extent that they're compatible with those of most of the world's citizens. (If you
think that's a null category, you won't like Clark. Nader's your man -- or, contrariwise, Bush.) This means not always getting what we want, as the
price of reshaping the world in ways we'll by and large welcome. Clark's take on recent talk of American "empire" is unusual in its focus on the
soldiers. He points out, briefly and devastatingly, that we'll never have an empire, and shouldn't aspire to one, when our army is made up not of
adventure-seekers and fortune-hunters but of "family men and women" (note that), "fierce, determined, religious, patriotic," who want to do their jobs and go home -- quickly.
It's a vision that Clark has clearly thought about constantly for decades and cares about deeply. And it's a perfect riposte to both Dean (whose
foreign policy mixes ignorance, isolationism, and a smug moralism approaching Bush's) and the unilateralist thugs of our current administration. Remember what Solzhenitsyn called Russian fascist
Zhirinovsky: "an obscene caricature of a Russian patriot." But that had bite because he was Solzhenitsyn: the patriot without the caricature. That's Clark.
2. Clark is essentially a pre-Sixties Democrat
Clark's main position on the culture wars is to find them (a) baffling and pointless and (b) a right-wing conspiracy to distract middle-class white guys from their declining living standards and an economic policy that gives everything to the wealthy. His take on Reagan Democrats/Angry White
Males/NASCAR Dads (pick one) is essentially: "I understand why you feel neglected, scorned, and generally ticked off. The last thirty years have
screwed you economically and demeaned you culturally. But dunderheaded jingoism will just guarantee exactly the bad jobs and eroded national pride you fear most. Be smart: Make a few sacrifices now to build peace and national pride in the future." The message is pitch-perfect: like something Clinton would say, except sincere.
3. Clark believes in fighting the war on terrorism -- hard, continually, smart, and to win. And he makes an excellent case that Bush's policies are
guaranteed to fail at this.
Clark points out that we need homeland security -- but Bush policies have meant laying off cops and firefighters. We need to pursue terrorist networks
through international institutions and alliances -- but administration arrogance has guaranteed that we lack influence in any country that we're not actually invading. We need peacekeepers and spies and development experts -- but the Rumsfeld policy in Iraq and elsewhere is to load all burdens on the Army, which can't take them.
Clark accuses the administration of going after states because those are the nails it sees -- given that armies that invade states in pitched battles are the only hammers it knows how to use. Clark doesn't criticize this primarily because it's immoral (though he thinks it hurts immeasurably our image abroad) but because it will get a lot of us killed, while poisoning the good will that should be the country's strongest weapon in the war against terrorist violence and the transnational networks that practice it.
On all these points, Clark seems clearly right. Just as important, this is a message that will sell where pacifism, conspiracy-mongering, or pretending
al-Qaeda doesn't exist will not.
4. Clark clearly casts himself as the person making policy, not one of the people debating it.
When it comes to foreign policy, Clark is confident -- to the point, as universally noted, of arrogance. I say better this than Dubya or Dean,
neither of whom combines his own arrogance with a tendency to know what he's talking about.
After reading the depth and intensity with which Clark has thought about foreign strategy, I realize why his position on the Iraq resolution looks like a waffle but isn't. For the last decade or more, he's clearly been thinking, "Where and how would I fight if I were in charge?" not "Which position would I take if someone asked my opinion?" So he doesn't care what resolution Congress should have passed (and, if he could be more honest than he can be, would probably point out that Congressional resolutions have never prevented a modern president from starting a war). He probably thinks that Congress should give presidents lots of discretion and that presidents should know how the hell to use it. And given that discretion, he wouldn't have fought in Iraq because there was no immediate threat.
This would be a dangerous outlook in a senator -- but is not a bad one in a president. And it explains all the waffles. I'm still waiting for Kerry to explain his.
5. Clark doesn't think the personal is political.
This is a good thing, in fact, an excellent thing. The book contains almost nothing about the inner demons that I'm sure Clark has. I can't imagine him
answering a question about his underwear (or needing to). His summary of "American virtues" is "tolerance, freedom, and fairness" -- about as good a slogan for the Democratic Party as I can think of. His book exudes a welcome politics of "live and let live" rather than "endorse my pain." This is the kind of liberalism that could actually be popular.
Dubya is planning to make gay marriage a wedge issue in the campaign. If Clark is the candidate, "bring it on." I can already imagine what Clark
would say about gays in the military: "What soldiers do in their personal lives is not my concern. And we should stop the disgraceful practice of persecuting people to unearth their private relationships. If a soldier
impedes combat readiness by trying to pick up a man in his unit in a war zone, I'll sign his dishonorable discharge myself -- and smile as I do it."
6. Remember that the Army is Biosphere II: a piece of Sweden stuck inside a country that's becoming Brazil.
If Clark seems to lack opinions on domestic policy, it's because he's spent his life in a place that's seceded from domestic policy. In his recent
health care speech, he said he was shocked to find out that ordinary people weren't required to get preventive checkups every year. Riff on this: He
also hasn't had to think very much about people who lacked health insurance, couldn't afford college, or struggled to pay rent. The Army has people with
low incomes, but ensures basic living standards and adequate opportunities for all. Clark's book convincingly articulates a case for making the rest of the country like that. Clark's long-running blindness to what Reaganism wrought is a flaw -- a big one. But now that he's emerged into the Brave New World (new to him), I think he gets it.
It's been said that Clark wants America to be strong at home so it can be strong abroad, not the other way around. It's true, and a bit jarring. But
given Clark's clear conviction that Republican policies are undermining our economic security and the culture of opportunity that makes us so attractive abroad, this actually works better than I initially thought it could. (Look for Clark to do very well among Latinos, and immigrants generally -- or kids of immigrants, like me. He understands the American Dream, and how Republicans are running it off the rails.)
There's a reason Rove didn't return his calls.
Bottom line: Clark is a throwback, a Rip Van Winkle, a pluralistic, optimistic, Greatest Generation-style politician lost, like Howard the Duck, in a world he never made. He's further outside the mainstream political culture than can possibly be imagined. This is what makes him so striking, so hard to parse, and so clearly the best candidate.
Sabl teaches political philosophy in the Department of Policy Studies at
UCLA.
*
****
For further reading:
This guy has a lot of good stuff on Clark:
http://nuisance.blogspot.com/
I was thinking about writing about Dean here, but you can read my thoughts
on Dean here instead:
http://jmiller.dailykos.com/story/2003/11/7/204532/613
and here:
http://jmiller.dailykos.com/story/2003/11/6/19550/2636
As a responsible citizen who wants to remove Bush from office, you have responsibility to carefully deliberate over which candidate you will
eventually endorse. I have little doubt that, given a little time and energy, Clark will be that candidate. There is much to say about Clark, but
I'll let the professionals carry on from here. There are many great pieces on Clark. A few of them follow:
Elizabeth Drew in the New York Review of Books:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16795
Clark's Stance on Gays:
http://www.planetout.com/pno/news/article.html?date=2003/11/12/3
Dem. Underground:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/03/11/18_clark.html
Of course, Clark's site - On the Issues:
http://clark04.com/issues/