Update: The video is now available:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...
Watch him refuse to be talked over, or be ganged up on.
Kudos for Wesley Clark for going after John McCain on his much vaunted "military experience" meme, touted in the TM ad nauseum.
He just finished the interview, but to paraphrase what he had to say this morning, he gave McCain kudos for being a POW, but made it quite clear that McCain has actually never had an executive military background, nor any experience dealing with the complex relationship between military oversight, the inter-relationship with diplomacy, or the important understanding of the region (middle-East) and its complex politics.
He refused to be drawn into discussion of his potential VP status, joking that he was discussing business with Harold Ford Jr., but it was clear that he will now join John Kerry in deconstructing John McCain as the only person who can claim "Commander in Chief" status. He made it clear that Barack Obama is not making claims at all to military expertise, but the fact that McCain is running on that as his sole platform, allows his critics to call his bluff.
Way to Go General Clark!
Maye published a simultaneous diary with a link to HuffPo's Clark article.
McCain Untested and Untried on National Security
"I know he's trying to get traction by seeking to play to what he thinks is his strong suit of national security," Clark said of McCain while speaking from his office in Little Rock, Arkansas. "The truth is that, in national security terms, he's largely untested and untried. He's never been responsible for policy formulation. He's never had leadership in a crisis, or in anything larger than his own element on an aircraft carrier or [in managing] his own congressional staff. It's not clear that this is going to be the strong suit that he thinks it is."
UPDATE:
Newsweek has recently updated its veepstakes piece on Gen. Clark:
Odds: Strong--precisely because he's a Clinton loyalist. Actually, on paper Clark may be the only veep candidate who meets every single one of Obama's requirements--*UPDATE: or at least what experts say Obama needs, politically-speaking, in a second fiddle.* He's white. Check. He's Southern. Check. And he has the two kinds of experience Obama most desperately lacks: military and executive. A Vietnam war hero, McCain will hammer his Democratic rival on national security and insist that the Illinois senator, whose foreign policy resume is painfully short, doesn't have necessary gravitas to serve as Commander in Chief; Clark, who served for 34 years at the Department of Defense and retired as Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO, provides Obama with an effective counterargument. What's more, while McCain fought in a war (and legislated his way through others), Clark boasts what some voters might see as a more relevant resume point given our current situation in Iraq: he actually ran one. (See: the highly effective U.S. intervention in Kosovo--not to mention the fact the Clark, a Rhodes Scholar, finished first in his class at West Point, and McCain finished fifth from last in his class at Annapolis.) In short, Clark would not only help Obama blunt McCain's major line of attack but also give him a leg up on some key military matters (while adding a dash of administrative competence to boot). And like Obama, Clark was against the Iraq war from the start.
http://www.blog.newsweek.com/...