I'm not sure what to make of Slate's chief political correspondent, William Saletan. Sometimes he's right on the mark in his analysis, sometimes right out of left field. Today he manages both in the space of one piece:

The virtues and shortcomings of Wes Clark's earnestness.

Great job capturing the essence of Clark's persona:

I've seen a few Clark speeches and a town hall meeting, but this event clarified where he fits into the Democratic field: He's the earnest guy.

Two weeks ago, at the only debate he's attended so far, Clark was full of canned answers. His performance was good but not distinctive from the career politicians onstage. Maybe debates aren't his strong suit, or maybe he should just can the canned stuff. Either way, in a town hall format, he's much more appealing. The reason is that he doesn't have to put on a show. He can just be what he is: bland and sincere. . . .

It's hard to convey the artlessness of his responses. You don't see his eyes, jaws, or hands working over the question, probing for threats and opportunities, the way John Kerry or John Edwards does. One hand grips the mike; the other hangs in his pocket. He stares at the questioner, unblinking. His eyebrows never rise. Neither does his voice.

But he's at his best when he cites a long Clark passage and then explains how it differs from his competitors:

[Clark speaking here:] They do things backward. They have some preconceived solutions, and then they look for circumstances that they can use to excuse putting those solutions in place. They had a tax cut plan. Well, first it was, "The government had too much of our money," so they were gonna give our money back. And then it was, "We were in a recession." But it wasn't exactly like the tax cut was designed to pull us out of the recession. Most of the cuts were way out in the future. … It was a solution looking for a problem. Same thing happened with Iraq. These guys were talking about going into Iraq back before the election. … They used 9/11 as the pretext to take us into that war, I think under false pretenses.

[Saletan analyzing here:] This critique lacks the moral edge of Dean's attack on Bush's divisiveness or Edwards' attack on Bush's elitism. But it has greater truth and, I suspect, broader resonance with public opinion. It doesn't demand that you think Bush is a bad guy or the Republican Party is evil. It only demands that you to look at the facts and put them together to form a relatively charitable, though fatal, conclusion: Bush lacks the temperament to adapt and solve problems as a president must. Gephardt calls Bush a failure and posits that the failure would continue in a second term, but he doesn't explain why. Clark explains why.

Stunning passage from Clark. Just that one paragraph and I remember why I'm in love with the guy. And Saletan pretty much reads it right out of my mind.

Great job so far Mr. Saletan. And then he sails right off a cliff:

But the real peril of earnestness isn't that it's boring as a campaign theme. The real peril is that it's insufficient as a governing philosophy.

What? He provides one dopey example and I guess that's supposed to illustrate a point maybe he thinks we agree with intuitively. Or something. (And in my mind, the example illustrates the opposite, but journos can usually be counted on as short-term thinkers.)

I think he's a little out of his mind. I have been praying for an earnest president, a wise man like Clark with (generally) the courage of his convictions, who governs according to true convictions instead of polling data and and long-range thinking instead of short-term political expediency.

I could use a little more excitement out of the guy, but he makes up for it with admiration. That is, every time I see him, I'm not so much electrified as mesmerized: finally, the real deal. A wise, honest and candid man, not (yet) beholden to a bunch of special interests.

Aside from the excitement, everything Saletan has described here--especially the passage directly from Clark--makes me believe he would be an incredible president.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell is celebrating its ten year anniversary, and Bill Clinton has chosen the occasion to bash the policy.

News release from the SLDN site:

In his strongest denunciation of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” to date, former President Bill Clinton says that “Simply put, there is no evidence to support a ban on gays in the military.” The written statement was made to Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) in conjunction with the organization’s End the Witch Hunts national dinner on Saturday. . . .

Well that's great to get his support, but a little hard not to gag on his words.

I am willing to cut Clinton some slack, but he really screwed both gays and the military (in the long run) on this one. Hard to hear him take the strong stand against Don't Ask, Don't Tell now, coming from the very guy who FORCED IT ON US!

Prior to Clinton, any president could have overturned the gay ban with just a swipe of his pen (executive order). But Clinton got this monstrosity enacted into law, and now it will take an act of congress to overturn it.

Thanks Buddy.

I wait too long to get back in the field sometimes.

In this case, it wasn't about researching a story, but . . . hmmmm, I hate to use this word but (promoting?) one.

As I mentioned in the last post, I spent the afternoon yesterday talking to three classes at the Air Force Academy about Columbine. I had been toying with the idea that the public seemed overripe for a book finally addressing what that tragedy was really about, and nothing could have convinced me more.

The professor warned me in advance that like any other college students, they could be both apathetic class material and shy about speaking in class. They were positively riveted. Right out of the gate, they were jumping in with questions, and we could have gone on for hours. And I was surprised, too, by the extent of their knowledge, and the depth of their probing. They were really fascinated by the whole topic.

If this is any indication of the interest level out there among young adults--and I have no doubt that it is--there is a considerable market out there for the book I've been messing with for years.

So, I'm going to take the advice many of you have given me here, get off my ass and get that book proposal together. (And start pitching it to magazines as well.)

There are several new movies surfacing on the subject--I'm going to see Gus Van Sant's Elephant at the Denver Film Festival next week--the five-year anniversary is coming up next April, and I have so much more to tell on this topic. (Particularly about what drove Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold to do it.)

I'll let you know how it goes.

I spent about six hours inside the Academy again yesterday--in some rather unusual situations--and it's always refreshing when I do.

They have a very real problem with the rape situation there, and also an enduring problem with the climate toward women, but that really is not the whole story about the place.

I don't want to come off as a member of the booster squad, but I think it's important to put things in perspective. And I think much of the country just sees that place as some sort of horrifying den of evil, where young robots are lobotomized and marched around to the beat of somebody else's brain, where the only original thought a cadet ever has is "Who can I rape tonight?"

Hardly. I have been developing some contacts there for awhile, and yesterday I was the guest speaker for three classes on Columbine (more on that in a separate post in a minute), and also sat in to observe three lengthy sessions where some of the brightest cadets were grilled by a small faculty panel (I'd rather not go into details.)

Wow. Actually sitting down and talking to--or listening to--cadets down there will turn your head around in a hurry. The classes were in a discussion format, where I mostly responded to questions from both the professor and students, and they were one of the best audiences I've spoken to in years. Bright, thoughtful, highly engaged. You can learn a lot about how people think just by listening to their questions, and these were three really dynamic and impressive groups.

And if you think military cadets must be some mindless automatons, you just need to let go of that stereotype. They laughed, they smiled, they furrowed their brows--one big tough guy in the front row teared up when I responded to a question about Principal Frank DeAngelis, and described how he handled the crisis.

I'm tempted to say that they're just like the students on any other campus, but that's not entirely true. They tend to be more conservative than most college populations, more Christian, more rigid in their thinking unfortunately, and way, way, way more polite. But I have to dredge up the old cliche here, that their similarities to other students are far greater than their differences.

I wish everybody could sit down and have a disucssion with groups of them for an afternoon. Not discussing their own situation, because they can get defensive and sometimes denialistic about that, and they are going to parrot back the party line much of the time. Don't talk about that, just talk to them. At heart, they're just normal 20-year olds struggling with all the same problems as any other 20-year old. Plus the whole military regimine added on top.

And as for the kids facing the panels, of course they were among the top students selected for the opportunity, but two of the three cadets I saw were just stunningly impressive. Sharp, witty, funny, open-minded and wise beyond their years. The cadets are not all like these two, but if this kind of cadet can rise to the top of the Air Force, I feel very secure about the direction the service will take.