Some added details are coming out about Wesley Clark. The most revealing are those he has penned himself.
Like for example, one in Washington Monthly. [1]
Clark depends too heavily on internationalist, and not enough on Americanism. It is increasingly and alarmingly clear Clark doesn’t have what it takes to lead America.
The kind of “leadership by consensus” Clark proposes is invariably a disaster, first because it is an oxymoron… One can either lead, or try to build a consensus, but you cannot do both.
Second, because it makes the fatal assumption that all the participants in the consensus are being above board about their motives. Which is why foreign policy gives Democrats fits. They make a great show consensus building, but can’t seem to deal with the problem when they discover that there were ulterior motives behind one member or another’s actions. The failure of Carter to deal well in Iran, for example. People of each political stripe on the issues surrounding the West Bank, for another. The ‘consensus’-centered relations almost invariably neglect the concept that there are some people… And Arafat was one, the Iranians under Carter in the other, that simply cannot be negotiated with.
Clark, by his own words, would be another such person. Fortunate that given the scenario we’ve already discussed [2] we’ve nothing to worry about.
Still, his positions do seem to represent a large portion on the left, and thus are worth dissecting, dismembering, and disposing of.