Clark’s Snark Is Leaving a Mark

Wow, the negative reax to Wesley “World War III” Clark’s attack on the presidential candidate I refer to as JS3M3 (John Sidney the Mad Maverick McCain III) has legs.

In case you missed it, Clark, described here as “a key military adviser” to the candidate I refer to as Mr. BOOHOO-OUCH (Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi” Obama - Objectively Unfit Coddler of Haters), said the following, among a lot of other really dumb things, on Sunday (vid is at Hot Air; you have to see the whole thing to fully appreciate its awfulness):

Well I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.

CBS’s Bob Schieffer was clearly astonished at what he was hearing.

I thought Hot Air’s Captain Ed was seeing too much when he wrote this on Monday morning:

Not only can every argument Clark made get applied more to Obama than to McCain, he has now made it clear that the Obama strategy is to demean and belittle McCain’s military service — and by extension, military service in general.

But Ed’s instincts sure look dead on. Now I see that Clark won’t back down, and that Obama thinks it’s no big deal (HT Politico):

I guess my question is why, given all the vast numbers of things that we’ve got to work on, that that would be a top priority of mine?

Obama even used that word (”inartful”) that isn’t a word again. That would be the same word he used when he tried to pretend that he really didn’t want to ban handguns in November when he told the Chicago Tribune (last few sentences at link) that he thought the DC gun ban was constitutional (but of course he really does want your guns). The fact that the nutroots think that going after McCain’s service is as great idea should be scant consolation (or is shaking the nutroots’ money tree yet another time that important?).

Now McCain has the clear upper hand in demanding that Obama throw Clark under the bus. If Obama does that, the nutroots go nuts in the wrong way. If he doesn’t, McCain has 120 days or so to hammer Obama’s popular vote percentage into the 30s. As usual, it’s not the action, it’s the reaction.

Anyway, as to the story having legs — I was in a place the Food Police say I shouldn’t be this morning, ordering stuff the Food Police say I shouldn’t eat, watching a TV channel I shouldn’t watch (because watching that TV channel is more dangerous to my health than eating the stuff the Food Police say I shouldn’t eat), watching replays of Wesley Clark “not backing down,” saying the same things he shouldn’t have said the first time in only a slightly different way, while the TV channel I shouldn’t be watching is showing old war footage of John McCain over and over again right next to Clark’s smug mug — footage it probably doesn’t want to show, but it has to because what Clark is saying is so awful that they’re hoping that viewers will watch the footage and stop listening to Clark — but it’s not working, because Clark is stepping in it so deeply that I’m thinking that some really nasty stuff that is even worse for me than the stuff the Food Police says I shouldn’t eat at the place the Food Police say I shouldn’t be in will start flying out of the TV.

And this is on a channel that until now has been notoriously friendly to the point of absurdity towards Obama.

This has legs.

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UPDATE, 5 PM: Oh brother, Jim Webb’s giving it four legs.

UPDATE 2, 5:15 p.m.: An Instapundit blast from the past (early 2004, when Clark was in the midst of his pitiful primary campaign for the Dem presidential nomination) notes that “Clark was urged to retire (from his command in the Balkans) so that they would not need to take the drastic step of formally relieving him.” To Clark this supposedly means that he wasn’t “relieved of his command.” That’s like saying a baseball manager or football coach, told to resign or else be fired, wasn’t really “relieved of his job.” Give me a break.

UPDATE 3, 5:20 p.m.: I like this McCain campaign spokesperson’s quote –

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.

UPDATE 4: Great comment at Ann Althouse’s place– “Do they really want people, going into the 4th of July holiday, to be concentrating on the service and sacrifices of John McCain? Really?” They’ve got it, like it or not.

UPDATE 5: This baby may be growing centipede legs — Powerline has a partial transcript where Clark insists that John Kerry was more qualified than McCain, because Kerry had “the moral courage to stand up for himself and oppose the conflict in Vietnam.” Powerline’s John adds, “…. and falsely accused his fellow servicemen of being war criminals.” By all means, let’s continue to compare.