Jewish World Review Jan. 21, 2004/ 27 Teves, 5763
Mark Steyn
Undoing the party herd
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |
Where are we going to find the
Undean? That was the cry of
Democratic power brokers as Howard
Dean rose unstoppably through last
year and the wise old birds fretted that
he was unelectable. Judging from the
polls, New Hampshire Democrats seem
to have found their Undean. It's Wesley
Clark.
So now the Dem bigshots can all
start looking for the Unclark.
If they aren't already, they ought to
be. Mr. Dean might be bad for the
health of the party, but that's no
reason to go from bad to Wes. If the
rap against Mr. Dean is that he's
gaffe-prone, shoots from the hip, says
loopy stuff that goes tenfold for Mr.
Clark.
Let me say, by the way, in a spirit of
bipartisanship, that I don't believe
Howard Dean is nuts. From my perch in
New Hampshire, I watched him across
the river governing Vermont for a
decade. Although he was certainly
mean and arrogant, the chief
characteristic of his political persona
was blandness.
But this is no time for a Democratic
candidate who feels your pain.
Democratic activists want someone who
feels their anger, and Mad How the mad
cow was pretty much invented by the
somnolent Gov. Dean to fit that bill.
So I would say Howard Dean is a
sane man pretending to be crazy.
Whereas Mr. Clark gives every
indication of a crazy man pretending to
be sane.
Now I'm not talking about things like
this screwy response to a question
from MSNBC's Chris Matthews. The
retired general had indicated he wished
Osama bin Laden to be tried at The
Hague and sentenced to life in prison.
"But," asked Mr. Matthews, "doesn't life
in Holland beat life in a cave?"
"Not in a Dutch prison, Chris," said
Mr. Clark. "They're under water, they're
damp, they're cold. They're really
miserable."
Dutch prisons are under water?
Good thing Mr. Clark's not as dumb as
George W. Bush or Dan Quayle, eh?
Nor am I talking about his flip-flops
on Iraq. That's just an extreme version
of standard-issue political opportunism: If you're a CNN
military analyst who gets schmoozed into running as the
standard-bearer of the antiwar movement, there are bound
to be a few not entirely convincing lurches in continuity.
Nor do I mean his creepy statements on abortion, in which
he is taking "pro-choice" to levels undreamed of even in
NARAL's wildest dreams. Mr. Clark's position is no restrictions
on nuthin'. Third trimester? Partial-birth abortion? Bring it on,
baby. "Life begins with the mother's decision," says Mr. Clark.
You got a 9-month-old healthy fetus, you're in tip-top shape,
you've started contractions and the little feller's about to
emerge, and you suddenly change your mind and decide you
want a last-minute partial-birth abortion. ... hey, life begins
with the mother's decision and if you say "Let there not be
life," then there won't be. That's not crazy so much as a sign
of the general's general laziness on this and most other
domestic issues. He simply appears to have given no thought
to the question.
But what shifts him from unprincipled and thoughtless to
the out-of-his-tree category is stuff like this:
"If I had been president, I would have had Osama bin
Laden by this time." And: "I'm going to take care of the
American people. We are not going to have one of these
incidents. I think the two greatest lies that have been told in
the last three years are: You couldn't have prevented
September 11 [2001] and there's another one that's bound
to happen."
Normal presidential candidates just don't say things like
this. By "normal," I mean candidates like Dennis Kucinich and
Al Sharpton. Let's not set the bar too high. Granted, George
W. Bush was not the most articulate candidate in the world.
But what matters is what a candidate reveals when he
stumbles. Take this allegedly disastrous "Bushism": "I know
how hard it is to put food on your family."
The anti-Bush types who buy all those lame-o filler books
of the "Bush Dyslexicon" love that one. I'm amazed how often
I get it quoted back at me as evidence of what a moron Mr.
Bush is. Well, I guess there are two possibilities:
(a) He meant to say "food on your table".
(b) He was referring to an amusing game he and Jeb like to
play at Kennebunkport cookouts when Dad and Mom aren't
looking.
Either way, what's the difference? Mr. Bush's goofs never
hurt him because they don't contradict his public persona;
indeed, they reinforce it. What do Mr. Clark's goofs reveal?
