January 9, 2004
RUNNING HOT IN THE COLD:
With Wes: Devotion and recriminations on the campaign trail. (Rich Lowry, 1/09/04, National Review)
It was one of the strangest things I've ever seen on the campaign trail. A man at a Wes Clark town-hall meeting Thursday night stood up and explained how he had been literally struck speechless upon meeting Clark a few months earlier. He said he had since realized that his tongue-tiedness had been a product of his awe at the fact that Clark is such "a humble, down-to-earth man. [He's] what we need in this country." The crowd applauded. The man continued, explaining that to make up for his earlier reticence he had made Clark a present, a framed picture of Clark with his family so he could better remember them while away campaigning.He approached Clark to give him the picture. Something seemed off. Maybe he was a plant? Or maybe it was a hoax and he was just a canny heckler pulling Clark's leg? One reporter said afterward she thought that maybe the man was going to attack Clark. It turned out to be none of the above — he was just a weirdly devoted Clark fan. There seem to be quite a few of those. Someone else got up and gave a little speech about what a honor it was to have such a man as Wes Clark walking among mere mortals at a New Hampshire high school on a freezing January night (and I mean freezing — it was below zero outside and the water froze inside our press van).
The Clark crowd, as is typical these days, was big — 700 or so, standing room only in the school's big atrium. Clark's apparent New Hampshire momentum may just be a result of the Big Three other candidates' — Dean, Gephardt, and Kerry's — focus on Iowa, meaning there is less competition for New Hampshirites' attention. Or the notoriously fickle New Hampshire voters may just be giving Clark a fleeting second look. But whatever it is, something is happening here, and it's going to be magnified by reporters eager to tout the hot new thing now that Howard Dean seems so last news cycle.
Presumably the General's in Hanover tonight, because every square foot of the town has a lawn sign and there were folks on the street corners, in -10 degree weather, waving them too. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 9, 2004 11:04 PM
Well, if Clark does worse than expected in the New Hampshire primary, his handlers can spin it that most of his supports had pneumonia and were too sick to make it to the polls..
Posted by: John at January 9, 2004 11:53 PMYou people in New Hampshire need to get a life.
Posted by: h-man at January 10, 2004 7:18 AMNew Hampshire delights in making a wreck out of somebody's campaign every 4 years by going against the early frontrunner. Before Perot and McCain were given the NH lift, now Clark is the anointed one.
Does the Iowa caucus take any wind out of New Hampshire's sails because it starts so early? (Uh-oh, this probably qualifies for a metaphor alert).
Posted by: Buttercup at January 10, 2004 7:34 AMI could understand someone being a Gephardt fan, on purely mercenary terms (union membership). I could understand someone being a Kerry fan - the French connection. I could even understand someone being an Edwards fan - the swoon factor. And Kucinich probably has the utter devotion of a few dozen moonbats. But someone this devoted to a general that no one had heard of just 9 months ago? A general who never fought a war (15,000 ft. just doesn't count). It is crazy. How desperate.
There were people devoted to MacArthur back in 1951, but he had been a demi-god since 1916 (in his own mind at least). Perhaps Clark believes the same, although I doubt if MacArthur ever asked an aide to help him answer a question.
Posted by: jim hamlen at January 10, 2004 8:33 AM