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TAP: Vol 14, Iss. 3. Meet Mr. Credibility. Michael Tomasky. The rumored presidential bid of retired Gen. Wesley Clark, bandied about mostly in inside-dope items in the press over the last three months, may or may not materialize. The considered judgments of rumor-mill initiates run the gamut from "slim chance" to "almost certainly." For his own part, Clark keeps it vague. "A lot of people have come to me and talked about the need for leadership," he said in an interview, "but I haven't made any plans. I haven't raised money or formed any committees." Whether Clark runs or not -- and if he doesn't, he seems like a vice-presidential candidate sent from God, which may be the real angle he's playing -- his mere presence on the national stage, his coming out of the closet, as it were, as a functional Democrat who opposes the administration's war aims and who just happens to have been a NATO commander, could instantly make the Democratic Party more plausible on foreign affairs than it's been at any time since a general named George Catlett Marshall was containing communism and rebuilding Europe with a president named Harry Truman. "I think it's safe to say," says former Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta, "that the supreme allied commander of NATO has a certain credibility on military affairs that is not usually associated with members of the Democratic Party."
posted by
Matthew Carroll-Schmidt at 3:23 PM
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