General's campaign focuses on economy

Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark speaks to delegates at the Florida Democratic Party convention Saturday. (Scott Martin / The Associated Press) e-mail this story to a friend

Prime time in a huge warehouse.

Cotton bales stacked just so. Heavy-duty lighting in place. And a sound system. Just enough of a crowd that more rented chairs had to be brought out. The candidate was on time.

It went by the book, but why not, when the candidate is a former general who has run an army and a successful war.

Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, of Little Rock by way of lots of places, foreign and domestic, worked the crowd like a political old-timer. That he's a first-timer was evident only when he lingered with some folks, causing aides to look at their watches.

Clark had brought his Democratic presidential campaign to this tiny, struggling textile hamlet, a made-for-TV setting for the unveiling of a plan he says will make free trade fairer and preserve what's left of the region's and the nation's manufacturing sector.

Patricia Davis of Inman was typical of those who turned out to take their measure of Clark.

South Carolina's Feb. 3 Democratic presidential primary will go a long way toward determining that party's challenger to President Bush. Consequently, Clark was the latest to appear with promises of better times.

While Davis came and left undecided, her message for Clark could apply to the other eight contenders: "They need to bring the jobs back. It's bad over here."

The focus of Clark's campaign has been the economy.

Atypical candidate

Clark, who turns 59 on Dec. 23, may be the most atypical candidate in the field.

He is a West Pointer and Rhodes Scholar who speaks four languages, was supreme allied commander in Europe, ran NATO's 1999 operation to end ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and wasn't identified as a Democrat until the day he announced his candidacy in September, the last to enter.

Larry Sabato, presidential scholar and director of the Virginia Center for Politics, has described Clark as "a real threat" for the nomination.

Some polls have shown him leading nationally and running strong in South Carolina, although "undecided" still tops most surveys, and even a 20 percent showing for any of the contenders remains an elusive mark.

Clark opted not to directly compete for Iowa's caucus votes, an effort that would have been both time and labor-intensive for a late-starting candidate. Instead, he's emphasizing New Hampshire and South Carolina, the second and third major battlegrounds, plus other Feb. 3 states and beyond.

"Iowa is a caucus state with 99 counties and 2,000 precincts," he told reporters during a recent appearance in Orangeburg.

"It's a big, mechanical organizing process. I had people who liked me in Iowa and wanted me to do it, but when I talked to the experts, they said you've got to figure 30 days and several million dollars. It takes months and months to get that structure in place."

Iowa opt-out

Instead of tackling head-on his opponents' head start in money, organizing and staffing, "it made more sense for me to work the primaries, New Hampshire and South Carolina," he said.

In South Carolina, Clark quickly recruited several seasoned in-state political operatives when Florida Sen. Bob Graham dropped out of the race. The Clark campaign took over an entire floor in a downtown Columbia office building overlooking the Statehouse. Three more regional offices are planned.

"He has geared up dramatically for South Carolina," said Dick Harpootlian, the former state Democratic chairman who says he's neutral.

The Iowa decision made sense, Harpootlian said.

"It's so liberal, there's so much inside baseball that you've got to start two years out to have a chance. And, it probably wouldn't mean anything because that looks like a Dick Gephardt-Howard Dean affair" and he's mostly frozen out of New Hampshire by New England favorite sons, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor.

"The best you can do there is run third," Harpootlian said.

"At this point, I don't know that running third or fourth (in New Hampshire) does you much because you're so far down the line, so that brings you to South Carolina," he said.

Military bearing

Clark is about 5 feet 10 inches tall, his lean build and silver hair suggestive of a former fighter jock aging well. He is a polished but less than dynamic speaker. Clark appears to listen intently when soliciting questions and comments during his travels without the hugging, backslapping and overly broad smiles of seasoned pols.

