WHEN WESLEY CLARK formally bows out of the race later today, it's won't be because, as his son has recently charged, the media did him in. It will be because the man, by some accounts a decent fellow who served his country well, was not ready for prime time.
In truth, journalists were never as hard on Clark as they could have been. Clark's biggest misstep--his conspiracy theory on Iraq--is relatively famous. Less so are his smaller gaffes, which littered the campaign trail and made it clear to anyone watching that he had virtually no grasp on domestic American political issues.
My favorite Clark moment came one afternoon last month at the University of New Hampshire. The general gave a coherent and interesting talk about American involvement in Iraq. Then, during the Q&A session, one student asked him, "What would you do to protect us from corporate special interests?"
Without pausing even for a moment, Clark replied, "Well I'm the right person to do that job because I know about corporations. I've been on lots of boards of directors."
It was the perfect essence of Clark: self-assured, self-referential, self-parody.
ON THE ROAD, Clark had other moments of confusion (despite the fact that he often spoke with notes). After calling for total and unlimited access to abortion (he told the Manchester Union Leader that he didn't think "the law should get involved in abortion" at all), he clarified his remarks, telling reporters, "I support the established law, Roe v. Wade and
Casey." A sensible enough retreat, except that as reporters pressed him, it became clear that Clark had no idea what the decisions from Roe v. Wade and Casey said.
While Clark favored rote repetition with topics he didn't understand, he had a tendency to freelance when he was comfortable with the subject. One night in New Hampshire, he told an audience, "We're going to go to the Saudis and the Pakistanis and we're going to end the hatred, the invective, the funding, the madrassas, and help change those regimes in the Middle East."
THE ONLY SUBJECT on which Clark demonstrated complete mastery was his own résumé. It was his touchstone. Never content to let his accomplishments speak for themselves, Clark spoke for them. At every opportunity.
Asked by the Washington Post why so many of his peers in the Army didn't like him, Clark replied:
How do you think I could have succeeded in the military if everybody didn't like me? It's impossible. Do you realize I was the first person promoted to full colonel in my entire year group of 2,000 officers? I was the only one selected. Do you realize that? . . . Do you realize I was the only one of my West Point class picked to command a brigade when I was picked? . . . I was the first person picked for brigadier general. You have to balance this out. . . . A lot of people love me.
When the same question came up with the New Yorker he was ever-so-slightly more modest:
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