Dean/Clark?

Yesterday Dad asked for thoughts on possibilities of a Dean/Clark (or Clark/Dean) ticket. I deferred answering right away so that I could bounce it around in the back of my head for a bit.

Well, after letting it bounce around for the past day, I have to say that my only thought right now is that I haven’t got a clue. At this point, I really don’t know all that much about Wesley Clark. I know that he’s well respected by many people, which seems to cross party bounds, after having a strong military career. He apparently had strong ties to the Republican party in the past, and has recently crossed party lines to toss his hat in with the Democrats. It appears that his entrance into the Democratic nomination ring was predicated not so much by wishes of his own (at least at first), but by a grass-roots campaign from his supporters (and apparently he’s now looking to disband those grassroots weblogs, which may be a mistake, if he ticks off the very people that started giving momentum to his campaign before it ever even existed). Apparently during yesterday’s Democratic debate, he said nothing, but said it with style.

He delayed his entrance into the Democratic field until the last possible moment, playing a big “will he or won’t he?” game. That doesn’t seem like a good idea strategically — while there were some people on the ‘net tracking his every step, the major media didn’t bother with him until just a day or two before his official announcement, which gave a lot of press time to the other nine contenders. Delaying his entrance also limited the amount of time he could use to raise money.

Essentially, as I look at it all together, Clark worries me. At least to me, he’s coming off as wishy-washy. He couldn’t decide whether he was Republican or Democrat. He couldn’t decide to run or not. He doesn’t seem to care about the organizations that started his roll towards the nomination race. Most worrying to me is that while he may have had a good military career, he’s not been a player in political fields at all. He strikes me as someone who’d make a very good cabinet member or advisor to the President on military matters, but not someone I’d be terribly thrilled to be voting into office — and that may go for a vice-presidential position as well as a presidential position.

Dean may not be perfect — his campaign’s current “5 million in 10 days” fundraising drive struck me as fairly ludicrous when I saw it (even with the fundraising skills they’ve demonstrated, that’s a lot of money in very little time, and if they don’t make their goal, then no matter how much money they do raise, it will be perceived as a “failure” because for the first time, Dean couldn’t meet or break a fundraising goal…they seem to be setting themselves up for bad press) — but I still believe that he’s by far the best choice, and the only candidate that really gets me excited. As I’ve said before, should he fail to get the nomination, I’ll support whichever Democratic candidate does land it — we need to get Bush out of office, and that’s the bottom line — but none of the others have really struck me as someone I could support as strongly.

Actually, I should amend that. I have liked a lot of what I’ve seen and heard from Carol Mosely-Braun. Unfortunately, I have to concede that I don’t think there’s any way she’d get elected were she to land the nomination — America’s still not about to elect a black woman president, unfortunately. The reports of how chummy she and Dean have been at various points did toss a fun (if completely unfeasible) scenario into my head, though.

Suppose that there’s more to Clark than I’m seeing right now. Bush’s numbers continue to drop, and after Dean picks up the Democratic nomination, he does choose Clark as his VP. America, sick of Bush’s presidency, sees the combination of Dean’s platform and Clark’s military skills and elects them to the White House. Once they’re in, Dean appoints Mosely-Braun to a fairly high-ranking and visible position in his cabinet. Over the next four years, America visibly starts to crawl out of the hole that the Bush administration has dug for us — jobs come back, international relations start improving, etc. As 2008 approaches, it’s clear that we are in a far stronger position that we were in 2003, thanks to the Dean/Clark administration, and it becomes nigh-impossible for any Republican contender to have a realistic chance at getting back into the White House. Suddenly, Clark decides that politics isn’t for him after all, steps down from his VP position — and Dean announces Mosley-Braun as his VP for the 2008 election. He might take a bit of a hit in votes from the ~~more inbred~~ less forward-thinking voters, but if his first term had been strong enough, it might be enough for us to suddenly have a black female Vice President in 2008.

Okay, it’s a pipe dream. But I have to admit, it’s a pipe dream I like.