The fury of the Democratic convert

"Somebody once told me in business that when you're going to negotiate a business deal, you stake out [Clark slams the table] your position and stand on it! Don't go in there and ask what they want. Say, `Here's what I want!' [slams table again].

"You've got a Republican Party under Gingrich and Tom DeLay that says, `Here's what I want' [slams table again]. "Then you've got the Democrats over here saying, `Yeah, ah, yeah, we could, some of what you say makes pretty good sense.

"The result is the American people don't see the full spectrum. Before the 2002 election there were a lot of Democratic politicians apparently who said, `I don't have the information. I can't battle with the president on the information. He's got the intelligence. What if there is a smoking gun in there? I can't fight the president in my congressional district.'

"What we've got to do is stake [slams table again] out our position. For instance on tax reform, stop [slam] saying [slam] you agree with simplification of the tax code. . . . We stand [slam] for progressive taxation. We're proud of it. If you make more, you should pay more, period!"

Even as he put an exclamation point on his rising crescendo Wednesday before the Trotter Group of African-American columnists, Clark's words raised an ironic question. He has risen in the polls to emerge as the top challenger to Howard Dean in the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary.

Dean has positioned himself as the unDemocrat Democrat, vaulting over the establishment on his stunning Internet fund-raising. But no one knows whether supporters will get off e-mail and eBay long enough to vote or whether any of that excites traditional core Democrats.

Clark's stock has risen even though he is even more of an unDemocrat Democrat. He voted for Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. As recently as May 2001, he praised the "great team" of Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, and Paul O'Neill at a Republican fund-raiser in Arkansas.

O'Neill, then the Treasury secretary, was later booted out of the administration. He has since written a scathing review of the Bush White House. Clark, according to a Newsweek profile last year, said, "I would have been a Republican" had he been invited to the White House team after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Clark, the former NATO commander, said he was only joking (the Republicans who heard the remark said he was not). But like O'Neill, he had a furious conversion. Clark now slams Bush as the first president in his lifetime who has manipulated America into war. Clark is now staking his position that he respects the very social programs -- education, health care, minimum wage, affirmative action -- that Reagan and the Bush family have spent much of the last two decades trying to ignore or dismantle.

His self-confidence that a furious converted Democrat can do better than complacent career Democrats was evident when he mentioned Senator John Kerry. Kerry wants to be seen as the Democratic candidate who is strong on defense. Kerry's campaign this week attacked Clark again for his Republican past.

Clark said to the columnists: "I like John Kerry. If John Kerry wins and he becomes president, I'll be happy. The problem is, and the reason I'm in this race, is because I don't think John Kerry's going to win. He just hasn't taken off. He's not connecting. My wife said early on: `I like that man. He's a senator. He talks well. He's really smart. Why do they keep coming to you? Why don't they go to John Kerry?' "

Clark, during the course of the interview, of course answered the question. He rattled off his military record, his foreign negotiations, and his sensitivity to domestic issues. He said: "If you want a doctor, hire a doctor. If you want a laywer, get a lawyer. If you want a leader, get somebody who's proven leadership."

The curiosity of Clark is that so far, he is catching up to Dean on the gamble that pure leadership is the trump card to the nomination. The attempts by the other candidates to say, "If you want a Democrat, hire a Democrat," have fallen into the wastebasket of spin.

That Clark is even competitive for the Democratic nomination not even two years removed from calling the Bush administration a "great team" is a scathing indictment of a party that still has not staked out enough of a position to persuade Americans that the invasion of Iraq was wrong, let alone to oust Bush from office in November.

"We've got to get a story out to the American people that they can understand," Clark said. For him, that statement is a double-edged sword. The better he does in the primaries, the more core Democrats will want to know his own story -- whether he is a true convert or a Democrat of convenience.

Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com.