A Left Turn FOR CLARK

Two things the media loves nowadays are sports and reality TV. No wonder they are so enthralled by Presidential contests. What could possibly be better than two fields of high profile celebrities competing in a nonstop horserace over 18 months to win the Super Bowl of Politics? A serious discussion of the critical issues facing both our nation and the world? Nah, doesn’t even come close. Meet the Press was never able to muster the ratings that Survivor has. So it’s no surprise that General Wesley Clark’s potential 2008 run for President gets virtually no mention in the press. He’s not on their chosen island.

But what about us Democrats? We aren’t covering 2008 Presidential races, we’re staging one. In theory we get to pick our candidates. Currently we have a nice group of announced ones. Wes Clark isn’t in that group, and neither is Al Gore or Russ Feingold. In Feingold’s case the reason is clear; early on he decided against running this year. Al Gore has done all he can to discourage speculation about him running for President, other than stating that under no circumstances will he run. So of course that encourages speculation about Al Gore running for President. That leaves Wes Clark, who candidly admits that he would like to run for President this year, if he can line up enough support. Which, it seems, discourages some Democrats from speculating about Clark.

Summer is rolling on and Labor Day is approaching. George Bush and Dick Cheney are now almost certainly the least popular President and Vice President team in American History. John McCain, the G.O.P. pretender to the throne who once was feared as the only man with sufficient stature and integrity to convince the American public to renew the Republican lease on the White House, has departed center stage after a war vote malfunction stripped bare his passion for the Iraq surge, exposing him as unelectable in the Super Bowl of politics. Meanwhile the Democrats have a very strong field of presidential candidates. At least the media keeps telling us so, and given the quagmire the G.O.P. now seems stuck in, it’s hard to argue otherwise. That could be the reason why so few do argue otherwise, since conventional wisdom is much easier to repeat, but cracks that can fracture the veneer of Democratic complacency are hiding in plain sight, where many refuse to see.

For one thing, the Democratic Party still has not shaken its inferiority complex compared to the Republicans when it comes to National Security. If you doubt that you need look no further for evidence than the August 4th vote by 16 Democratic Senators and 41 Democratic House members to support Republican written legislation giving George Bush’s near laughing stock of an Attorney General constitutionally unsupported authority to spy on the international telephone calls and e-mails of Americans, in the name of keeping America safe from terrorists. Anyone who found that vote shocking simply has not been paying close enough attention to Democrats in Congress. Democrats may have found the courage to often unite against the Iraq War now that it is universally unpopular, but they still rattle sabers against Iran almost as well as the best Republican Chicken Hawks around. It is that knee jerk need to posture as tough as Republican that led a Democratic Senate to issue George Bush a blank check for war against Iraq in 2002. Very little has really changed.