Who's this Wesley Clark fella?

With a left(ish)-leaning, one-time NATO Supreme Allied Commander throwing his hat into the presidential race, people are understandably excited by Gen. Wesley Clark's candidacy. I mean, he's got more military clout than Kerry (and, needless to say, Bush), a convincingly presidential demeanor, a Dean-ish populist bent, and on-the-record progressive policy stances. With the right runningmate--Howard? Hillary? Al?--he'd make a formidable ticket. Even Michael Moore's atwitter over the possibility; his open letter to Clark enthuses:

1. You oppose the Patriot Act and would fight the expansion of its powers.

2. You are firmly pro-choice.

3. You filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in support of the University of Michigan's affirmative action case.

4. You would get rid of the Bush tax "cut" and make the rich pay their fair share.

5. You respect the views of our allies and want to work with them and with the rest of the international community.

6. And you oppose war. You have said that war should always be the "last resort" and that it is military men such as yourself who are the most for peace because it is YOU and your soldiers who have to do the dying. You find something unsettling about a commander-in-chief who dons a flight suit and pretends to be Top Gun, a stunt that dishonored those who have died in that flight suit in the service of their country.

Still, you've gotta cringe when in April he wrote of the "scent of victory" in Iraq, opining, "Can anything be more moving than the joyous throngs swarming the streets of Baghdad?" Or when he said that war with Iraq was the "right call." Is this really our anti-war candidate? And credible lefties like Wayne Madsen (who sees Clark's candidacy as part of a plot by neoconservative Democrats who really support Lieberman) and Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn (who, in 1999, called him a "vain, pompous brownnoser") have reservations about Clark in the Oval Office.

At the very least, it'll be interesting to see how Clark's candidacy affects Kerry and Dean and Kucinich--and to see the AWOL guardsman Bush shake in his boots a little.

Learn more:
Clark BBC bio
Official website