Barack Obama “had nothing to do” with Gen. Wesley Clark’s curt dismissal of John McCain‘s military record, the retired Army officer wants everyone to know.
“I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president,” Clark said of McCain on “Face the Nation” – and then repeated it on several nationally broadcast venues.
But Obama’s not about to stop using Clark as a campaign surrogate. Nor is the onetime NATO commander about to retract his remarks about the man who spent five years as a prisoner of war.
What a far cry from four years ago – when Wesley Clark was denouncing criticism of John Kerry by groups supporting President Bush.
“In the heat of a political campaign,” wrote Clark in a New York Times op-ed, “attacks come from all directions.
“Although President Bush has not engaged personally in such accusations, he has done nothing to stop others from making them. I believe those who didn’t serve . . . should have the decency to respect those who did serve.”
Now, it might be easy to dismiss Clark’s comments as a pathetic attempt to stay politically revelant.
But Clark is the eighth prominent Democrat and Obama supporter to throw darts at McCain’s military service.
They include Sen. Jay Rockefeller, who derided McCain as someone who “dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet” and thus doesn’t “care about the lives of people.”
Obama foreign-policy advisor Rand Beers said McCain’s having spent five years as a prisoner of war in the Hanoi Hilton left him “isolated” from anti-war sentiment, meaning his national-security viewpoint is “sadly limited.”
Sen. Tom Harkin complained that McCain can be “pretty dangerous” because his views come from “always having been in the military.”
Of course, these remarks are always predicated with the line that “we honor his service.”
Baloney.
As a McCain spokesman said, “If this kind of wink-and-nod game is how Barack Obama wants to run his campaign, then fine. But spare us the empty talk of ‘new politics’ and raising the dialogue in this country.”