E-Mail This Article to a Friend General dynamics Democratic presidential contender Wesley Clark is gaining support among both traditional liberals and more independent centrists. Can he bring them together, especially now that Saddam is under arrest? BY ADAM REILLY

EVEN BEFORE Saddam Hussein’s capture this weekend, buzz was building among the political cognoscenti that Retired General Wesley Clark would emerge as the anti–Howard Dean. Al Gore’s surprise endorsement of the former Vermont governor last week solidified Dean’s status as the candidate to beat — and, in a weird way, may also have helped Clark. An Associated Press analysis of the race after Gore’s endorsement noted that Dean is now saddled with the burden of increased expectations. Therefore, if Clark finishes strong in next month’s New Hampshire primary, he can claim victory even if Dean wins. Also last week, Chuck Todd, editor-in-chief of the Hotline, pegged Clark as the candidate with the best chance of stopping Dean, arguing that Clark, as the field’s only non-politician, can present an outsider message that surpasses Dean’s. And in the blogosphere, Talking Points Memo’s Joshua Micah Marshall argued that Gore’s endorsement will help Clark by making it harder for Dick Gephardt and John Kerry to win in Iowa and New Hampshire, respectively, hastening the advent of a Dean-Clark race.

Now that Saddam’s post-capture dental exam and lice check have replayed endlessly on television, Clark’s ascent to the number-two spot seems even more likely. While this high-profile victory for Bush doesn’t help any of the Democrats who’ve criticized the war, it should have less of an impact on Clark, who has stellar military credentials, than on Dean, even though both candidates aggressively opposed the Iraq campaign. And, with Saddam in custody, Paula Zahn of CNN turned to Clark for his opinion on What It All Means. After all, the retired general was at The Hague this week testifying in the war-crimes trial of former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic. (In 1999, as supreme allied commander of NATO, Clark paved the way for Milosevic’s ouster by leading the bombing campaign that drove Serbian troops from Kosovo.) Who better to talk about what the future holds for Saddam than Clark? On CNN, Clark argued that the process by which Saddam is brought to justice will be tremendously important — "It’s not only that justice has to be done, it has to be perceived to have been done" — and touted Milosevic’s ouster as proof that Saddam could have been deposed using a more multilateral approach. It all adds up to a nice media bounce for the former NATO commander, who is more likely to benefit from the flurry of excitement associated with Saddam’s capture than any of the other Democrats running for president. And that would make Clark the strongest contender to challenge Dean after the latter steamrolls over everyone else in Iowa and New Hampshire next month — as most expect he will.

OF COURSE, we’ve heard that before. Even before he officially declared his candidacy on September 17, Clark was being touted as the anti-Dean, the one candidate who could halt the former Vermont governor’s march toward the Democratic nomination and give the Democrats an advantage on national-security issues in 2004. To anyone who’d heard Clark critique the war in Iraq or deconstruct the Republicans’ presumed monopoly on patriotism, the suggestion was plausible. Clark was intelligent and articulate, capable of criticizing President George W. Bush and his administration just as effectively as Dean, but without Dean’s shrillness. His biography — first in his class at West Point, Rhodes scholar, decorated Vietnam War veteran, former four-star general — was icing on the cake. There was only one caveat: Clark couldn’t afford to falter. "He’ll need to hit the ground running, with the finest pair of sneakers you’ve ever seen," Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore’s campaign in 2000, told Salon just before Clark declared.

But Clark did falter. Again and again. One day after joining the Democratic field, he tarnished his anti-war credentials by admitting that he "probably" would have voted for the congressional resolution authorizing President George W. Bush to use force in Iraq. In the same in-flight interview, conducted en route from Clark’s hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas, to Florida, the candidate mentioned that he’d "probably" voted for Richard Nixon in 1972, definitely voted for Reagan in 1980, and only started considering himself a Democrat in 1992. In his first debates, he looked nervously earnest rather than charismatic or commanding. Like Joe Lieberman, another candidate failing to live up to high expectations, Clark decided to bypass the Iowa caucuses. And, for good measure, he voiced support for a proposed constitutional amendment banning flag-burning.

Despite all this, however, the notion of Clark as the anti-Dean never really died. It just dropped out of the headlines for a few months. Now, in the wake of Gore’s endorsement of Dean, it’s back with a vengeance. (One caveat: all interviews for this article were conducted before Saddam Hussein’s capture.) Most significant is the near-unanimous belief that the Gore endorsement hurts Clark less than it does his biggest rivals. Here’s the rationale: if Congressman Dick Gephardt flops in Iowa, a state that’s contiguous with his home state of Missouri and where he enjoys considerable support, his campaign can’t recover. Ditto for Kerry in New Hampshire, despite his campaign’s belated and unconvincing attempts to minimize expectations there. By improving Dean’s chances in each of those states, Gore’s endorsement makes it more likely that Gephardt and Kerry will sustain fatal blows before January draws to a close. Clark, meanwhile, isn’t facing comparable pressure. While he needs to do well on February 3 — the day Arizona, Delaware, Missouri, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Carolina hold their primaries — he isn’t facing any imminent must-win battles.

