Stark raving Clark: the general is all-American, and all pander.

Concord, N.H.

IT might be the very peak of the Clark boomlet in early January. The lobby of Concord High School is packed with 700 people, almost to the rafters. Kids are sitting atop soda and concession machines in the back to get a better view. Clark is halfway through his question-and-answer period when a man stands up and explains how he had been struck speechless--speechless--upon meeting Clark a few months earlier. He says that he has since realized that his tongue-tiedness had been a product of his sheer awe at the fact that Clark is such "a humble, down-to-earth man. You're what we need in this country." The crowd cheers. The man tells Clark that to make up for his earlier reticence he has made him a present, a framed picture of Clark with his family so he can better remember them while away campaigning.

He begins walking toward Clark to give him the picture. Something seems off. Maybe it's a canny heckler pulling Clark's leg? Or maybe something worse? One reporter says afterward she thought that maybe the man was going to pull out a gun and shoot Clark. It turned out to be none of the above--he was just a weirdly devoted Clark fan.

A strangeness adheres to the Clark campaign, which is an admixture of old-fashioned patriotism and rank opportunism and paranoid anti-Bush raving. If Clark fails to withstand the John Kerry and John Edwards surges coming out of Iowa (as seems likely), American politics will be better for it. Clark represents the antiwar lunacy of Howard Dean without any of the conviction (although it's debatable how much of his own shtick Dean believes). Nonetheless, amidst all that is off-key and noxious in the Clark effort, there is something winsome and all-American too.

His campaign video, "American Son," is practically pornography for patriots. Watching it is enough to make you think that not only should Clark become president, he should ascend bodily to heaven. Puppy-dog-holding kid. Champion swimmer. Honor student. West Point standout. (Are you feeling unworthy yet?) Husband of beautiful wife. War hero in Vietnam. Friend of children and minorities while in the military. Savior of the Kosovars. Medal of Freedom winner. And, of course, presidential candidate seeking to restore the honor of his nation. The only problem is that the video is so perfect it is almost self-parodic. At the beginning, Clark is shown speaking in a military uniform so festooned with medals and ribbons it's a wonder he could stand up straight. But it's no mystery why shrewd politicos thought the person of Wes Clark would make an excellent foundation for a presidential campaign.

He wouldn't have been such an attractive vessel if there weren't a reservoir of patriotic feeling and regard for the military even among Democratic primary voters. Clark often asks veterans in the audience to stand and be acknowledged--something John McCain used to do too. When Clark talks about, as a kid, going into his friends' attics to look at their fathers' medals, or cracking open shotgun shells to get gunpowder to try to build a rocket in his backyard after the Soviets launched Sputnik, it's a wonderful evocation of dutiful American boyhood. He can bring almost any policy question back to his experiences in the military, and his military references are almost always well-received. Asked about the national shortage of nurses at a health-care forum, Clark recalls his experience with the nurses in an army hospital after being shot in Vietnam. They were nurturing, but not just that: "They made me sit up straight in bed--these were army nurses." The audience laughs.

Talking about the military comes naturally to Clark. His retail politicking is more forced. At an L.L.Bean store, shopping for a sweater, Clark pounces on any stray shopper he can find. He grabs one woman's hand and won't let go, while cameras and reporters gather around. She looks shocked and uncomfortable, relieved when Clark finally moves on. "Is this the line for returns?" she asks no one in particular. Then, Clark jumps to a woman with a baby, asking "Have you ever seen a really cute baby picture?" He theatrically kisses the baby on both cheeks, claps his hands and exclaims, "How's that? Not bad, right?"

Clark strains hard to achieve a regular-guy bonhomie, so hard that often he is goofy or downright weird. When he is too small to fit in an extra-large forest green sweater he takes into the changing room with him at L.L.Bean, he offers it to a young woman following him from one of the networks. "You really want me to wear a large man's green sweater?" she asks, puzzled or maybe a little offended. Later that night, reporters guffaw and shake their heads when Clark invites them on his daily swim the next morning, but stipulates that if there are cameras there, there can be "no shots beneath the waist. No beefcake."

Clark is sharp, and has learned his lines well. After a health-care speech at a hospital in Hanover, he effectively parries questions from doctors and medical professors for more than twenty minutes. It's impressive, but you get the sense that his knowledge--and, more important, his conviction--is an inch deep. Ask him about Medicaid reimbursements to the states, and he'll spit out a brief, perfect piece of wonkery. Ask him why he's a Democrat given that he voted for Nixon, Ford, and Reagan--which someone asks him at almost every stop--and he sounds prickly, defensive, and unconvincing.

When someone asks him the question at a town-hall meeting, he says, apparently suggesting the questioner must be an agent of an enemy campaign, "I could ask you why you are asking that question." At another event, asked by a woman if he is a Republican "in sheep's clothing," he looks very awkward before shooting back, "I don't think Democrats are sheep." His quick-witted rejoinder gets applause, but he didn't answer the question. What he usually says is that he voted Republican because the country needed to be protected during the Cold War (uh, and now it doesn't?).

Clark already has a politician's habit of over-promising. Routinely on the stump he promises to: "raise family income $3,000 a year in my four-year term"; "save 100,000 people in this country from premature death"; add "a million additional kids in college in four years"; "raise two million children above the poverty level"; "guarantee health insurance for every child in America and universal access to health care." In addition he will catch Osama bin Laden, prevent any more terrorist attacks, and create "a new agency of government to help foreign governments prevent crises." He loves the word "promise." He tells one questioner he will fix the nursing shortage in the U.S.--"I promise you we will do that." As for the Mideast, he says, "I will be there. I'll have my representatives there. And we will bring peace between Israelis and Palestinians. And that's a promise."

Because Clark seems to have little in the way of conviction, he is a natural panderer. In today's Democratic party, especially when you have been chasing the ex-frontrunner Howard Dean, that often means pandering to its worst instincts. This tendency, coupled with the newcomer Clark's political tin ear, has led to his regularly making outrageous charges (see Jay Nordlinger's "A General's Campaign," NR, Jan. 26). I heard him call Bush unpatriotic; suggest that Bush never had any real interest in capturing bin Laden; say that Bush has "the record of a reckless and heartless leader"; and argue that only the Democratic party is true to Christian principles. And all of this was before Michael Moore showed up to endorse him a week or so later, when Clark gave credence to the idea that Bush was "a deserter" during his National Guard service.

When Howard Dean still seemed unstoppable, there appeared to be a premium on this sort of rhetoric. But the Iowa vote boosting Kerry and Edwards was, among other things, an anti-flakiness vote. Clark has identified himself with the flakiness of the Left in this political season in a way that may well--and should--cost him. He did this not because he is a wild-eyed left-winger at heart, but because he is so ambitious. Clark's super-charged ambition is what created resentment toward him at the Pentagon and prematurely ended his military career in 1999. It could do the same to his political career. And there is no time for prematurely ending it quite like the present.