Clark's True Colors (Page 2)

The imagery of the stalwart warrior reluctantly accepting the laurels offered by the Draft Clark movement is very consciously encouraged by the Clark campaign, and especially by Clark himself, who makes no secret of being a student of this kind of history. At a press conference in Concord in early November, Clark joked that "there hasn't been a successful draft movement since Cincinnatus."

Clark brings up Cincinnatus a lot. He was the good Roman dictator who, as a very old man, defeated the Aequi barbarians and saved the empire. Lots of obvious parallels there--if you happen to think Thomas Jefferson's United States is a place where the people ought to be longing for a benevolent dictator. That said, the Cincinnatus imagery seems to me to be a decoy. The throne Clark is really after is Caesar's. Once you've watched Clark sheepishly ascend to the podium after an introduction by a Draft Clark veteran, and shake his head and say, "They really made it impossible for me to say no"--once you've seen that act five or six times, you're not left with any doubt about where it comes from.

Snapshot from the Clark campaign. Nashua, New Hampshire, October 21. Clark had been scheduled that day to give a "major economic address," but that was scratched, so to speak, due to an illness that left him without his voice. To fill the time slot, the Clark staffers scheduled one of the classic seen-but-not-heard events so many of the candidates favor: the "downtown walk." The general was going to stroll up and down the main drag in Nashua, allowing the press to take dramatic pictures of him surveying the impulse-buy counters of local stores.

It was pouring rain when Clark arrived. After a brief handshaking scrum outside Nashua's city hall, he took off down the rainy street in search of photo ops. Three dozen journalists raced after him, in Keystone Kops fashion.

At this kind of campaign event I follow the old adage: Don't run down the hill and screw one of the cows, walk down and screw them all. When a candidate does a photo op in a store or restaurant, I go, have a leisurely lunch and then come back later and ask the proprietor to re-create the whole event as though it were a crime scene. At a diner in Claremont I even got a waitress to draw chalk outlines of Joe Lieberman's feet. In this relaxed atmosphere, your interview subject always recalls the story with more feeling.

At a Nashua bakery called Patisserie Bleu later that day, owner Jacqui Pressinger went through the motions of Clark's appearance, walking from the door to the counter. "He came in, stood right here, and ordered an 'Everything' bar," she said. "But then--he was whispering--he leaned over and told me and the girls that actually, his favorite dessert was a napoleon."

"You're kidding," I said.

"Yup," she said. "Then he started talking about West Point. He said something about eating a lot of napoleons at West Point."

"That's incredible," I said.

"Mmm-hm," she said. "I love pastry stories!"

At one of the Clark meet-ups in Boston, at a bar near Faneuil Hall, we volunteers were addressed by a man who was introduced as the highest-ranking Massachusetts politician to have endorsed the Clark campaign--a member of the state Democratic committee named Steve Driscoll. Here is how Driscoll opened his remarks:

"The thing is," he said, "being electable means having certain qualities. And unfortunately, many of those qualities are superficial qualities." He paused. "General Clark has depth, but he also has those surface qualities. He appeals to people who don't have time to think about the depth part."

Jesus, I thought. They're just coming right out and saying it.

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