Of course, it’s too early to count out Lieberman, whose stock may actually have risen following Gore’s Dean endorsement. A Newsweek poll of Democrats nationwide in the wake of the Gore endorsement showed Lieberman’s support moving from eight percent to 12 percent as Clark’s dropped from 15 to 12 percent. The two were tied for second, well behind Dean, who jumped from 16 to 24 percent. And then there’s the potential effect that Saddam’s capture may have on Lieberman, who lacks Clark’s military credentials but has distinguished himself in the Democratic field as a consistent and vocal supporter of the Iraq war. Lieberman didn’t hesitate to use Saddam’s capture as a way to attack the anti-war Dean, stating that "if Howard Dean had his way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power today, not in prison, and the world would be a more dangerous place."

But Clark has something else working in his favor that the other candidates (Dean excluded) lack: the big mo, as in momentum. The buzz coming from Clark’s Little Rock headquarters has the general pulling in a massive amount of cash between October 1 and December 31 — possibly as much as $12 million. George Shelton — a Democratic political consultant at the Washington, DC, firm of Strother Duffy Strother, which is unaffiliated with any Democratic candidate — says that if that figure is accurate, Clark will be poised to lock down the second spot in the Democratic field. "I’m hearing that Clark is going to pull in really, really strong numbers — very Dean-like numbers — and that most of that will be through the Internet," Shelton says. (Dean, whose success raising huge amounts of money via small donations made largely through the Internet has been the great story of the campaign to date, set a Democratic record by raising $14.8 million in the third quarter.) "If that comes to pass, I think certainly it would make it more and more like a two-person race." When Clark officially entered the race, after being egged on by the widespread and Internet-driven Draft Clark movement, his campaign’s new hierarchy alienated numerous Draft Clark activists by failing to make room for them in the official Clark organization — and it seemed like Dean would remain the only candidate with a substantial advantage on the Web. Now, though, the Internet again seems to be working in Clark’s favor.

It’s worth noting that fourth-quarter fundraising reports aren’t due at the Federal Election Commission until January 31, four days after the New Hampshire primary. Still, there are ways to gauge whether the hype around Clark’s fundraising is for real. "One way to test that will be to see if he’s buying ads in those February 3 states, to see the extent of his media buy," says Elaine Kamarck, a lecturer in public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and Al Gore’s senior policy adviser in 2000. "What we don’t know is if this fundraising stuff is real, or whether it’s kind of a campaign tactic designed to create the sense he’s going someplace."

Meanwhile, the big mo behind Clark’s campaign extends to his standing in New Hampshire. Some polls show that he may be gaining in the Granite State. A Boston Globe/WBZ-TV poll released December 14 has Clark running a reasonably strong third among likely New Hampshire voters with 13 percent support, close to Kerry (at 19 percent) but further from Dean (who finished with 42 percent). And a Zogby poll of likely New Hampshire primary voters released on December 3 showed Clark increasing his support from six percent in October to nine percent. This puts him third, and within striking distance of Kerry, who saw his support drop from 17 percent to 12 percent.

There’s yet another reason for the renewed Clark buzz. Around the time Clark jumped into the race, conventional wisdom held that Dean’s candidacy both reflected a split in the Democratic Party between a populist-insurgent wing (led by Dean) and an establishment dominated by Bill and Hillary Clinton, and served as a catalyst for it. Some analysts detected ideological friction between unabashed liberalism and Democratic Leadership Council–style centrism. Others, noting that reports of Dean’s own liberalism have been greatly exaggerated, argued that the schism was more about party control than ideas. But almost everyone agreed that the establishment, whatever its defining characteristic, would eventually unite behind one candidate in a final effort to derail Dean. The fact that Clark consulted both Clintons before entering the race — and that Bill Clinton cited Clark and his wife as the "two stars" of the Democratic Party — made it seem likely the Clintonites would eventually get behind Clark. Now that Gore’s endorsement has increased the air of inevitability around Dean’s candidacy, the argument goes, the establishment’s going to spring into action and mobilize behind its candidate of choice — and that candidate is Wesley Clark, Clinton’s fellow Arkansan, fellow Rhodes scholar, and fellow centrist.

