Wesley Clark: Enough Already!

Hell, Wesley Clark — on the worst day of his life — would make more sense than W anytime. W was a real hit at the UN. And, he showed a lot of class in walking out on Jacques Chirac. The French leader sat and listened to W babble, but W walked and took Condi and Colin with him. W's chances of gaining UN support in Iraq? Slim and none and Slim went home. We have a fool in the White House. God save us. If this be (fair & balanced) blasphemy, make the most of it.

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Is General Clark's Political Inexperience a Handicap in the Campaign?
by E.J. Dionne

[T]he truth is that Americans are opportunistic, fickle and capricious on the subject of experience in politics -- which also means that we are practical and sensible. There are times when the voters are looking for a plumber, mechanic or doctor. The idea is to hire someone with a long track record who can fix problems and keep an eye on things. There are other moments when voters yearn for a preacher, an actor, a general -- even a wrestler -- who might lift their spirits by offering vision, or just by being different.

Retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, who announced his presidential candidacy last week, hopes this will be one of those moments. If elective office is the only relevant "experience" for the White House, Clark is a sure loser. As Ron Fournier of the Associated Press pointed out, Clark never even ran for student council. But for many Americans, that might be one of his strongest qualifications....

In truth, experience has always been a slippery concept in American politics. For one thing, experience is no substitute for ability. When Republican Party bosses picked Sen. Warren G. Harding of Ohio as their presidential nominee on the 10th ballot in 1920, they were nominating an amiable cipher. "Harding had no qualification for being president except that he looked like one," wrote historian William E. Leuchtenburg, even though Harding had held several public offices. Democrat William McAdoo memorably said that Harding's speeches "leave the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea; sometimes these meandering words would actually capture a straggling thought and bear it triumphantly, a prisoner in their midst, until it died of servitude and overwork."

But this was Harding's greatest asset. Americans had just had plenty of ideas and experience from Woodrow Wilson, including World War I and its disappointing aftermath. Harding gave Americans little to be against, promised "normalcy," and that was enough to win him a landslide.

In 1960, Richard M. Nixon based much of his campaign against John F. Kennedy on the experience issue. Both men had been elected to Congress in the same year, but Nixon was an exceptionally high-profile vice president and was seen as having lots of know-how in foreign policy. Kennedy had not made much of a mark on the Senate.

Nonetheless, Kennedy was a Democrat in what was still a New Deal country. He offered verve and drive and vision galore, even if the vision was a bit gauzy. Nixon tried to get past the party labels and glitz by being safe, sound -- and, well, experienced. "Because Experience Counts" became one of his main slogans. The 1960 result was one of the closest in U.S. history -- a virtual tie between experience and its competitor.

The big difference between 1960 and now is that the country has gone through one merciless anti-Washington campaign after another. Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and now Howard Dean -- all, in one way or another, tried to turn Washington experience into a form of leprosy.

It's enough to make a grown member of Congress cry -- and protest.

Here's Rep. Richard A. Gephardt, the Democratic presidential candidate, who was first elected to Congress in 1976: "I'm not going to say what's fashionable in our politics -- that I'm a Washington outsider, that I couldn't find the nation's capital on a map, that I have no experience in the highest levels of government," said the former House Democratic leader in announcing his presidential candidacy. "I do, and I think experience matters. It's what our nation needs right now."

Yet what, exactly, constitutes "experience"? You can think of certain candidates -- among them Gephardt, Joseph Lieberman, John Kerry, Bob Graham, John Edwards, Howard Dean, Carol Mosley Braun and Dennis Kucinich -- who say elective office is an asset. That would seem to leave out a general like Clark. Generals are used to having people follow orders, which could make matters dicey with, say, Congress and the voters. Clark has no professional experience with domestic issues, and acknowledged to reporters on Thursday that he had few specific policy ideas to offer at the moment. More experience might have prevented his embarrassing flip-flop last week -- first he said he probably would have voted for the congressional resolution authorizing President Bush to go to war in Iraq, then he reversed himself the next day.

Yet if the presidency is in part about command, who better than a former general? George Washington, Andrew Jackson and Dwight D. Eisenhower were no slouches. How many senators have ever run things? In the wake of 9/11, which "experience" is more relevant -- Clark's in foreign policy and war, Howard Dean's as a chief executive, albeit of a small state, or the extensive legislative experience of most of the rest of the field? (Senator Graham, former governor of Florida, can claim both executive and legislative experience, but it hasn't helped him in the polls so far.)

The fact that "experience" is itself a mushy concept becomes even clearer if you consider this question: Was George W. Bush's six years' experience as a governor sufficient to prepare him for the presidency? Ask any dozen people and I bet you an old Nixon button that their answers break down almost entirely along party lines -- proving that experience can have little to do with our view of "experience."

That we are terribly ambivalent about experience is brought home by our vacillation between the Cincinnatus and Richard J. Daley models of leadership. Our hearts regularly go to the proud and independent person who has never been soiled by politics or compromise and comes to our rescue out of nowhere. This sort of character (Jesse Ventura played him on TV) appeals to our mistrust of politics and our desire to escape it.

Copyright © 2003 Washington Post