Wes Clark is, once again, doing well at YearlyKos. One of the oddities of the 2004 election was the feebleness of Clark’s campaign. True, he lacked political experience and that showed, but even so the lack of focus and the strategic failures of his campaign were palpable.
Then again, not everyone would have been surprised. I’ve been reading Alastair Campbell’s diaries this week and came across this passage, dating from the Kosovo war:
Sunday April 18, 1999: TB [Tony Blair] saw [Charles] Guthrie [Chief of the Defence Staff] and he basically levelled and said we were likely to have to put in ground troops… Guthrie called me later and…[his] assessment was that [Wesley] Clark was not a ‘proper’ general…I said I was reasonably impressed by him and Charles said yes, Tony said that, but a good general looks upwards and sideways, delegates and then protects the people he has delegated to from the politicians.
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