Democrat focuses on domestic issues

Monday, December 08, 2003

By Maeve Reston, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. -- In an effort to convince voters that he has the domestic policy credentials to be president, Democratic candidate retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark plans to roll out a series of specific goals for his presidency this week so voters could hold him accountable if he were to become president.

	Wesley Clark will detail domestic goals this week. Related article Dean goes South to try new strategy attacking Bush Road to the White House

Clark said in a conference call with reporters yesterday that he would announce five domestic targets this week for a potential Clark presidency:

to raise family income by $3,000

to create environmental protections that will save 100,000 people from premature death by 2020.

to increase college enrollment by 1 million students.

to lift 2 million children out of poverty.

to extend healthcare to 30 million Americans without coverage.

Campaign aides said he would release details of the plans in stops in New Hampshire, New York City and Tennessee this week.

The campaign also will air a new ad in New Hampshire this week that attempts to present Clark as a leader who would be more accountable to the American people. Though Clark does not mention President Bush by name in the ad, he says America needs to get back to the principle that it's the duty of government leaders "to look out for the people they lead, not just for themselves."

The ad is the latest in a glossy series of black and white ads that focus on Clark's biography, his sense of duty to the country and his decorated service as an Army officer for 34 years and his role of NATO supreme commander over Europe in the late 1990s. (The ads can be viewed at www.clark04.com)

Clark senior adviser Chris Lehane said yesterday the campaign had the financial footing to remain on air through the primaries with ads in New Hampshire, which will hold the first state primary on Jan. 27, and Arizona, Oklahoma and South Carolina, states that will hold primaries on Feb. 3 and where the Clark campaign is focusing much of its energy.

Lehane said the campaign will raise $12 million to $13 million in the fund-raising quarter ending

Dec. 31. Clark raised nearly $3.5 million in the few weeks before the end of the third fund-raising quarter after he announced his bid for the presidency on Sept. 17 in his hometown of Little Rock, Ark.. Joe Trippi, the campaign manager for former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who shattered records by raising $14.8 million last quarter, said Friday that the Dean campaign would raise over $10 million by the end of this quarter.

Clark appears to be gaining support in New Hampshire and South Carolina polls, while support for candidates like Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry has dropped. He is now in a statistical dead heat with Kerry for second place in New Hampshire and jockeying for first place in South Carolina. North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and Connecticut Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, who have been campaigning heavily in New Hampshire, have been unable to break out of single digits. But Dean still holds a wide lead in the Granite state. He is now supported by more than 40 percent of the respondents in most New Hampshire polls.

But many Democratic New Hampshire voters continue to say they need to hear more details about Clark's domestic policy ideas. He draws large crowds to his events, as he did in Exeter, N.H. last week, but voters like 58-year old Andrew G. Woolf of Brentwood, N.H. are still leaving Clark's events unconvinced.

"He sounds like a Democrat at least, and he says things we agree with," said Woolf, in what was hardly an endorsement of the four-star general after listening to him take questions at Philips Exeter Academy.

"Am I impressed?" he paused and looked at his wife. "I'm not disappointed."

Woolf said he appreciated Clark's experience in foreign policy but was concerned that Clark's focus had been narrowed by his military experience.

"Being a military man I think it's hard for him to think outside the box and have a vision of a world that doesn't have war and the military," said Woolf, a community college professor. "I noticed here that he didn't speak much in terms of the word. We're in a dangerous world, we have to keep up with the military, so that's to be expected, but that's not my viewpoint. He wasn't quite as idealistic as he might have been."

Part of the ambivalence among voters may also be a response to Clark himself, who doesn't always seem as though he's fully embraced the idea of being a presidential candidate.

When asked to explain his decision to run for president at Exeter, he made his decision sound more like a duty than a willful act: "For me this was a call to service. I had fifty or sixty thousand people in the draft movement and a lot of very prominent Americans who more or less demanded that I present myself," he said.

"The clinching argument was delivered by my son. My wife was a little concerned . . . and said 'Don't you think we've done enough?' And my son said, 'Mom, you can't say that. This family has always stood for public service.' "

Then Clark seemed to cast himself in the role of rescuer of the Democratic Party.

"It's not something I worked for all my life, it's not something I planned and plotted for," he said, in an implicit jab at candidates like Kerry and Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt.

"I'm here because I think America's in trouble and I think we're going to be running in 2004 in an election in which the president is going to unscrupulously use national security, patriotism and the American flag to try and crush the Democratic Party and he's going to try to crush the democratic spirit. I'm running because that must not happen."

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