General decides to wait for battle

Wesley Clark, the retired four-star general and former Nato supreme allied commander, took a strategic decision soon after becoming the last candidate to join the race for the Democratic nomination. He would not compete in Iowa, but, instead, lead his first assault in next week’s New Hampshire primary.

We still do not know how wise a calculation that was. But he does seem to have got one thing wrong: as his poll numbers surged in the past two weeks, he predicted the New Hampshire derby would come to down to himself versus Howard Dean.

That two-horse race is not to be, after John Kerry’s upset in Iowa and John Edwards’ strong showing. “I don’t know what to call it now,” he conceded yesterday.

But he does have the comfort of knowing that his campaigning style of recent weeks seems to have paid off. The tactic has been to emphasise the man over the general. In fact, diluting the image of a man of war seems to have been his primary mission. This is a candidate, after all, whose most high-profile endorsement has come from Madonna.
Source: The Indipendent