Wesley Clark, the retired general whose campaign for president was pretty much created by television, should have been the star of last Sunday morning's television talk shows. Instead, he was missing in action.

What happened? Was there a conspiracy to shut up the newest Democratic presidential contender? No, Clark was not being censored by the networks. Rather, he was busy having his head examined by his campaign aides. They were trying to figure out how to remove their candidate's foot from his mouth.

Clark, CNN's "talking general" during the months when the United States was debating whether to attack Iraq, made his name as a thoughtful critic of the president's rush to war. At a time when just about everyone else on television was cheerleading for the Republican administration's "diplomacy-be-damned" approach to international affairs, Clark asked enough of the right questions that a movement developed to draft him into an already crowded Democratic contest.

Clark's attempts to offer a coherent explanation of his position on the process that led the United States into the Iraq war were so convoluted and contradictory that he left even his supporters dizzy and disturbed. One day after he entered the race last Wednesday as the "anti-war warrior" - the general who fully understood the folly of President Bush's war - Clark was sounding every bit as clueless as most of the Democratic contenders he wants to displace.

Asked whether he would have voted for the October 2002 congressional resolution that authorized Bush to use military force against Iraq, Clark said, "At the time, I probably would have voted for it ... ." A day later the general said he "would never have voted for this war," but allowed as how he would have voted for the resolution because it provided Bush with "leverage to get a diplomatic solution."

Clark's statements created a firestorm because there are very few Democrats who seriously believe Bush was looking for "leverage" when he pushed that resolution through Congress.

The majority of Democrats in Congress voted against the resolution because they recognized it for what it was: a blank check for a facts-be-damned administration that was determined to start a war. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, a critic of the rush to war, used the votes of U.S. Rep. Richard Gephardt and Sens. John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and John Edwards to dismiss those more prominent contenders as insufficiently anti-Bush. Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chairman Dennis Kucinich and former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Bob Graham, both of whom voted against the use-of-force resolution, got into the race at least in part because they recognized that grass-roots Democrats were furious with Gephardt, Kerry, Lieberman and Edwards.

The campaign to draft Clark into the race was grounded on the theory that an anti-war general would be an even more effective challenger to Bush than an anti-war representative, senator or former governor. But Clark now looks like a candidate whose understanding of the issues that were - and are - at stake is not a whole lot more impressive than that of Kerry, Gephardt or Edwards.

Clark's new to the race. He might still be able to cure this case of foot-in-mouth disease. (A good performance in today's debate would help.) But one thing is certain: He cannot waffle on this issue and expect to be nominated - let alone elected.

Copyright 2003 The Capital Times

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