New presidential candidate’s politics seem wishy-washy
COMMENTARY
Jeff Brubaker

Wesley Clark, the newest addition to a long list of Democratic presidential hopefuls, has pollsters buzzing.
Clark, with his impressive military career behind him, is bursting onto the scene, gaining equal and sometimes more support than other candidates in recent polls.

However, the support for Clark’s late-starting campaign can be nothing more than a fluke.

Clark is still attempting to bring together his main policy points under the harsh lights of the national stage. Other candidates have been rehearsing theirs for months.

But perhaps the most difficult hurdle for Clark is his ambiguous position on the war with Iraq. While other candidates such as Howard Dean have voiced criticism of President Bush’s preemptive policies, Clark seems to be somewhat undecided. He has stated his disapproval for what he called “a major blunder” on the part of Bush, but he’s also said he would have voted to support the war.

The somewhat soft position has surprised Clark’s supporters and has confused the heck out of me. Democrats today need to buckle down and take a stand against Bush’s preemptive attack on Iraq and make no apologies for it. In the last presidential election, it was extremely difficult to find real differences between the candidates, but now there is an obvious issue that should be taken advantage of. Clark seems to be missing it.

There are more reasons to think twice about Clark. History has shown that former generals rarely make good presidents. While there are some exceptions, most notably the ever-deified George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant stands out as a president who knew less about politics than he did about how to minimize casualties in combat. And the heavy-handed reign of Dwight D. Eisenhower was marked by militarization and never-ending competition with the Soviet Union.

The most recent projections show the leading democratic candidates are close to Bush in a head-on confrontation with Dean, John Kerry and Joe Lieberman tying, and with Wesley Clark actually beating the incumbent.

Clark has even more going for him. He has the backing of the former first family and him being a four-star general proves that he can use force when necessary. Also, with Dick Gephardt and Kerry trying their best to show themselves as coming from middle-class America, Clark can — and probably goes out of his way to — remind people that he’s a soldier who’s “laid on the battlefield bleeding.”

Clark has also taken the position of leaving in place tax cuts for middle-income Americans and, like other leading candidates, supports the rights of gun owners while supporting a proposed ban on assault weapons.

The whole song and dance of the democratic candidates seems to be aiming at finding the middle road and using it to beat Bush over the head. Kerry is trying to find it. Most people don’t think Dean can find it, but it appears that Clark has found it and is in a position to use it well.

He must take advantage of last week’s polls that show rising disapproval of Bush, especially after weapons of mass destruction have yet to be found in Iraq, terrorism is alive and well and the economy is going nowhere.

Jeff Brubaker is a senior history major from Welasco.