Two statements over the weekend should have brought everyone supporting Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark to a standstill. They certainly made the rest of the country raise an eyebrow. The first was Clark’s claim that another contender asked him to be the second slot on his ticket and the second was his proposal of how he would have gone about capturing Osama bin Laden. After hearing these two statements it would have to be said that anyone who would vote for Clark either has an IQ of below normal or the attention span of a gnat.

In an interview on ABC’s This Week, Clark eluded to a one-on-one conversation with Howard Dean that had Dean asking Clark to fill the number two spot on the ticket should Dean become the Democratic candidate for president of the United States. For the record Clark declined, as all candidates would do this early in the fray. Later on in the same broadcast, Dean’s campaign manager Joe Trippi, set the record straight and rebuked Clark’s claim stating that such a conversation never took place. Clark’s campaign manager responded that Trippi wouldn’t have known about it as it took place in a private conversation between the two candidates.

Now, there are a few things that should raise eyebrows with this scenario.

The first, it would seem highly unlikely that a candidate’s campaign manager wouldn’t be privy to the content of a conversation with such an important issue as the topic for discussion. The selection of a number two on a presidential ticket is normally something the senior staff and the candidate discuss quite thoroughly before any decision is made primarily because the wrong choice can cost a candidate the election.

The second point to raise an eyebrow is that to date no primary has taken place. Because of this it would be highly unlikely that any candidate would be positioning him or herself so arrogantly. Even the arrogance of the Dean campaign wouldn’t afford them the handicap of placing themselves in this position so early in the race. A display of overconfidence such as this would be a detriment and would almost certainly open the floodgates to a barrage of criticism from his fellow candidates, criticism that would only have to be piled on top of the criticism he is already receiving from his disfigured foreign policy.

It can only be surmised that the Clark campaign is hedging its bets and trying to place the idea of a Dean/Clark ticket in the minds of the Democratic faithful even before a single primary vote has been cast. When one thinks about it the move is quite Clintonian. On the other hand the thought of a Dean/Clark ticket brings to mind a Second City Theater styled parody of the NBC show West Wing. It would be entertaining but after the first year the ratings would sag.

The second issue that was brought to the forefront this weekend was Wesley Clark’s grand plan for capturing Osama bin Laden. He approached the subject by saying, "If I'd been president, I would have had Osama bin Laden by this time." Of course, Clark being Clark, he shared with us the vagueness of his grand and secret plan, positioned just up his sleeve, by not elaborating on it at all. He then threw in some interesting criticism of President Bush’s approach. In traditional Clark form it was quite amusing.

"This administration didn't have the heart to put the effort and the innovation and the ingenuity into fighting terror," Clark said. He continued by saying he "wouldn't have been afraid to try" to kill the al Qaeda leader had he been President in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. With this statement I am sure bin Laden is breathing a sigh of relief that Clark wasn’t Commander in Chief in the aftermath of September 11th. After all, President Bush didn’t respond with anything that could have possibly been misconstrued as a coordinated military response. Just ask the Taliban leaders who didn’t have their enclaves completely leveled…oh, that’s right, there aren’t any.

Clark’s claim that not enough has been done to capture Osama bin Laden is laughable and that laughter would be coming from all over the world including old foes and the men and women of our military.

Here we have the former head of NATO forces who was dismissed from his post by the Pentagon for, as former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs under Bill Clinton, Hugh Shelton put it, "integrity and character issues”, claiming to be able to catch the most abetted terrorist of all time. Perhaps we should ask Radovan Karadzic, former president of the Bosnian-Serbs, and Ratko Mladic, the former head of the Bosnian-Serb Army, the two most wanted men in the world pre-September 11th for their acts of aggression and genocide, if Clark possesses an incredible ability to capture the world’s most wanted individuals. They would know, if only for the fact that in 1994, when Clark was a three-star general, he met with Mladic despite warnings from the State Department "not to meet with Serb officials suspected of ordering the deaths of civilians.” Between acts of genocide Mladic and Clark drank wine, exchanged gifts and even had pictures taken together where they jovially exchanged hats. It would seem that Clark’s "killer instinct” was missing from display during these brutal confrontations. Or perhaps his "killer instinct” really isn’t that "killer” at all, in light of the fact that the two Bosnian-Serb leaders are still at large today.

Clark went on to generalize, as he is prone to do, that if he were president he would have done everything that he could have done and done it really, really, well, in order to get Osama bin Laden. This is comforting. It is nice to know if Clark were to be elected president we wouldn’t be giving bin Laden the pass that President Bush is giving him today. Certainly, as bin Laden sits in his lavish palace atop the pristine mountains on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, he cringes at the thought of drinking wine, exchanging gifts and perhaps getting to wear Clark’s hat. With a strategy like that it is a wonder why bin Laden hasn’t surrendered just because Clark is in the race!

Once again, Wesley Clark has pulled a page from the Clinton playbook by simply issuing an edict for change. His proposals, if one can call them that, lack any substance whatsoever. He purposely avoids mapping out details while he continues to spout his cant about the expertise he would bring to the White House, the same expertise that found him relieved of his command at NATO.

While Clark continues to be entertaining, the sparkling shine of his "here I come to save the day” candidacy is giving way to the reality of it: Wesley Clark is an inferior candidate with a sub-standard political ability who has fallen quite far from his glory days at West Point. At this juncture one has to wonder if he still receives Christmas cards from his Alma Mater. Of course, he probably wouldn’t care depending on who his wine drinking buddies are these days. As for his supporters, it would seem they are just drinking too much wine altogether.

Frank Salvato is a political media consultant and the managing editor for The New Media Journal.us. He is a contributing writer for The Washington Dispatch, GOPUSA, OpinionEditorials, Men’s News Daily, Canada Free Press & AmericanDaily. His pieces are regularly featured in Townhall.com. He has appeared as a guest on The O’Reilly Factor, The Kevin Matthews Radio Show (Chicago) and The Brad Messer Radio Show (San Antonio). His pieces have been recognized by the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention and are occasionally featured in The Washington Times and The London Morning Paper as well as other national and international publications.

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