General Wesley Clark is McCain and the GOP’s worst nightmare:  a military man with more experience and rank than McCain and a military man who himself came home as a hero on a stretcher from Vietnam.  And more: a person of honor himself, General Clark is an articulate spokesman for the truth who cannot be backed down from the traditional GOP tactics of characterizing a perfectly honest and correct assessment of their candidate’s qualifications as an attack on the character of their candidate and thus counter-attacking by smearing the character of the messenger. 

General Wesley has never attacked the character of John McCain.  He only dared to question the claim that being shot down over Vietnam qualifies any one for the office of the presidency.  Last night on MSNBC’s Dan Abrams show, General Wesley Clark was a 30 minute free advertisement for Obama.  It was great.  As much as Abrams tried the traditional Republican tactics of twisting the words of another to suit their purposes, he could not twist the truth of what General Wesley Clark was saying.

The truth is very simple.  The McCain campaign is trying to take the history of McCain’s status as a war hero and turn that into the supreme qualifying factor for him to be President of the United States of America.  General Wesley Clark is very successfully and articulately questioning—not John McCain’s character or his status as a war hero, but rather that such an experience automatically qualifies one to have the right judgment and make the right decisions in the Oval office.  In addition, Wesley Clark struck another blow against the status of a war hero by pointing out that being a war hero is not the only act that qualifies someone for noble actions.  Passing by the opportunity for a lucrative law practice to serve poor people on the South side of Chicago is another example of selfless behavior. 

Judging from their continued attacks on General Wesley Clark, the Republicans still are not heeding the words of Newt Gingrich, one of the leaders of their party.   After the Republicans resounding defeat to the Democrats in four special elections for congressional seats this year (and in all of which the Republicans tried their typical smear tactics) Newt Gingrich got it.  He told the GOP that the traditional Rovian campaign tactics are not going to work this year.  It would seem, however, that the Republican have not gotten the message.