For example, the bizarre claim he made after September 11,
2001, that "people around the White House" had called him
on the day to tell him to go on TV and connect the attack to
Saddam.
As the weeks went by, he modified the story, until it
emerged that it wasn't "people," just one fellow; and he didn't
call on September 11, but afterward; and he wasn't from the
White House at all but from some think-tank in Montreal,
which from the look of the map isn't even in the District of
Columbia. And the fellow from Montreal said true, he had
called Gen. Clark, but they hadn't talked about Saddam at all.
Mr. Clark was sold to the Democratic Party as a military
man of peaceful manner: Generals are from Mars, but this
one's from Venus. But there's a common theme to every
glimpse of the real Wesley Clark, whether it's his own private
fantasies about the White House calling him on September 11
or memories of those who served with him, like the British
general who refused an order by Mr. Clark to launch an insane
attack on Russian forces in Kosovo: At best, he's a
thin-skinned, vain, insecure man with a need to insert himself
at the center of every story; at worst, he's a paranoid
megalomaniac narcissist.
The defense is that he got in the game late and he's not a
blow-dried pol with all the life focus-grouped out of him. Very
true. He's so new a New Democrat he barely knew any
Democrats. But I'm with the Clinton administration on this
one: If Wes Clark didn't have the temperament to be NATO
commander in the dozy 1990s, he certainly doesn't have the
temperament to be president in a time of war. "I'm going to
take care of the American people. We are not going to have
one of these incidents." He is the incident, waiting to happen.
Oh, well. Back to the drawing board.
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JWR contributor Mark Steyn is North American Editor of The (London) Spectator and the author, most recently, of "The Face of the Tiger," a new book on the world post-Sept. 11. (Sales help fund JWR). Comment by clicking here.
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12/23/03: Spates of denial
12/16/03: Defiant? He's a Ba'athist who won't bath
12/10/03: Rummy speaks the truth, not gobbledygook
12/02/03: War on terror can't stop with Iraq
11/24/03: It's not Vietnam and Bush is no Kennedy
11/12/03: There is a Cold War between the US and the EU
10/28/03: Muslim paranoia: Enemies made us impotent!
10/28/03:The CIA scandal is important not because it put an agent's life at risk it didn't but because it shows that US Intelligence is either obstructive or inept
10/08/03: Palestinian death cult
09/29/03: Bring on the capitalists
09/22/03: Here comes General Clark, his policies will follow shortly
09/17/03: Don't wait for government protection
09/11/03: Predators aren't looking for peace
09/02/03: This is Hillary's moment You go, girl!
08/29/03: There are now calls for greater UN involvement in Iraq. That’s the last thing the country needs
08/26/03: There's only one hyperpower so everything is our fault
08/04/03: The White Man's Burden
07/29/03: Bill Clinton got this right
06/25/03: It's Mullah time!
05/07/03: What counts is what a guy does when he's not talking
04/30/03: It's named UNSCAM for a very good reason!
04/14/03: Movers and shakers have moved on to the next 'disaster'
03/25/03: Give Saddam credit
03/18/03: 'Eurabia' will have to look after herself
02/27/03: Death wish
02/19/03: The curtain will come down on the peaceniks
02/10/03: Let's quit the UN
02/03/03: Columbia reality-check
01/29/03: Go forth and multiply
01/09/03: America's fake identity crisis
12/31/02: GOP underperforms, but Dems are laughable
11/26/02: A bombing pause --- for 12 months!?
10/30/02: Stop making excuses for Muslim extremists
09/27/02: The more inventively you try to ''explain'' the Islamist psychosis as a rational phenomenon to be accommodated, the more you risk sounding just as nutty as them
08/23/02: Battered Westerner Syndrome inflicted by myopic Muslim defenders
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07/10/02: Hey, FBI: So, denial really is a river in Egypt!
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05/24/02: Sweet land of liberty: Britain and Europe have free governments, but only in the US are the people truly free
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04/09/02 Arafat has begun his countdown to oblivion. Now it's time to crush the Palestinian uprising
03/27/02 The good, the bad and the Gallic shrug
03/20/02 Grand convocation of the weird
© 2002, Mark Steyn
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