Unlike past generals, Clark will have to fight
WASHINGTON -- Almost from the moment retired General Wesley K. Clark announced for the presidency, news organizations began showing pictures of past generals who became president, arrayed like a new set of collectibles from the Franklin Mint: Washington, Jackson, Harrison, Grant, Eisenhower, and more. But parallels between Clark's run and those of past generals are nothing but trivia. With a few exceptions, generals were courted by party bosses to front their tickets the way producers try to sign up movie stars to rescue failing Broadway musicals. The generals were handed their nominations with little or no effort on their parts.
Clark is the first general to suit up for a presidential run since the nominating process became democratic in 1972. That means he's going to have to do something few previous general-politicians have had to do: fight.
Despite a medium-long list of congressional endorsements and encouragement from the stepdaddy of most Democratic contenders, Bill Clinton, Clark is running an insurgency campaign. That means he's going to have to take on not only George W. Bush, but the whole political establishment, running as a maverick against all the professional politicians.
Clark seems game for this kind of campaign, and his supporters are drawn to the idea of a military man exposing the fallacies of armchair warriors all along the political spectrum. But every time he goes on the attack, like all insurgents from John McCain to Howard Dean, he'll be surrendering the prime advantage of past generals who ran for office: the sense that they floated high above the fray, embodying the national interest in the same way they embodied national defense.
Ulysses S. Grant, of course, rode his fame as the man who beat Robert E. Lee to a gift-wrapped nomination to the presidency, and then squandered it with a scandal-ridden administration. When the Republicans chose Grant as their candidate, in 1868, many feared that he would turn it down, though shrewder observers noticed that he had already tiptoed into the political arena by involving himself in the Andrew Johnson impeachment drama earlier in the year.
When handed the piece of paper offering him the nomination, Grant scribbled a quick thank-you note. The final line, "Let there be peace," became the only quote from the candidate until November. Adhering to the 19th-century tradition, Grant didn't campaign. Dwight Eisenhower, the most recent general to reach the presidency and an oft-cited model for Clark, was almost as much of a national hero as Grant. Both parties courted him. A recently uncovered diary entry indicates that after World War II, President Truman considered Eisenhower so formidable that he was willing to run as vice president if Eisenhower would accept the Democratic nomination in 1948.
As it turned out, Eisenhower waited until 1952 to announce his intentions, and he gave the Republicans a month before their convention to decide whether to nominate him.
Having lost five straight elections, they bypassed their longtime Senate leader and conscience of the party, Robert Taft, to have the general take them to the White House.
The closest thing to a repeat of Eisenhower's run was the desire of some Republicans to draft Colin L. Powell in 1996, a move that would have required having other candidates fall by the wayside and line up behind the Gulf War chief.
Clark isn't the subject of a draft, and no other candidates are dropping by the wayside. He didn't win the Civil War or World War II or even the Gulf War. He won Kosovo, an interesting war and possibly a blueprint for today's overseas police actions, but one that engendered no special affection on the homefront.
Now, there may be even less affection for Clark in the military, where his relationships with fellow commanders seemed to range from cordial to chilly and where he ran afoul of Clinton's second-term defense secretary, William S. Cohen.
This is not to say that Clark is a cipher, only that he shares almost nothing in common with past generals who went to the White House. His bureaucratic battles in the Pentagon, and his arm-twisting of allies involved in the Kosovo campaign, may better prepare him for presidential politics than leading a charge at Vicksburg. And his willingness to mingle with voters in the living rooms of Iowa and New Hampshire reveals he has no illusions about his status.
This is not a surprise to the hardy band of supporters who backed Clark during his long period of deciding to run. But so much of what gives Clark his aura of formidability is the presumption that so many others are yearning for a military hero, a man above politics, to lead them.
Will they love Wes Clark when they see their military man hustling for votes just like another politician?
