TAP: Clark Able?

[Larkspur]

The general-turned-politician could be a bust or a star.
The American Prospect
http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2003/09/tomasky-m-09-17.html

Well, the Pete Dawkins factor has been subdued, at least for now.

While Wesley Clark was deciding whether to run for president, sources who spoke with him tell me that he wrestled mightily with the question of whether he would end up "Dawkinsed." Pete Dawkins, you might recall, was the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in New Jersey in 1988. He was a West Point graduate and a college football star. He was a Vietnam War hero. The New Jersey Republican Party circa 1987 was on the prowl for a strong candidate to take on Democratic incumbent Frank Lautenberg, considered (even then!) a bit long in the tooth and ripe for the picking; New Jersey, a Democratic state since the days of the powerful Jersey City boss Frank Hague, had voted twice for Ronald Reagan and looked very much as if it was ready to vault into the Republican camp. Dawkins' press clippings from around the time of his announcement show us a media that had bought into the Dawkins narrative every step of the way. Several pundits regarded Lautenberg as not much more than a pothole in the path of the mighty Dawkins tank, and they practically had the man sitting in the Oval Office.

Naturally, Lautenberg sailed to victory with 54 percent of the vote. Dawkins finished the campaign heavily in debt and with zero political future. Dawkins and Clark, my sources say, are close friends. So it makes sense that Dawkins' experience would have weighed on Clark's mind these last few weeks.

Dawkins' problem was a simple one: This man who had shown a dazzling aptitude for many difficult pursuits in life just wasn't a very good candidate.
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