Not Your Sweetie

(#226) (Rated 4.71/14)

by Anonymous on 02/13/2004 12:53:38 AM EST

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To:     All Clark Supporters
From:    Matt Bennett
Re:     The New York Times Story of February 12
As some of you know, I was the Clark Campaign's Director of Communications.  I was enormously proud to serve General Clark in this capacity, and I was proud to work alongside a group of incredibly dedicated people in Little Rock and around the country - staff members, volunteers, Draft Movement veterans, Clark Action Team members, and all of the others who gave of their time, their money and their hearts to help Wes Clark run for president.
In a story in yesterday's New York Times, I was quoted as saying that General Clark was, at the start, "an empty vessel" into which his supporters put their hopes, dreams and desires.  Many of you reacted angrily to this quote, thinking that I was maligning General Clark.   Nothing could be further from the truth.
My choice of words was indeed poor - many thought I meant that General Clark was "an empty suit."  That notion is, as we all know, absurd.  Wes Clark is one of the the brightest, most creative, most accomplished and talented people in the entire world.
What I should have said is that because he was not a politician, with a long line of deal-making and compromising in his wake, General Clark began this campaign as a blank slate for voters - a slate they could use to fill in any way they saw fit.  
But once he joined the race and began to set out HIS views and HIS agenda, there were bound to be disappointed people, because even among Democrats there are profound differences in what voters want their presidential candidates to be.  He simply could not be all things to all people.
And he wouldn't want to try, because the bottom line is that Wes Clark is a leader.  Leaders make hard choices, and they stick by them.  Take one example: General Clark is a staunch defender of the right of dissent, but he simply cannot abide the burning of the American flag.  His position on flag burning annoyed some of his supporters - that isn't on the slate (or in the "vessel") that many Democrats want in their candidates.  A few of them abandoned our campaign.  But leaders stick to their guns, and that's what he did.  And I was proud to see him stand up for what he believes in.
In dozens of interviews over the last five months, it was my duty and my pleasure to stand up for this man, and that continued until my very last minutes in his service.  I plead guilty to a badly phrased metaphor.  But I would not - and I did not - intentionally slight, demean or distance myself from the person whom I have come to know, to respect and to believe, as sincerely today as I did when I began, that he should be President of the United States.