Last month, this column predicted that the GOP response to Gen.
Wesley Clark's presidential candidacy would be to turn him into the
Democratic equivalent of Gen. Jack D. Ripper, the megalomaniacal
crackpot in the classic film "Dr. Strangelove." Portraying Clark as mad
with ambition appeared to be the only way to deal with his otherwise
perfect political resume--first in his class at West Point, Rhodes
Scholar, a Purple Heart and Silver Star for valor in Vietnam, NATO
Supreme Commander, all that.

Besides, the outlines of the strategy were already visible. It
clearly behooves Republicans to take him out now. Clark as the
Democratic nominee would make Bush's re-election unlikely. Early
profiles by members of what ABCNews.com's The Note calls "The Gang of
500" bristled with anonymous quotes from Pentagon detractors depicting
Clark as, in Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen's words, "too
weird for prime time." Note the TV metaphor. Cohen wondered if "the
personal qualities that bothered his [nameless] critics would be
intolerable in a president. We like our presidents as we like our
morning TV hosts--comfy."

"In an institution filled with ambitious men," wrote Post reporter
Lois Romano more recently, "some viewed Clark as over the top, someone
who would do or say anything to get ahead-and get his way." Now to a
rational mind, accusing a West Point valedictorian, four-star general
and presidential candidate of ambition is about as newsworthy as
charging a golden retriever with an unseemly zeal for chasing tennis
balls.

If the phrase "would do or say anything" sounds familiar, that's
because it comes directly out of the GOP playbook. The last Democrat
depicted as crazed with ambition was Al Gore, who never figured out how
to counter a barrage of false accusations, such as the absurd canard
that he claimed he'd "invented the internet," ceaselessly reiterated by
Washington pundits taking dictation from the Republican National
Committee.

Although unconscious, there's a subtly royalist overtone to such
comments. George W. Bush, see, doesn't have to be a striver. No
valedictorian he, Bush knows how to play the role of relaxed TV
host/president precisely because as a humble, everyday American
aristocrat he was born to it. Hence his accomplishments in life needn't
make you, the humble voter or journalism major, feel inferior.

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank, albeit a fine reporter not
beloved by the Bush White House, once gave a revealing explanation of
the press's visceral antipathy to Gore on CNN's "Reliable Sources."
Gore, Milbank said, "has been disliked all along and it was because he
gives a sense that he's better than us as reporters. Whereas President
Bush probably is sure that he's better than us--he's probably right, but
he does not convey that sense. He does not seem to be dripping with
contempt when he looks at us, and I think that has something to do with
the coverage."

"In interviews," she wrote, Clark "displayed the outward calm of a
man who cannot bear to convey doubt or failure." [my italics] Actually,
he sounded more exasperated to me. "How do you think I could have
succeeded in the military if every-body didn't like me? It's
impossible," he said. "Do you realize I was the first person promoted to
full colonel in my entire year group of 2,000 officers? I was the only
one selected. Do you realize that?...Do you realize I was the only one
of my West Point class picked to command a brigade when I was
picked?...I was the first person picked for brigadier general. You have
to balance this out...A lot of people love me."

Now I doubt that Clark volunteered that some people love him
without first being told others hate him. (The ellipses are Romano's.)
Nevertheless, the doctor was definitely IN at the Washington Post, not
to mention at The New Republic, the allegedly "liberal" magazine where
one Adam Kushner opined that Clark's response to anonymous slurs made
him appear "self-assured to the point of delusion."

Delusion, mind you, a psychiatric term denoting dogged belief in
false ideas. Unless Clark made up the facts, it's a callow, ugly smear.
The problem is that nobody but Clark himself can deal with it, and
preferably on national TV. During a recent Democratic debate, he
referred to a rival general's unspecified slurs on his "character and
integrity" as sheer "McCarthyism." But he may need to confront symbolism
with symbolism and go all Ollie North on them, treating the whispers as
an insult to his patriotism, and standing in front of a flag.