WHY IS THE WACO KID RUNNING?

Interesting theory on Gen. McClellan's Clark's entry into the fray: He's a stalking horse to keep the Clintonista-run Democratic Leadership Council from becoming irrelevant.

I could buy that. The Clinton camp may not want the Dem nominee to win in 2004 (thus freezing Hillary! out for another term or two), but they don't want the party to lurch so far left that it will take a generation to come back to the faux Clinton center. So enter the General to try and stem the Dean tide. Into the breach goes the political soldier.

And for the general's motivation, there's always the chance he could fool around and win the thing, whereas if he waited around until 2008 he'd be up against Hillary! and that's a losing proposition for him. So now is likely his best shot. It's a win-win for Clark and the DLC.

MORE: Rick Brookhiser has picked up the Clark as McClellan meme that I've been trying to start (when I'm not accusing Clark of masterminding Waco, that is).

The gist of the McClellan meme is this: George McClellan was the penultimate political general. That's not to say that he was completely incompetent; on the contrary, he helped Abe Lincoln build the Army of the Potomac which would win the Civil War. But having built that army, McClellan just couldn't bear to use it. Lincoln fired him for his battlefield caution, then re-hired him, then fired him again.

McClellan loved to gad about Washington, even when he was Lincoln's field commander, making fun of the President at highbrow social soirees. After his last firing, McClellan ran for President against Lincoln on an anti-war platform and became the Dems' nominee.

Yes, the former commander of the Army of the Potomac ran against its mission in 1864. Had he won, he probably would've sued for peace, rending the Union forever.

So what's this got to do with Clark? Like McClellan, Clark was a competent soldier but lousy at discerning the political dimensions of battle. McClellan could turn a great victory into a humiliating defeat by failing to hunt down the Confederate forces as they retreated; Clark nearly turned a small-scale police action in Kosovo into World War III because he wanted to sack a Russian force occupying an airfield. McClellan was full of pomp and circumstance, but little substance or principle. He could build an army and then run against its just use. Clark could wear four stars, yet misunderstand the capabilities of the forces he recently led to the point that he predicted mass American casualties in Iraq. Both knew how to wear their uniforms well; both were known more for that quality than for any actual ability to lead men in battle. Both McClellan and Clark turned their military careers into an anti-war run against a sitting President in a time of grave national peril.

And last, McClellan failed...