The general jumps in.

What do we know about Wesley Clark? He voted for Nixon and Reagan and effusively praised Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice.

First in his class at West Point, a Rhodes scholar, and a decorated Vietnam vet, he was head of the U.S. Southern Command in Panama, over-seeing U.S. forces in Latin America and the Caribbean at a time when the drug war and the massive build-up of U.S.-supplied weapons in Colombia were raising serious human rights concerns.

As NATO's supreme allied commander, he was relieved of his duties early by superiors who called him trigger-happy and not a team player. Clark ordered NATO forces to strike Russian troops approaching an airfield in Kosovo at the end of that war, threatening to "start World War III," according to British General Michael Jackson, who defied the order.

A photo of a grinning Clark now circulating in newspapers and magazines and on the web shows him shaking hands with Ratko Mladic, a Serbian army commander who was the subject of multiple U.S. war crimes charges at the time and who is still wanted as an international war criminal. Clark visited Mladic, flouting a U.S. State Department directive not to meet with Serbian army leaders accused of ethnic cleansing.

His latest career, as a consultant to military contractors, places him squarely in the middle of the military-industrial complex--just what General Eisenhower, to whom Clark is often compared, warned us about.

His position on Iraq has changed dramatically over time, as documented by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). Despite his recent criticisms of the war, on April 10, Clark wrote in a London Times column: "Liberation is at hand. Liberation--the powerful balm that justifies painful sacrifice, erases lingering doubt, and reinforces bold actions. Already the scent of victory is in the air." FAIR also points out that "Clark made bold predictions about the effect the war would have on the region: 'Many Gulf states will hustle to praise their liberation from a sense of insecurity they were previously loath even to express. Egypt and Saudi Arabia will move slightly but perceptibly towards Western standards of human rights.' George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair 'should be proud of their resolve in the face of so much doubt.' "

Clark is hardly a progressive dream candidate--in fact, he's barely a Democrat. So why are Democrats so enthusiastic? Clark has little in the way of a domestic policy agenda, except for the obligatory Democratic positions on abortion and affirmative action. If he seemed like a great messenger for those opposed to the war in Iraq, his flip-flopping has undermined that stand.

But this is the year that Democrats of all stripes want nothing more than to win. With his military record and foreign policy experience--the Purple Heart, Presidential Medal of Freedom, and myriad other decorations--Clark seems like he might have the best chance to beat Bush.

The Anyone But Bush contingent dominated the crowd at a recent speech by Clark at the University of Iowa, just forty-eight hours after he announced his candidacy.

"We're anxious to hear what he has to say about health care," said Kim Miller, executive director of Local 199 of the SEIU. (Nothing, as it turned out. The general focused exclusively on foreign policy.) Along with a group of nurses wearing T-shirts that said, "I'm a Health Care Voter," Miller was waiting in line to get a first look at the candidate. "Working families are taking it in the shorts," he said. "We've got to come together and beat Bush."

Joe Shindelar, a retired John Deere product designer and Air Force veteran, went to a breakfast at the local hamburger joint to shake Clark's hand and then came over to campus to hear him speak. "I've been kind of a Dean supporter," he said.

Shindelar was a Republican until the era of Newt Gingrich. That's when the Republicans became too extreme for him. And while he once thought that unions were too strong, "now I think they're too weak," he said. "It's unfair for these retail stores to be hiring all these part time workers and not paying them a fair wage and no benefits," he said. As for the Bush tax cuts: "I don't see why these people making hundreds of millions of dollars shouldn't pay their fair share."

But Shindelar's biggest concern in this election is foreign policy. "I'm afraid we're headed in the wrong direction internationally--making more enemies than friends," he said. "Iraq has turned out to be a really bad deal, and I was not in favor of it without U.N. support. We've got to learn to live with our neighbors."

Clark made exactly that point in his speech. "We're not a 'you're with us or against us' kind of a people," he said in one of his biggest applause lines. "We're a 'come and join us' kind of people. ... Americans know in our hearts you don't make us safer by building walls, but by building bridges."

The current Administration's contemptuous treatment of the U.N. and lone-wolf foreign policy maneuvers have left us isolated and disliked around the globe, he pointed out.

In Iraq, he said, "we're involved in something that's beginning to look like an endless occupation." Afghanistan is falling apart, the Taliban is regrouping, "the strategic opportunity to pull the net tighter around Osama bin Laden was lost." And "the war on terror continues," he said. "Especially in the Islamic world ... favorable impressions of the United States have declined. People see this and they are asking, 'What went wrong and what can we do about it?'"

The rest of his speech laid out what he called the "period of transformation" that the United States faces in its relations with the rest of the world.

After September 11, we must stop acting like an isolated superpower and reach out to other countries. Clark demonstrated his abilities here by citing, in an oddly boastful way, his star-studded resume, and by answering questions about the U.N. and NATO in highly specific language.

The impression Clark left is that he has a grasp of international affairs, or at least geography, that could put George W. Bush to shame. He certainly has that paternal, military bearing that people call "Presidential." That may count for a lot in a general election.

He might even help America get out of the corner it's in, since Bush has alienated people abroad and made the United States a further target for terrorism.

Clark came out for immediate talks with North Korea. "You've got to set up a path in negotiations where both sides can see it as a success." And he identified himself as a multilateralist. "We have to use international institutions, not condemn and abuse them," he said. And he expressed caution about military intervention, in contrast to Bush's recklessness. "Force should be used only as a last resort," he said. "The reason for this is not only because it's right to try peaceful means first. It's very difficult to change people's minds when you're bombing them and killing them."

On the other hand, Clark might prove to be the hothead his subordinates in NATO and his superiors in the Pentagon thought he was.

On economic issues, Clark is a dud. His answer to a question about free trade was so circumspect and loaded with bureaucratic gibberish it was impossible to understand. We've lost 2.7 million jobs since "we opened the doors to trade liberalization," Clark said. "In theory, we can make it work. We have to make it work in practice." How? "We need resource adjustment mechanisms." Huh?

Then there's the peculiar problem of Clark's multiple answers to the question of whether or not he would have supported the war in Iraq. In Iowa, he answered a question about his flip-flopping by saying: "I would never have voted for war. I'm a soldier. I've been in war. I've been shot. I've seen people lying in the battlefield, dying. I've seen the terrible passions war arouses. I've seen hatred--it's no way to solve problems and resolve disputes. What I would have voted for was leverage for the President to internationalize the effort. ... That's what we needed from that resolution, and that's what we didn't get. The simple truth is that there was never an imminent threat to the United States from Iraq. There was no reason for our President to send our forces. It was a major blunder by the United States of America. I hope that clarifies my soundbite in The New York Times."

In other words, Clark has exactly the same position as John Kerry, who criticizes the war in Iraq, but who voted for the resolution that started it.

The question for Anyone But Bush voters who are attracted to Clark's horse-race potential is whether it's worth giving up on what Representative Bernie Sanders calls the fundamental issues of our day--the disappearance of the American middle class and the destruction of economic opportunity for ordinary folks. This is what Joe Shindelar put his finger on when he talked about the retailers who hire workers part time for low wages and no benefits, and the multimillionaires who get bigger and bigger tax breaks. Those problems, which may bring Reagan Democrats back into the Democratic fold, don't appear to be on Clark's radar screen.

"The fact that he admitted he voted for Reagan is problematic," said Dave Franker, a school board member and candidate for Congress from Iowa City. "But as an educator, I know that people are life-long learners," he said of Clark, with a wink.

As long as Clark has Bush in his sights, a lot of people figure he'll do.

Ruth Conniff is Political Editor of The Progressive.