| 9/10/2003 |
 |
| Clark has a Party. . .And A Line |
| By Dan Gilgoff, US News |
|
 |
Last week, retired NATO Supreme Allied Commander and potential presidential candidate Wesley Clark announced what many Americans had already assumed: He's a Democrat. The 58-year-old former Rhodes scholar has been publicly flirting with a presidential run all summer. He promises a decision within the next two weeks.
Did it take much soul-searching to determine that you're a Democrat?
It wasn't about picking the party [I belonged to], it was about picking a party. It's pretty clear my ideas would have fit fine with many Republicans but not with the people in power in the party. I mean, I talked to [current National Security Adviser] Condi Rice in 2000, and she said she didn't think America should do peacekeeping. Isn't that ironic?
Why is it taking so long to decide if you're going to run for president?
I had no intention of doing anything like this when I got out of the military. My intention was to go into business and earn an income. Then I signed to CNN as an analyst. I was trying to cast a large-enough net in terms of getting income. Now, the question is, what's the best way to make a contribution: to run or not run?
Your specialty is foreign policy. How would you rate Bush in that area?
We're excessively aggressive. We moved into a war with Iraq that wasn't essential to U.S. national security. It was tangentially related to terrorism but it wasn't central. But it is now, now that we're there.
How's America doing at home?
We've got one party that's pushing the bounds, between the [Clinton] impeachment, the Florida recount, and the California recall. Are we going to have a two-party system with reasonable and informed debate, or are we going to collapse into a single-party system?
-Dan Gilgoff
|
|
| www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/030915/usnews/15clark.peo.htm |
|