Part or all of this argument makes sense to many Democrats. William Mayer, a Northeastern University political scientist and editor of The Making of the Presidential Candidates 2004 (Rowman & Littlefield), believes large numbers of Democrats resent the direction the party took under the leadership of the Clintons and their allies. Boston College political scientist Marc Landy, co-author of Presidential Greatness (University Press of Kansas), views Gore’s endorsement in terms of a Clinton-Gore split, suggesting that "it kind of boxes in the Clintons," who he believes back Clark but won’t formally endorse him. And Democratic consultant Michael Goldman describes Clark as "clearly a Clinton guy." It also makes sense to Republicans. "The Clark camp is essentially the Clintons, and Gore is now with Dean," Republican analyst Cheri Jacobus says. "So it’s clear that there’s a divide in the Democratic Party which has little to do with Dean and Clark and more to do with Al Gore and Clinton about who will be the standard-bearer for the party.... Since the Clark camp has Clintonites on board, I’m not at all surprised they’re trying to put forth Clark as the viable alternative to Dean."

That said, personnel with connections to Clinton and Gore are sprinkled throughout the various Democratic campaigns. "There are Clinton people in all these camps, just as there are Gore people in all these camps," Kamarck says — noting, for example, that Steve Grossman, the national Democratic Party chair under Clinton, is a prominent Dean fundraiser. In addition to Grossman, Anthony Lake, Clinton’s former national-security adviser, is also working with Dean. And former Gore spokesperson Chris Lehane is now a Clark strategist. But as for Clinton and Gore themselves, it’s hard to question the conclusion — arrived at by the likes of political commentator John Ellis — that in this race at this time, Dean is the stand-in for Gore while Clark is the stand-in for Clinton. In discussing the impact of Gore’s endorsement of Dean, Ellis wrote last week: "If Dean loses, Gore will be the rightful heir to the Dean apparatus; the single most impressive fundraising and organizing operation in Democratic Party politics. He’ll inherit the only network that is capable of competing with and defeating the Clinton network, which it has by proxy in the Dean v. Clark competition." And there’s no question that this surrogate "Clinton v. Gore" dynamic helps Clark by giving him a potent ally — even if the former president hasn’t officially endorsed him — that the other candidates lack.

IN ALL THE discussion about Clark’s position as the anti-Dean in the wake of Gore’s endorsement — discussion that has only heated up with the capture of Saddam Hussein — the missing piece is talk of the vice-presidency. Dean reportedly tried to keep Clark out of the race by tempting him with the VP slot. For many Democrats, a Dean-Clark ticket is a dream come true, since Clark could help Dean with Southern voters and give him sorely needed credibility on foreign policy. Clark obviously rebuffed Dean’s original entreaties; he’s in the race. And in an interview with Salon published Monday, Clark pretty much ruled out the VP option once again. "I don’t think the Democratic Party can win without carrying a heavy experience in national-security affairs into the campaign," he told the online magazine last week. "And that experience can’t be in a vice-president." If that wasn’t clear enough, Clark added that a Dean-Clark ticket "won’t work."

In that case, it looks like Clark’s planning to go for broke in the primaries. That means his most realistic option is to emerge as a John McCain–like opposition figure as the primaries play out. The comparison runs deeper than the mere fact that Clark’s position as the number-two candidate parallels McCain’s in 2000. McCain’s strength came from his appeal to independent voters. Clark’s ultimate fate may be decided in states like New Hampshire, where undeclared voters can register as Democrats immediately before voting in the primary, or Missouri, where the primary is open to voters from all parties. (Of the states participating in the February 3 primaries, only Delaware restricts its primary to voters already registered as Democrats.) Northeastern’s Mayer argues that Clark’s Republican voting record and on-the-record paeans to the Bush administration have effectively doomed him with Democratic primary voters. "I’m working on an analysis of primary exit polls from past elections, and one of the things I’m struck by is the fact that, at some level, the party faithful distinguish between guys who are really party loyalists and the guys whose loyalty to the party or to the party’s dominant ideology is suspect," Mayer says. "I just can’t imagine that Clark does very well with the party faithful, the hard-core Democrats. Yeah, there’s a small little constituency there that says, ‘We’re vulnerable on [national security].’ But that doesn’t seem to be a winning issue with most people. I just think that when push comes to shove, Clark will have trouble convincing a lot of Democrats he’s reliable enough to support for this job."

There’s no question that Clark could appeal to the same independents who flocked to McCain’s campaign in 2000. Indeed, both Dean and Clark are bringing new people into the party, Democratic consultant Shelton asserts — but while Dean appeals to lefties and former Ralph Nader voters, "Clark pulls them more from the center to the right." If Clark could successfully woo those voters while appealing to the disenchanted Democratic base, he’d be a force to be reckoned with. But whether Clark can actually bring those two camps together remains to be seen.

Adam Reilly can be reached at areilly[a]phx.com