Word: clarks
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...Clinton is the ghost in all their political machines, massaging Dick Gephardt's message, editing John Edwards' speeches, matchmaking between Wesley Clark and the party rainmakers. If too much time passes between calls, friends say, Clinton gets a little peeved, like a mother wanting her kids to succeed when they head off to college, but not without her help. "He knows what they are going through," says a source who chats with Clinton often. "He has helped them think through their own strengths and weaknesses." But none of the Democrats can do that without first coming to grips with Clinton...
...Hampshire last week, I bumped into howard Dean's worst nightmare. Her name is Ruth Bedinger. She is retired and working in the Dean campaign office as a volunteer. I met her at a house party for General Wesley Clark. "I'm switching to Clark," she told me, after listening to the general's new, sleek stump speech. "When I saw Dean speak, it was like a revival meeting--very exciting but not much detail. This was a lot more intelligent and cogent. There was no anger here, which is the one thing I was worried about with Dean...
...Wesley Clark's volunteers are predominately male and haven't showered in days, and many look like they're still working through their Y2K provisions. The Clark campaign also boasts the only volunteer dog, an underfed beagle named Truman. The future lobbyists are at John Kerry's headquarters, where things hum along like a '90s Internet start-up run by well-dressed New Republic readers. The sweet-natured, churchgoing college interns at the Richard Gephardt campaign are far outnumbered by the brawny volunteer ironworkers. Joe Lieberman's nerdy, beleaguered staff, which is the best-liked in town, works...
This new terrain plays to Clark's strengths. He has broad, nuanced foreign and defense policy experience. He has a commanding presence and radiates a brisk military competence. When I last checked in on Clark in early December, he seemed an Army officer trying to act like a politician. Now he's a politician. He not only has a stump speech but he's got the body language down too. During a town-hall meeting in New Hampshire last week, Clark was confronted by a man waving a thick sheaf of insurance forms--the paperwork required in treating his wife...
...Clark's new stump speech has a quality not often found in political oratory: it is charming. He is able, somehow, to shed his brass and re-create his lonely, impoverished childhood in Arkansas: his patriotic attempt to master chemistry and build a backyard rocket after the Russians launched Sputnik; his decision, at age 5, to attend the Baptist church in Little Rock because the stained-glass windows reminded him of the Methodist church he'd attended in Chicago before his father died; his struggle to raise a family on a military salary; the car he totally rebuilt because...