Making his assault on the presidency

Profile Wesley Clark - four-star general with an eye to the White House The CV of the newest Democratic Party candidate to challenge…

Profile Wesley Clark - four-star general with an eye to the White HouseThe CV of the newest Democratic Party candidate to challenge George Bush should appeal to an America at war, writes Conor O'Clery, North America Editor

He's from Little Rock, he's a native son of Arkansas, he's a Rhodes scholar, he's a Democrat and he's running for president. But there all comparisons with Bill Clinton come to an end.

Wesley Clark is austere and cool rather than passionate and gregarious. He is as precise as Bill Clinton is indisciplined. He is one of America's most distinguished officers, a retired four-star general and former NATO supreme allied commander for Europe who fought in Vietnam while Clinton was avoiding the draft and protesting against the war.

General Clark today makes a strong candidate to be the nation's commander-in-chief in an America at war. "I've been there and done that in the national-security field," he says. "I have written the policies and led the troops."

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He also has the benefit of being well known. Clark was used frequently on CNN as a commentator in the run-up to the Iraq war. His was a lone and prescient military voice, warning that Americans were being deceived into supporting an unnecessary war - one that would have a messy and deadly aftermath - against an enemy incapable of posing a serious threat.

The telegenic, handsome general has always shown a liking for the camera. During his time commanding NATO's successful US-led operation in Kosovo he appeared so often on screen that William Cohen, Clinton's defence secretary, reportedly told him: "Get your f***ing face off TV."

But Clark did not annoy Cohen and the top brass simply because he came over well on the networks. His push for the use of ground troops and Apache attack helicopters in Kosovo infuriated a Pentagon that had been spooked by losing an elite force in the "Black Hawk down" fiasco in Mogadishu and could not bear the thought of more US military casualties.

Although his Balkan operation was hailed as a huge success, it included some hairy moments during which he showed risky judgment. Clark was overruled by British commander Sir Michael Jackson when he wanted to deploy 500 British and French paratroopers at Pristina airport, just as the Russians were rushing to get there first. Jackson reportedly told him: "I'm not going to start the third World War for you."

The much-decorated general was in the end dumped by the Pentagon in 2000, in a manoeuvre presented to President Clinton as a routine staff reshuffle. He was fired in the classical manner; that is, he heard of it in a telephone call from the Washington Post. It was a devastating blow to the ambitious soldier.

In his account of the shafting of Clark in his book War In A Time Of Peace, David Halberstam described it as a public rebuke of unparalleled proportions, administered because "his superiors and peers did not merely dislike him, they hated him".

Clinton, who was said to have been angry about what happened, awarded Clark the Presidential Medal of Freedom a year later to compensate for allowing himself to be blindsided.

The people around Clark feel Clinton now owes the dismissed general big time. And indeed what goes around comes around. Clark is the darling of the Clinton political set. The former president recently remarked that there are only two stars in the Democratic Party: his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Clark.

The two men have known each other since their days in Arkansas. They were never close, nor did they overlap as Rhodes scholars at Oxford, but as small-time boys who made it big in Washington they had a certain kinship, according to Halberstam.

Both, coincidentally, bear the surnames of their stepfathers. Clark was born Wesley Kanne in Chicago, but his Jewish father, Benjamin, a lawyer and a Democrat, died when Wesley was four. His mother, Veneta, a Protestant from Arkansas, went to live with her parents in Little Rock, where she later married a banker named Victor Clark. Wesley was raised a Baptist and converted to Catholicism in Vietnam. He learned only late in life that he is half-Jewish. He is married to Gert Clark and they have one son, also Wesley, who lives in New York.

After high school in Little Rock Clark went to the United States Military Academy at West Point, where in 1966 he graduated first in his class. On his scholarship he earned a master's degree in philosophy, politics and economics. In Vietnam, as the 26-year-old commander of an infantry unit, he was caught up in an exchange of fire with the Viet Cong that left him wounded in four places - hand, shoulder, leg and hip - and in need of a year of rehabilitation. He was awarded a Silver Star and a Purple Heart. Later, as he advanced through the ranks, he was sent for a time to serve as an aide to Al Haig at the Reagan White House, an episode that may have given him a taste for politics.

The high point of a brilliant military career came in 1997, when he was appointed NATO's supreme allied commander for Europe and commander-in-chief of the US European command. His campaign biography claims his leadership of Operation Allied Force rescued 1.5 million Albanians from ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. The British and French made him a knight and a commander of the Legion of Honour.

Since being forced to hang up his uniform Clark has written a best-seller called Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, And The Future Of Combat. He has embarked on a career as an investment banker and public speaker. He is currently chairman of Wesley K. Clark & Associates, a strategic advisory and consulting firm, and heads WaveCrest Laboratories, which is working on an electric motor that Clark enthuses about.

In post-9/11 America the newest Democratic candidate's military record is important, as many analysts say Americans will want to elect a wartime president. Among his nine rivals for the nomination only Bob Kerry saw action in Vietnam. (President Bush served in the Texas National Guard during the Vietnam War and didn't turn up for much of his training.) Whether his resumé will allow him to follow in the footsteps of 11 other generals - the most recent being Dwight Eisenhower - who have made it to the White House will now depend on his abilities not as a soldier but as a politician. Voters will want to know about, and want to be impressed by, his economic proposals.

Clark is critical of the deficit and Bush's tax cuts but has to master complex popular issues such as healthcare, on which the other candidates have been cutting their teeth for months. As a dove on Iraq he will also face awkward questions about his hawkishness on Kosovo.

Another big question hangs over his candidacy: is he a natural? He is undoubtedly an impressive figure, wowing audiences at presentations. He is a fine soldier and a successful businessman. But he will have to show he is a plausible politician too. He has this in common with Bill Clinton, that both are talented and driven and have to be first in their class. Now he will have to become just a little bit more like Clinton to get himself elected.

But that he was destined for great things was never doubted by those who came in contact with Clark during his early career. In 1981 the Washington Post ran a profile of the rising military star. The headline? "If there's a World War III, Wes Clark may be your man at the front."

TheClarkFile

Who is he? Wesley Clark, former supreme allied commander for Europe of NATO

Why in the news? He has declared he is running for the White House in 2004 as a Democratic candidate

Most appealing characteristic Looks great in uniform

Least appealing characteristic Has to be first in everything

Most likely to say I have shown I can lead

Least likely to say I know nothing about the economy