Undoing the party herd

Where are we going to find the Undean? That was the cry of Democratic power brokers as Howard Dean rose unstoppably through last year and the wise old birds fretted that he was unelectable. Judging from the polls, New Hampshire Democrats seem to have found their Undean. It’s Wesley Clark.

So now the Dem bigshots can all start looking for the Unclark.

If they aren’t already, they ought to be. Mr. Dean might be bad for the health of the party, but that’s no reason to go from bad to Wes. If the rap against Mr. Dean is that he’s gaffe-prone, shoots from the hip, says loopy stuff — that goes tenfold for Mr. Clark.

Let me say, by the way, in a spirit of bipartisanship, that I don’t believe Howard Dean is nuts. From my perch in New Hampshire, I watched him across the river governing Vermont for a decade. Although he was certainly mean and arrogant, the chief characteristic of his political persona was blandness.

But this is no time for a Democratic candidate who feels your pain. Democratic activists want someone who feels their anger, and Mad How the mad cow was pretty much invented by the somnolent Gov. Dean to fit that bill.

So I would say Howard Dean is a sane man pretending to be crazy. Whereas Mr. Clark gives every indication of a crazy man pretending to be sane.

Now I’m not talking about things like this screwy response to a question from MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. The retired general had indicated he wished Osama bin Laden to be tried at The Hague and sentenced to life in prison. “But,” asked Mr. Matthews, “doesn’t life in Holland beat life in a cave?”

“Not in a Dutch prison, Chris,” said Mr. Clark. “They’re under water, they’re damp, they’re cold. They’re really miserable.”

Dutch prisons are under water? Good thing Mr. Clark’s not as dumb as George W. Bush or Dan Quayle, eh?

Nor am I talking about his flip-flops on Iraq. That’s just an extreme version of standard-issue political opportunism: If you’re a CNN military analyst who gets schmoozed into running as the standard-bearer of the antiwar movement, there are bound to be a few not entirely convincing lurches in continuity.

Nor do I mean his creepy statements on abortion, in which he is taking “pro-choice” to levels undreamed of even in NARAL’s wildest dreams. Mr. Clark’s position is no restrictions on nuthin’. Third trimester? Partial-birth abortion? Bring it on, baby. “Life begins with the mother’s decision,” says Mr. Clark. You got a 9-month-old healthy fetus, you’re in tip-top shape, you’ve started contractions and the little feller’s about to emerge, and you suddenly change your mind and decide you want a last-minute partial-birth abortion. … hey, life begins with the mother’s decision and if you say “Let there not be life,” then there won’t be. That’s not crazy so much as a sign of the general’s general laziness on this and most other domestic issues. He simply appears to have given no thought to the question.

But what shifts him from unprincipled and thoughtless to the out-of-his-tree category is stuff like this:

“If I had been president, I would have had Osama bin Laden by this time.” And: “I’m going to take care of the American people. We are not going to have one of these incidents. I think the two greatest lies that have been told in the last three years are: You couldn’t have prevented September 11 [2001] and there’s another one that’s bound to happen.”

Normal presidential candidates just don’t say things like this. By “normal,” I mean candidates like Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton. Let’s not set the bar too high. Granted, George W. Bush was not the most articulate candidate in the world. But what matters is what a candidate reveals when he stumbles. Take this allegedly disastrous “Bushism”: “I know how hard it is to put food on your family.”

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