I'm not sure how many of you drive down Route 10 on a regular basis -- I myself am only lucky enough to make a Wal-Mart run on the occasions when I can successfully bribe a car owner to drive me there and back, so my familiarity with the sights in between here and West Lebanon is limited, at best. However, one week this fall on a Friday afternoon joyride I noticed a house one block south of Dorrance Street with a Dean sign so large and prominently displayed I couldn't help but remember it.
If you've been down Route 10 lately, you'll immediately say, "What are you talking about? There's no huge Dean sign." And when you say so, you'll be right. My friends, the Howard Dean house is now a Wesley Clark house. I can only assume that the explanation for this change is that the residents in question, for one reason or another, felt they could no longer support Howard Dean. So they switched to Clark. See the sign for illustration. This makes me happy, because I myself am a big Clark supporter, but it also evidences a growing phenomenon around the country. General Clark is the anti- "Anti-Bush."
Democrats all over the country are starting to crescendo their doubts about Howard Dean. What once was a whisper has now escalated to a noticeable hum, like the whirring of a radiator in Dartmouth Hall that just won't be ignored no matter how hard the class tries. Dean is angry and abrasive, his quick tongue gets him into more trouble than it gets him out of, and he's far to the left of the average American voter. He won't beat Bush, and more and more Democrats are starting to realize it. But rather than throwing in the towel and starting countdown calendars until 2008, many Democrats are jumping the Dean ship for a likelier candidate.
Clark is a four-star general and served as the supreme Allied Commander of NATO forces throughout the war in Kosovo (a war where not a single American soldier's life was lost). He is, in a oft-quoted early campaign summary, "pro-choice pro-affirmative action pro-environment, pro-education, pro-health care and pro-labor." He proposes to create more jobs, enable health insurance for 30 million uninsured Americans, repeal Bush's tax cuts for wealthiest Americans, send one million more people to college, and clean up the air. Aside from the four-star general bit, he sounds like everyone else.
But Wesley Clark is also a Rhodes Scholar, a Vietnam veteran, an economics professor and a family man with an actually visible family. (Where is Judith, Dean's wife, on the campaign trail?) He is from Little Rock, Ark., and he likes Outkast. A lot. I don't expect this last biography note to win over the general public, and I'd also like to add that Wesley Clark is not like every other candidate -- go to his website, read his stances, his job proposal is extremely impressive and he knows his foreign policy -- but what I am trying to get across is that Clark is becoming the Dean alternative for a reason.
Clark appeals where Dean does not, and he appeals more than any other candidate running. He has Kerry's veteran status and erudite appeal, Edwards' southern-ness and more momentum than Lieberman, Gephardt, and the rest combined. He's managed to stand strongly (albeit after initial wavering) against the Iraq debacle with the policy experience to back up his comments and without Dean's trademark irascibility. He's for civil unions, but no conservative can actually stand against him on the issue. He's a believable moderate, an appealing quality to a lot of undecided voters, but true Democrats, read his proposals and be calmed. His resume is both impressive and comprehensible -- the accomplishments of a general are more easily understood than those of a New England governor. And he smiles.
I don't like being the person that pulls the emphasis away from the issues, but I've adopted the attitude that compromising on small points is better than compromising another four years to the current administration. Clark is not the idealist's candidate, but politics is not the idealist's game. Clark is gaining popularity because people realize he is a good Democrat and the best candidate, not the other way around. Zealous New Hampshire voters with eight by four foot signs in their front yards have always been the first indicators, and this example is no exception: look for signs, poll numbers and votes to start switching sides.