Supporters delight in calling him "general," but the campaign is shortening the more formal Wesley to just "Wes." Clark has lately begun to take off his suit jacket and roll up the sleeves of his dress shirt, a trademark ploy of another opponent, North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

In Orangeburg, Clark visited with the mother of a soldier who had been killed in Iraq, a war he calls unnecessary. He didn't take any reporters along.

Later, when asked about the visit, he spoke in generalities, his voice growing both harder and lower simultaneously:

"I've seen so many families grieving. It breaks my heart. I saw that helicopter (crash site) on television when I woke up Sunday morning, and I looked at it, and I just knew. ... I've seen them crash into mountains. I've seen armored personnel carriers roll over. I've seen guys get crushed by tanks, burned to death. I've seen the families. My heart goes out to them."

As a young lieutenant in Vietnam, Clark was hit by four rifle slugs, wounds that required a long recovery, giving him time for contemplation of the military of the future.

Demos' suspicions

Some Democrats have voiced suspicions about him, that he's a Republican in disguise or had said too many nice things about them in his precandidate days. Clark was a registered independent the day he announced for president.

One opponent, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, reflecting on Clark helping raise money for the GOP in 2001 and bashing Bush in 2003, said it smacked of a "journey of convenience."

Clark said, "I was either going to be a very lonely Republican or ... a very happy Democrat."

Front-runner Dean and Sen. Kerry have criticized him along similar lines. Clark's early days as a candidate were replete with fits and starts, from a flip-flop on Iraq to the resignation of his national campaign manager, Columbia's Donnie Fowler Jr.

Initially, Clark said he would have voted for the use of force resolution on Iraq, but a day later, said, "I never would have voted for this war."

Then it was disclosed he was a registered lobbyist but not a registered Democrat.

Next, press aides came and went. Fowler contended that grass-roots activists who triggered the Clark boomlet were being sacrificed to Washington campaign professionals.

And that was just the first three weeks. Things have smoothed out since then.

Clark shrugs off questions about the impact of not winning in New Hampshire.

"I'm a viable candidate right now. I don't think anything more has to happen. I have to have time to engage with people around America, especially in these early primary and caucus states, other than Iowa. It's basically a matter of the message and going out and meeting people. It's more than a strategy."

He doesn't say that Bush isn't doing his job but answers:

"Go through Walter Reed (Army Medical Center), look at these kids that have lost arms and legs, talk to them, talk to their families who sit up there and it'll give you a real determination to have a strategy that's successful and not just ask for more money with a blank check."

Clark toots his own horn at times. "Unlike the other candidates, I've had firsthand experience with foreign policy. I've done it."

He cites shuttle diplomacy in the Balkans, "where I dealt with some of the worst people on the planet ... trying to get things settled, but we did it. I worked with heads of state in Europe, tried to head off a war, and when it couldn't be done, I had to lead the alliance and fight it."

Clark has criticized the Bush administration for the loss of 3.3 million jobs since January 2001 and has proposed a $100 billion plan built around homeland security programs that would include public works projects and law enforcement hiring, aid to state and local governments and education and job training. Another $20 billion would be earmarked for Medicaid.

His trade program is built around ending tax breaks for companies that shift jobs overseas, insisting that America's trading partners abide by international agreements and ending China's manipulation of its currency that allows it to further undercut U.S. goods.

He would rescind Bush's tax cuts for those with incomes of $200,000 and more but leave intact the estate tax repeal for small business and family farms.

Clark said although he opposed the Iraqi invasion, pulling out now is not an option. He has called for internationalizing the occupation by reincorporating the nation's estranged allies into the force there, troop increases if necessary, but with a better mix for the mission, one that would include more reliance on light, fast-moving special forces.

He launched a television ad campaign Tuesday, spending $200,000 each in South Carolina and two other Feb. 3 states, Arizona and Oklahoma. The 60-second ad is biographical, focusing on his military career.

Dick Armey, the former House Republican leader, said Clark, because of his background, is the Democrat who would pose the most serious threat to President Bush.

Dan Hoover covers politics and can be reached at 298-4883.